Today is the 315th day of 2015. There are 50 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1918: World War I ends with Germany and the Allies signing an armistice in a railroad car at Compiegne, France.

OTHER EVENTS

1500: France’s King Louis XII and Ferdinand of Aragon secretly sign the Treaty of Granada for conquest and partition of Naples.

1528: Margaret Hunt tells the bishop of London the secrets of her “sorcery” — how she combines natural herbs and prayer to heal the sick. She is not prosecuted.

1606: Peace treaty is signed at Zeitva-Torok between Turks and Austrians.

1620: Forty-one Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower anchor in what is now Massachusetts and sign a compact calling for a “body politick”.

1673: Poland’s King John Sobieski defeats Turks at Korzim, Poland.

1778: British forces take St Lucia, West Indies, from French.

1831: Former slave Nat Turner, who led a violent insurrection, is executed in Jerusalem, Virginia.

1836: Chile declares war on Peru-Bolivia Federation.

1895: British Bechuanaland is annexed to Cape Colony.

1921: US President Warren Harding dedicates the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery.

1938: Kate Smith first sings Irving Berlin’s God Bless America on US network radio.

1942: Tearing up the Franco-German armistice which established the occupied zone in 1940, Hitler orders German troops into Unoccupied France on the 25th anniversary of the World War I Armistice.

1951: Juan Peron is elected to his second of three presidential terms in Argentina.

1964: Food shortages in India provoke riots.

1965: Ian Smith declares Rhodesian Independence, and Britain says the regime is illegal. The African country is now known as Zimbabwe.

1971: China’s chief delegates to the United Nations arrive in New York City amid tight security arrangements; US Senate ratifies treaty to return island of Okinawa to Japan.

1973: Egypt and Israel sign ceasefire agreement sponsored by United States and begin discussions to carry out the pact.

1975: Australian Governor General Sir John Kerr dismisses Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and dissolves Parliament — the first time in 200 years the British crown exercises its right to remove an elected prime minister.

1987: Boris Yeltsin, who criticised what he called the slow pace of Soviet reform, is removed as Moscow Communist Party chief.

1992: The Church of England votes to ordain women as priests.

1994: A 72-page manuscript of Leonardo da Vinci’s scientific diagrams and notes is sold at an auction in New York for a record $30.8 million.

1996: Guatemalan President Alvaro Arzu announces a peace agreement with the guerrilla movement, ending 36 years of fighting.

1998: UN personnel leave Baghdad, Iraq, and US President Bill Clinton orders more warplanes and ships to the Persian Gulf after Iraq refuses to allow weapons inspections to continue.

2000: A cable car being pulled through an Austrian mountainside to a glacier resort catches on fire, killing 155 skiers and snowboarders.

2002: Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates pledges $100 million to fight AIDS in India.

2004: Palestinians at home and abroad weep in an eruption of grief at the death of Yasser Arafat, the man they consider the father of their nation, and quickly elevate his #2 in the Palestine Liberation Organization as their top leader.

2011: The country’s top Cabinet secretary, Francisco Blake Mora, a key figure in Mexico’s battle with drug cartels, dies in a helicopter crash that President Felipe Calderon said was probably an accident.

2013: The Vatican ambassador to the US tells Roman Catholic bishops at their first national meeting since Pope Francis was elected they should not “follow a particular ideology” and should be more welcoming to church members.

2014: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accuses Israel of leading the region toward a “religious war”, drawing an angry response from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Louis Antoine Bougainville, French navigator (1729-1811); Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Russian writer (1821-1881); Kurt Vonnegut Jr, US writer (1922-2007); Daniel Ortega, president of Nicaragua (1945- ); Demi Moore, US actress (1962- ); Leonardo DiCaprio, US actor (1974- ); Calista Flockhart, US actress (1964- )

— AP