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Today is the 224th day of 2020. There are 141 days left in the year.TODAY'S HIGHLIGHT1961: The East German Parliament votes to erect a wall separating east Berlin from the western part. It goes up the same night. OTHER EVENTS1499: Turks defeat Venetian fleet at Sapienza, Italy. The battle is the one of several wars between the two sides.1530: Florence is restored to Medici family in Italy by Holy Roman Empire troops.1687: Duke of Lorraine and Louis of Baden defeat Turks under Suleiman Pasha at Battle of Mohacs, ending Turkish occupation of Hungary.1759: Russian and Austrian forces defeat Prussians at Kunersdorf, Germany, and Dresden falls into Austrian hands.1813: Austria declares war on France1898: Hawaiian Islands in Pacific are transferred to United States.1941: French Marshal Henri Philippe Petain calls on his countrymen to give full support to Nazi Germany in World War II.1953: The Soviet Union detonates its first hydrogen bomb.1958: Cuban rebel leader Fidel Castro announces the complete "liberation" of the Sierra Maestra area of Oriente Province from President Batista's army. Three-hundred Cuban soldiers are killed and 420 captured.1960: UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold and UN troops enter rebel province of Katanga in Zaire.1965: A US Navy jet fighter-bomber is shot down by a missile 50 miles (80 kilometres) south-west of Hanoi. It is the second US plane shot down by North Vietnamese in three weeks.1970: West Germany and Soviet Union sign non-aggression pact in Moscow.1978: Japan and China sign a peace treaty implemented in October.1990: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein offers to withdraw from Kuwait if Israel withdraws from occupied territories.1991: Soviet President Mikhail S Gorbachev authorises the establishment of an agency to oversee the denationalisation of large-scale State enterprises.1992: United States, Canada and Mexico reach a free-trade agreement.1995: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's former right-hand man and son-in-law, Hussein Kamel al-Majid, who defected to Jordan, announces a campaign to topple him.1998: Swiss banks agree to pay $1.25 billion to Holocaust survivors as restitution for lost assets.2005: In one of his first acts as pope, Benedict XVI invites Rome's chief rabbi to his installation ceremony and issues special greetings to Jews. He also assures Muslims the Roman Catholic Church wants to build "bridges of friendship".2006: China's south-east braces for more torrential rain after Typhoon Saomai strikes the region earlier in the week, killing more than 100 people and leaving almost 200 missing.2007: Forty-six children believed abducted or coerced from their parents are rescued from a Guatemalan adoption home catering to foreigners that is run by an American man and his Guatemalan wife.2009: US Marines battle Taliban fighters for control of a strategic southern town in a new operation to cut militant supply lines and allow Afghan residents to vote in a presidential election.2010: WikiLeaks spokesman Julian Assange says his organisation is preparing to release the rest of the secret Afghan war documents it has on file. The Pentagon warns that would be more damaging to security and risk more lives than the organisation's initial release of some 76,000 war documents.2013: Suspected Islamic militants gun down 44 people praying at a mosque in north-east Nigeria while another 12 die in an apparently simultaneous attack.2014: Ukraine insists aid must be delivered to a rebel-held zone in the east by the Red Cross as a Russian help convoy leaves Moscow. TODAY'S BIRTHDAYSRobert Mills, US architect (1781-1855); Katherine Lee Bates, US author of America the Beautiful (1859-1929); Erwin Schroedinger, Austrian physicist (1887-1961); Cantinflas (Mario Moreno), Mexican comedian (1911-1993); William Goldman, US novelist-screenwriter (1931-2018); Pete Sampras, US tennis player (1971- ); Casey Affleck, US actor (1975- )- AP