Today is the 300th day of 2014. There are 65 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1938: US company DuPont, announces the invention of nylon.

OTHER EVENTS

1787: The first of the Federalist Papers, a series of essays calling for ratification of the US Constitution, is published in a New York newspaper.

1806: France’s Napoleon Bonaparte occupies Berlin.

1871: Britain annexes the diamond fields of Kimberly, South Africa.

1904: The first rapid transit subway opens in New York City.

1922: Southern Rhodesia referendum rejects joining Union of South Africa.

1943: Germans close the Norway-Sweden border after moving up additional troops during World War II.

1961: US and Soviet tanks are brought to the border between East and West Berlin because of a decree ordering all foreigners to submit to identity controls on entering East Berlin.

1973: UN peacekeeping forces arrive in Cairo to attempt to set up a lasting ceasefire between Israeli and Arab forces.

1975: Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin are awarded Nobel Peace Prize.

1977: US President Jimmy Carter rules out any US embargo on trade with South Africa or any ban on US investments to protest its racial policies.

1987: South Korean voters approve a new constitution, clearing the way for the first direct presidential elections in 16 years.

1989: Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega announces an end to ceasefire with US-backed anti-Sandinista rebels.

1990: Roman Catholic bishops concluded a month-long synod in Rome, reaffirming the policy of celibacy for priests. The possibility of easing the church’s opposition to married priests came up as a way to help overcome a shortage of clerics in some dioceses.

1995: After eluding a massive manhunt for three days, a North Korean spy is fatally shot when he tries to break through a cordon of South Korean commandos on a mountain near the border between the two countries.

1997: The Dow Jones industrial average tumbles 554.26 points, forcing the stock market to shut down for the first time since the 1981assassination attempt on US President Ronald Reagan.

1999: Up to five gunmen seize Armenia’s parliament in a torrent of automatic weapons fire, killing the prime minister and seven others before taking dozens hostage; the US federal budget surplus is put at $123 billion in 1998, marking the first back-to-back surpluses since the 1950s.

2002: Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wins Brazil’s presidential runoff election, becoming the nation’s first leftist and working-class president.

2004: Pleading they cannot properly defend an unwilling client, Slobodan Milosevic’s court-appointed lawyers ask to quit, leaving the UN tribunal in a dilemma over how to conclude the most important war crimes trial in half a century in a way history will judge as fair.

2005: Israel kills seven Palestinians in a missile strike against Islamic Jihad, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon refuses to meet with the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas until he cracks down on armed groups.

2006: Germany’s military suspends two soldiers from duty in connection with photos of troops posing with a skull in Afghanistan.

2008: Harvard researchers conclude that Mexicans would live an average of two months longer if they breathed cleaner air.

2009: Seven former Guantanamo Bay detainees ask the High Court in London to reject a government request to use secret sessions to hear allegations that Britain was complicit in their torture overseas.

2010: Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden threatens in a new audio tape to kill French citizens to avenge their country’s support for the US-led war in Afghanistan and a new law that will ban face-covering Muslim veils.

2011: The excruciating work of inking a deal to contain their two-year debt crisis over, European leaders turn to a potentially more difficult task: implementing the agreement that asks banks to take on bigger losses on Greece’s debts.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY

Niccolo Paganini, Italian composer (1782-1840); General Fructuoso Rivera, first president of Uruguay (1784-1854); Theodore Roosevelt, US president (1858-1919); Dylan Thomas, British poet (1914-1953); John Cleese, British actor (1939- ); Peter Martins, Danish dancer (1946- ); Simon LeBon, English pop singer (1958- ); Roberto Benigni, Italian actor/director (1952- )

–AP