Today is the 92nd day of 2013. There are 273 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2005: Pope John Paul II, who helped topple communism in Europe and left a deeply conservative stamp on the church that he led for 26 years, dies at age 84 in his Vatican apartment, ending a long public struggle against debilitating illness.

OTHER EVENTS

1513: In searching for the Fountain of Youth, Spaniard Ponce de Leon stumbles upon Florida, but does not realise it is part of mainland North America.

1792: US Congress passes the Coinage Act, which authorises establishment of the US Mint and allows the government to make its own money.

1860: The first Italian Parliament meets at Turin.

1937: South Africa prohibits political activity by foreigners in Southwest Africa.

1947: UN Security Council appoints US as trustee for Pacific islands, formerly under Japanese mandate.

1976: Portugal adopts its present constitution, which embraces Western European-style democracy.

1982: Argentina seizes the disputed Falkland Islands from Britain. Britain takes the islands back the following June.

1990: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein says he would use nerve agents — outlawed since 1925 — against Israel if attacked.

1994: Vladimir Zhirinovsky is declared leader of the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party in Russia.

1996: Stung by a security crackdown, the militant Islamic group Hamas calls for more suicide attacks against Israelis.

1997: With a rebellion engulfing the country, Zaire’s President Mobutu Sese Seko accepts Parliament’s nomination of Etienne Tshisekedi as the new prime minister.

1998: Maurice Papon, a Vichy official and later Cabinet minister in postwar France, is sentenced to 10 years in prison for deporting Jews during World War II.

1999: Serbian troops go house-to-house in the Kosovo town of Djakovia, making threats and killing men and sending thousands of ethnic Albanians fleeing.

2000: French archaeologists announce the discovery of a 4,000-year-old queen’s pyramid south of Cairo, complete with texts of special prayers previously found only with kings.

2002: Pakistani President Gen Pervez Musharraf meets with Afghanistan’s interim leader Hamid Karzai, in the first visit by a Pakistani leader in more than 30 years. The two indicate they plan to mend relations and work together to promote stability in Afghanistan.

2007: UN refugee agency reports that fierce fighting between Ethiopian-backed government forces and Islamic insurgents in Somalia’s capital has killed nearly 400 people — mostly civilians — in the past four days, and some 47,000 people have abandoned their homes in the last 10 days.

2008: President Robert Mugabe’s long-ruling party lost its parliamentary majority, and Zimbabwe’s opposition claimed victory for leader Morgan Tsvangirai in the country’s presidential vote.

2009: Anxiously assembled at the most perilous moment for the global economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the world’s financial powers pledge more than $1 trillion for emergency loans to combat spreading chaos.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Charlemagne, Emperor of the West (742-814); Hans Christian Andersen, Danish writer (1805-1875); William Holman Hunt, English artist (1827-1910); Emile Zola, French author (1840-1902); Max Ernst (1891-1976); Buddy Ebsen, U.S. actor (1908-2003); Sir Alec Guinness, British actor (1914-2000); Emmylou Harris, US country singer (1947-).

— AP