Today is the 249th day of 2017. There are 116 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2001: The first Air France Concorde plane in more than a year is cleared for commercial flights. The carrier’s fleet had been grounded after a Concorde crashed outside Paris in July 2000, killing 113 people.

OTHER EVENTS

1620: Pilgrims sail on the Mayflower from Plymouth, England, to settle in the New World.

1901: US President William McKinley is shot by an anarchist and dies eight days later.

1909: American explorer Robert Peary sends word that he has reached the North Pole five months early.

1930: President Hipolito Yrigoyen of Argentina is toppled by a military coup.

1941: Jews over the age of six in Germany are forced to wear yellow stars of David.

1944: The German V-2 missile, the precursor of modern ballistic missiles, is used for the first time, against Paris.

1966: South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd is stabbed to death by a deranged page during a parliamentary session in Cape Town.

1968: Kingdom of Swaziland gains independence from Britain.

1970: Palestinian guerrillas seize control of three jetliners which are later blown up on the ground in Jordan after the passengers and crews are evacuated.

1975: More than 2,300 people are killed by an earthquake in eastern Turkey.

1982: Israeli Defence Minister Ariel Sharon presses Lebanese authorities to conclude a formal peace treaty with Israel. If they do not, he warns, Israel will create a buffer zone in southern Lebanon, using some of that country’s land.

1986: Two Arab terrorists kill 21 Jewish worshippers and themselves in an attack on a synagogue in Istanbul, Turkey.

1992: Troops in South Africa fire on African National Congress supporters near the Transkei homeland, killing 28 and wounding 200.

1993: Six oil-producing Arab nations give crucial endorsement to the peace deal that would give Palestinians self-rule.

1999: Indonesia imposes martial law in East Timor as thousands of people flee the province and pro-Indonesian militias continue a wave of terror.

2000: The largest gathering of global leaders in history assembles at the UN Millennium Summit to chart an agenda for the 21st century.

2003: Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas resigns after a prolonged power struggle with Palestinian President Yasir Arafat. Abbas blamed Israel, Arafat and the administration of US President George W Bush for undermining his government and causing his peace efforts to fail.

2006: Prince Hisahito — Japan’s imperial family’s first male heir since the 1960s — is born in Tokyo.

2009: Passengers leap into the dark sea and parents drop children into life rafts from a stricken ferry carrying nearly 1,000 people after it capsized in the middle of the night in the southern Philippines, killing nine and leaving 30 missing.

2010: Huge posters plastered across the North Korean capital hail the nation’s biggest political convention in 30 years as a historic event, as the world watches for signs that the country’s next leader is making his public debut.