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Today is the 344th day of 2021. There are 21 days left in the year.TODAY'S HIGHLIGHT1948: UN General Assembly in Paris unanimously adopts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Six members of the Soviet bloc, Saudi Arabia and South Africa abstain. OTHER EVENTS1906: US President Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first American to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for helping mediate an end to the Russo-Japanese War.1936: King Edward VIII of Britain abdicates with the intention of marrying American divorcee Wallis Simpson. His brother, the Duke of York, becomes King George VI.1950: UN Mideast peace mediator Ralph J Bunche is presented the Nobel Peace Prize, the first black American to receive the award.1963: Zanzibar becomes independent within the Commonwealth.1964: Dr Martin Luther King Jr receives the Nobel Peace Prize.1973: Austria closes its transit centre for Jews leaving the Soviet Union.1988: Chinese troops shoot into crowds of Tibetans demonstrating in Lhasa for human rights.1993: African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela says he and President F W de Klerk are bound by the Nobel Peace Prize they accepted to spend the rest of their lives building a democratic, non-racial South Africa.1996: South African President Nelson Mandela signs a constitution guaranteeing equal rights to all races.2009: President Barack Obama accepts the Nobel Peace Prize, offering a striking defence of war at the same time as he makes an impassioned case for building a "just and lasting peace".2010: Veteran journalist and university lecturer John Maxwell passes on. TODAY'S BIRTHDAYSAda King Lovelace, English mathematician and world's first computer programmer (1815-1852); Cesar Franck, Belgian composer (1822-1890); Emily Dickinson, US poet (1830-1886); Mary Norton, English children's author (1903-1992); Michael Manley, former Jamaican prime minister (1924-1997)- AP/Jamiaica Observer