Today is the 183rd day of 2021. There are 182 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1777: Vermont becomes the first American colony to abolish slavery.

OTHER EVENTS

1502: Conflict between French and Spanish over partition of Naples breaks out in open warfare in Italy.

1644: British Royalists suffer their first major defeat against the Parliamentarians under Oliver Cromwell at Marston Moor.

1657: Denmark attacks Sweden, already at war with Russia, Poland and Austria, but suffers a humiliating defeat the same winter.

1776: The Continental Congress declares American Independence.

1860: Russians found Vladivostok near Korean border.

1890: Brussels Act is passed by international conference to eradicate African slave trade and liquor traffic with primitive peoples.

1900: Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin flies his first airship in Germany.

1937: US aviator Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappear during an attempt to cross the Pacific.

1940: French Government moves to Vichy during World War II.

1947: An object crashes near Roswell in the US state of New Mexico. Military authorities first say it was an alien spacecraft and later say it was a weather balloon.

1964: A century after the Civil War was fought, US President Lyndon B Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act against racial discrimination.

1966: France explodes an atomic bomb at a Pacific atoll in first of series of six tests.

1976: North and South Vietnam are reunited officially after more than 20 years of war.

1988: Salvage tugboats battle flames aboard two Iranian tankers after missile attacks by Iraq’s air force in Gulf War.

1990: A stampede in a pedestrian tunnel linking Mecca and a tent city leaves 1,400 pilgrims dead of suffocation or trampling.

1991: Heavy fighting erupts in Slovenia with Yugoslav army using warplanes and artillery to help units trapped by Slovene forces.

1992: The United States completes a worldwide withdrawal of their tactical nuclear weapons marking the end of an era that began with rapid nuclear build-up in the early 1950s.

1993: A floating shrine sinks in Bocaue, Philippines, killing 315 worshippers during an annual nine-day religious festival.

1994: Colombian soccer player Andres Escobar is slain in Medellin for accidentally scoring a goal against his own team during a game against the United States.

1997: A supertanker hits a reef in Tokyo Bay, spilling 13,400 tons of crude oil, making it the worst oil disaster in Japanese history.

1998: After talks with new ruler General Abdulsalam Abubakar, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan says all political prisoners will be released in Nigeria.

2002: US millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett becomes the first person to circumnavigate the world solo in a balloon.

2004: Jordan and Yemen offer troops to Iraq in a major policy shift that could be an attempt to encourage other Arabs and Muslims to help Iraq’s US-backed Government restore security.

2006: Thousands of people march through Paris to protest plans to tighten restrictions on immigration and step up deportations of immigrant families with children who are in France illegally.

2010: Taliban suicide attackers storm a four-storey house used by an American aid organisation in north Afghanistan, killing four people before dying in a fierce five-hour gunbattle with Afghan security forces.

2011: Serbia and Kosovo strike deals on several practical issues that will make life easier for citizens — the first accords between the two countries since Kosovo declared independence in 2008.

2012: Physicists say they have all but proven that the “God particle” exists. They gave a footprint and a shadow and the only thing left is to see for themselves the elusive subatomic particle believed to give all matter in the universe its size and shape.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Christoph Willibald von Gluck, German composer (1714-1787); Sir William Bragg, British scientist and Nobel laureate (1862-1942); Herman Hesse, German writer and Nobel laureate (1877-1962); Wislawa Szymborska, Polish poet and Nobel laureate (1923-2012); Larry David, writer/director (1947- ); Jerry Hall, model/actress (1956- ); Lindsay Lohan, actress (1986- )

— AP