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Today is the 354th day of 2021. There are 11 days left in the year.TODAY'S HIGHIGHT1963: The Berlin Wall opens for the first time to West Berliners, who are allowed one-day visits to relatives in the Eastern sector for the holidays.OTHER EVENTS1192: Richard I the Lion-heart, king of England, is captured in Vienna.1582: The Gregorian calendar is adopted in France.1694: Frederick of Brandenburg restores Schweibus to the Holy Roman Empire.1712: The Swedes defeat the Danes at Gadebusch, Poland.1790: The first successful cotton mill in the United States begins operating in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.1803: New Orleans flies the American flag for the first time, signalling a transfer of ownership as the Louisiana Territory is handed over to the United States, which purchased it from France.1879: Inventor Thomas Edison privately demonstrates his incandescent light in Menlo Park, New Jersey.1880: Electric lights are installed throughout Broadway's theatre section.1922: Fourteen republics merge to form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.1928: Britain recognises the Nanking Government (Kuomintang) of China.1954: France sends 20,000 troops to Algeria to put down an independence movement.1957: European Nuclear Energy Agency is founded; Elvis Presley receives army draft notice.1986: Up to 30,000 students march for democracy through streets of Shanghai in China's largest demonstration since the Cultural Revolution.1987: More than 3,000 people are killed when the Dona Paz, a Philippine passenger ship, collides with the tanker Vector off Mindoro island, setting off a double explosion.1989: Some 12,000 US troops arrive in Panama to overthrow the government of General Manuel Antonio Noriega.1992: Welcomed by thousands of cheering Somalis, US Marines and Belgian paratroopers pour ashore in broad daylight and quickly take control of Kismayu's port and airport.1994: Mexico lowers the peso's trading floor, triggering a drastic devaluation.1995: An American Airlines jetliner carrying 164 people from Miami to Cali, Colombia, crashes into a mountain in the Andes. All but four people are killed.1998: Nkem Chukwu of Houston, Texas, becomes the first woman to give birth to eight live babies.1999: The Vermont Supreme Court rules that gay couples must be granted the same benefits and protections given married couples of the opposite sex in the first ruling of its kind in the United States.2001: Argentine President Fernando de la Rua resigns amid riots sparked by the country's collapsing economy.2003: Political opponents of President Hugo Chavez submit to the National Electoral Council petitions with 3.4 million signatures seeking a referendum to recall Chavez.2004: A tribunal upholds President Olusegun Obasanjo's victory in Nigeria's first-ever civilian-run vote, held more than a year earlier, saying some balloting fraud had occurred, but that the graft wouldn't have changed the results.2005: The first full session of Afghanistan's new Parliament almost breaks down in an uproar after a woman lawmaker demands that all warlords - some of whom are lawmakers - be brought to justice.2009: China, the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, lauds the outcome of a historic UN climate conference that ended with a non-binding agreement that urges major polluters to make deeper emissions cuts - but does not require it.2011: Around 10,000 women march through central Cairo demanding Egypt's ruling military step down in an unprecedented show of outrage over soldiers who abused them during a fierce crackdown on activists the past week.2012: Cuban Parliament President Ricardo Alarcon, one of the most influential people on the island and long its point man for US affairs, apparently is leaving the job he has held for 19 years when the body reconvenes the next year with new membership.TODAY'S BIRTHDAYSLeopold von Ranke, German historian (1795-1886); Branch Rickey, US baseball executive (1881-1965); Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, Australian statesman (1894-1978); W Eugene Smith, US photojournalist (1918-1978); George Roy Hill, US film director (1922-2002); Kim Young-sam, former president of South Korea (1927-2015); Nalo Hopkinson, acclaimed author, (1960- )- AP