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Today is the 271st day of 2021. There are 94 days left in the year.TODAY'S HIGHLIGHT2017: The Donald Trump Administration says its relief efforts in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria were succeeding, though people on the island say help was scarce and disorganised. OTHER EVENTS1066: William, duke of Normandy, invades England and claims the English throne.1542: Portuguese navigator Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo arrives at present-day San Diego.1687: Turks surrender Athens to Venetians, but retake it a year later.1716: Treaty of Hanover between England and France leads to Triple Alliance with Holland.1781: American forces, backed by a French fleet, begin the siege of Yorktown Heights, Virginia, during the Revolutionary War.1787: Congress votes to send the just-completed US Constitution to state legislatures for their approval.1850: Flogging is abolished as a form of punishment in the US Navy.1915: British defeat Turks at Kut-el-Amara in Mesopotamia.1920: A grand jury indicts eight members of the Chicago White Sox baseball team, accused of throwing the 1919 World Series and dubbed the "Black Sox".1924: Two US Army planes land in Seattle, Washington, completing the first round-the-world flight in 175 days.1928: Scottish medical researcher Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin, the first effective antibiotic.1939: Germany and Soviet Union agree on a plan to partition Poland.1941: Nazi German terror campaign begins in Czechoslovakia.1950: Indonesia is admitted to United Nations.1958: The new 5th Republican French Constitution is approved.1965: A volcano 55 kilometres (35 miles) south of Manila in Philippines erupts, killing at least 184 people.1970: President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt dies of a heart attack. Anwar Sadat replaces him.1972: Japan and Communist China agree to re-establish diplomatic relations.1977: Japanese terrorists hold 156 hostages on hijacked Japanese airliner at Dhaka, Bangladesh.1980: Iran rejects UN Security Council resolution to end the war with Iraq, stating Iraq was violating its territorial sovereignty and fomenting rebellion among Iran's minority population in Khuzistan and Kurdistan provinces.1984: Indian authorities order temporary closure of Sikh shrine Golden Temple in Amritsar.1987: India and Sri Lanka's Tamil guerrilla group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, agree to an accord that gives the Tigers a council majority to administer the semiautonomous northern and eastern provinces in Sri Lanka.1990: Three Philippine military officers and 13 soldiers are convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the 1983 murder of Opposition Leader Benigno S Aquino Jr.1991: Zairian President Mobutu Sese Seko agrees to form a coalition Government with Opposition leaders after five days of rioting, the first time in his 26 years of rule that he agrees to share power.1993: A natural gas pipeline explodes beneath a busy highway in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, killing 50 people.1994: The ferry Estonia sinks in a storm in the Baltic Sea, killing more than 900 people.1995: Israel and Palestinians sign a historic accord at the White House, in Washington, to extend Palestinian rule on the strife-ridden West Bank.1997: Swiss voters overwhelmingly approve their country's liberal drug policies, including the dispensation of heroin to addicts.2001: The United Nation Security Council ends sanctions against Sudan. The sanctions had been imposed in 1996 after Sudan refused to extradite suspects in a 1995 attempt to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Both Egypt and Ethiopia, where the assassination attempt occurred, wanted the sanctions lifted.2003: Pope John Paul II appoints 31 Roman Catholic prelates to the College of Cardinals, entitling most of those selected to vote for the next pope.2008: Austrian 16-year-olds vote for the first time in parliamentary elections under a new law. US President George W Bush urges Congress to pass a US$700-billion rescue plan for beleaguered financial companies, saying in a written statement, "Without this rescue plan, the costs to the American economy could be disastrous." Chinese astronauts aboard the Shenzhou 7 returned to Earth after completing their country's first spacewalk mission. Austrian 16-year-olds voted for the first time in parliamentary elections under a law adopted in 2007.2009: Rescuers pull more bodies from swollen rivers as residents start to dig out their homes from under carpets of mud after flooding left 140 people dead in the Philippine capital and surrounding towns.2010: The youngest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is elected to his first prominent posts in the ruling Workers' Party, putting him well on the path to succeed his father as leader.2013: Locked in a deepening struggle with US President Barack Obama, House Republicans demand a one-year delay in major parts of the nation's new health care law and permanent repeal of a tax on medical devices as the price for preventing a partial government shutdown threatened for October 1. (Senate Democrats rejected the plan and the White House said that "any member of the Republican Party who votes for this bill is voting for a shutdown".)2014: Pro-democracy demonstrators defy onslaughts of tear gas and appeals from Hong Kong's top leader to go home as the protests over Beijing's decision to limit political reforms expand across the city. TODAY'S BIRTHDAYSProsper Merimee, French author (1803-1870); Georges Clemenceau, French premier (1841-1929); Peter Finch, Australian actor (1916-1977); Marcello Mastroianni, Italian actor (1924-1996); Brigitte Bardot, French actress (1934- ); Ben E King, US singer (1938-2015); John Sayles, US film director/writer (1950- ); Janeane Garofalo, actress (1964- ); Mira Sorvino, actress (1967- ); Naomi Watts, actress (1968- ) - AP