Today is the 312th day of 2013. There are 53 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1895: Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, German physicist, discovers X-rays.

OTHER EVENTS

1519: Spanish conqueror Hernan Cortez reaches Mexico City with his small Spanish force and 1,000 Tlaxcaltec allies. The Aztecs, believing he is an incarnation of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, receive him with great honour.

1520: Swedes loyal to Denmark’s King Christian II execute over 80 political opponents in the central square in “the blood bath of Stockholm”.

1793: The Louvre Museum in Paris opens to the public.

1892 – Former US President Grover Cleveland beats incumbent Benjamin Harrison and becomes the first US president to win non-consecutive terms in the White House.

1917: Vladimir I Lenin becomes chief commissar in Russia and Leon Trotsky is named premier.

1923: Adolf Hitler stages unsuccessful coup in Munich, Germany, that comes to be known as the “Beer-Hall Putsch”.

1932: New York Gov Franklin Delano Roosevelt is elected US president.

1960: Massachusetts Senator John F Kennedy defeats Vice President Richard M Nixon for the US presidency

1966: Edward W Brooke of Massachusetts becomes the first black to be elected to the US Senate by popular vote.

1989: Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega offers to end arms imports to his country in exchange for demobilisation of Contra rebels.

1990: US President George Bush orders 200,000 more US troops to the Gulf; United States readies UN resolution that would authorize an attack on Iraq.

1991: The European Community and Canada impose economic sanctions on Yugoslavia in an attempt to stop the Balkan civil war.

1992: US Senator Bob Dole calls for an investigation into the action of the Iran-contra special prosecutor’s office in connection with the indictment of former Defence Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who was charged with making false statements to Congress.

1993: Russian President Boris Yeltsin approves a draft constitution that will give him increased powers at the parliament’s expense.

1994: France arrests 95 people in its biggest sweep against Islamic militants.

1995: Russia agrees to have peacekeeping troops in Bosnia report to an American division instead of having them directly under NATO command, which the Russians resisted.

1996: UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali calls for an international military force to aid and protect a million refugees caught in a civil war in Zaire, but is blocked by the United States in the Security Council.

1997: Chinese engineers divert the Yangtze River from its natural course, clearing way for the construction of the enormous Three Gorges dam.

1998: In Bangladesh, 15 former military commanders are sentenced to death for the 1975 assassination of the country’s first prime minister.

1999: Israel’s national airline graduates its first Arab flight attendant in nearly a decade, several months after it came under attack for discriminating against Arabs.

2000: Fusako Shigenobu, a Japanese revolutionary responsible for terrorist massacres in Israel and Italy, is arrested in Japan after decades on the run.

2001: The discovery of eight remains — five skeletons and the partially clad bodies of three young women — in Cuidad Juarez, Mexico, ignites fear that a series of 57 rape-murders did not end in the 1990s.

2005: France declares a state of emergency after nearly two weeks of rioting, clearing the way for curfews in hopes of ending the country’s worst civil unrest in more than 50 years. Its prime minister acknowledges that racial discrimination has inflamed tempers in the heavily immigrant suburbs.

2007: Russia’s Supreme Court refuses to recognise the executed last czar Nicholas II and his family as victims of political repression — a ruling Kremlin critics said was dictated by the government’s reluctance to condemn the bloodiest chapters of the country’s Communist past.

2010: Scientists at the world’s largest atom smasher in Geneva say they have succeeded in recreating conditions shortly after the Big Bang by switching the particles they use for collisions from protons to much heavier lead ions.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Edmund Halley, British astronomer (1656-1742); John Milton, English poet (1608-1674); Hermann Rorschach, Swiss psychiatrist (1884-1922); Margaret Mitchell, U.S. author (1900-1949); Katharine Hepburn, US actress (1907-2003); Alain Delon, French actor (1932-); Mary Hart, US television host (1950-); Parker Posey, US actress (1968- ).

— AP