Today is the 326th day of 2010. There are 39 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight:

2005: Conservative Angela Merkel takes power as Germany’s first female chancellor and the country’s first leader to grow up under Communism in the Soviet-occupied East.

Other Events

1699: Treaty is signed by Denmark, Russia, Saxony and Poland for partition of Swedish Empire.

1906: The “SOS” distress signal is adopted at the International Radio Telegraphic Convention in Berlin.

1943: Lebanon is granted independence after two decades of French mandate rule.

1972: US President Richard Nixon lifts 22-year-ban on American travel to China.

1977: The British and French supersonic airliner Concorde begins service out of New York’s Kennedy International Airport after lengthy dispute over noise levels.

1990: British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, after being defeated by John Major in a ballot for Conservative Party leader, resigns after 11 1/2 years in office.

1991: Ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide meets with a group of legislators to negotiate an end to Haiti’s constitutional crisis. It is the first meeting between the two sides since Aristide’s overthrow in a military-led coup.

1993: Mexican Senate approves North American Free Trade Agreement.

1994: Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi is placed under investigation in a bribery probe.

1995 – Boosting the Balkan peace accord, the U.N. Security Council suspends economic sanctions against Serbia and begins lifting the arms embargo against republics of the former Yugoslavia.

1998: Albanians ratify their country’s first post-Communist constitution in a referendum.

2001: The Turkish Parliament approves revisions to the country’s 75-year-old civil code to recognise men and women as equal before the law.

2002: Officials cancel the Miss World pageant in Nigeria and move it instead to London after news that the African nation will host the event sparks deadly riots.

2006: Nepal celebrates the end of a bloody 10-year communist insurgency by declaring a public holiday, and the international community hails the deal under which communist rebels will join an interim government.

2007:A transport strike that has crippled France for nine days in open defiance of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s reform agenda collapses as rail workers around the country vote “yes” to return to work.

2008: Martine Aubry, the architect of France’s 35-hour work week, wins the Socialist Party’s leadership in an extremely tight race.

Today’s Birthdays

Charles de Gaulle, French general-statesman (1890-1970); Benjamin Britten, English composer (1913-1976); Lew Hoad, Australian tennis champion (1934-1994); Jamie Lee Curtis, US actress (1958-); Mariel Hemingway, US actress (1961-); Boris Becker, German tennis professional and Wimbledon champion (1967-); Scarlett Johansson, US actress (1984-).