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Today is the 363rd day of 2021. There are two days left in the year.Today's Highlight2001: A series of firework explosions spark a massive fire in downtown Lima, Peru, killing 291 people. The blaze, fuelled by dozens of sidewalk stands selling illegal fireworks, quickly spreads throughout the crowded commercial district. Other Events1170: Archbishop Thomas Becket is slain at the altar in Cathedral of Canterbury, England.1721: French occupy Mauritius and rename it Ile de France.1845: Texas is admitted as the 28th state.1890: US troops massacre 200 Sioux men, women, and children at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.1901: Commonwealth of Australia is inaugurated after being constituted by an Act of the Imperial Parliament the previous year.1916: James Joyce's first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, is first published in book form in New York after being serialised in London.1921: United States, Britain, France, Italy and Japan sign Washington treaty to limit naval armaments.1940: German bombers inflict greatest damage on London since Great Fire of 1666.1957: Singers Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme are married in Las Vegas (the marriage lasts until Gorme's death in 2013).1965: Independence is announced for Bechuanaland, which becomes Botswana.1967: Hyundai Motor Company is founded in Seoul, South Korea.1972: Eastern Air Lines Flight 401, a Lockheed L-1011 Tristar, crashes into the Florida Everglades near Miami International Airport, killing 101 of the 176 people aboard.1975: A bomb explodes in the main terminal of New York's LaGuardia Airport, killing 11 people (It has never been determined who was responsible).1986: Former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan dies in Sussex, England, at age 92.1990: Johan Kraag is sworn in as president of Suriname after bloodless military coup on December 24 ousts former president.1996: Guatemalan Government and guerrilla leaders sign an accord ending 36 years of civil conflict, bringing Central America's last and longest civil war to an official close.1998: In Yemen, troops surround and fire on a band of Islamic extremists holding 16 tourists hostage, ending a kidnapping that leaves six of the hostages dead.2004: Paramedics spray Indian beaches with bleach and vaccinate tsunami survivors, as Indonesian authorities bulldoze mass graves for thousands of corpses lining the streets and lawns of Banda Aceh.2006: Turkish Cypriots begin dismantling a bridge that blocked plans to relink war-divided Nicosia's commercial centre and was seen as the strongest symbol of the island's partition. The bridge is gone 11 days later, but no breakthrough in reunification talks is evident.2008: An estimated 47 million people visited New York City in 2008, beating the previous year by one million visitors, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announces.2009: North Korea acknowledges it has detained an American for illegally entering the reclusive country, news welcomed by relatives of a missionary who feared they would never hear from him again after he sneaked across the border.2010: Police in Denmark and Sweden say they thwarted a terrorist attack possibly hours before it was to begin, arresting five men they say planned to shoot as many people as possible in a Copenhagen building housing the newsroom of a paper that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.2012: Shocked Indians mourn the death of a woman who had been gang-raped and beaten on a bus in New Delhi nearly two weeks earlier; six suspects are charged with murder. (Four are later sentenced to death; one dies in prison; the sixth, a juvenile at the time of the attack, was sentenced to a maximum of three years in a reform home.) Russia's foreign minister says that Syrian President Bashar Assad has no intention of stepping down and it would be impossible to try to persuade him otherwise. Maine's same-sex marriage law goes into effect.2013: Saudi Arabia pledges $3 billion to Lebanon to help strengthen the country's armed forces and purchase weapons from France as the troops struggle to contain a rising tide of violence linked to neighbouring Syria's civil war.2016: The United States strikes back at Russia for hacking the US presidential campaign with a sweeping set of punishments targeting Russia's spy agencies and diplomats; Moscow calls the Barack Obama Administration in the US "losers" and threatens retaliation. Tennis star Serena Williams announces her engagement to Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian - on Reddit. (The couple marries on November 16, 2017.) Today's BirthdaysJeanne d'Etoiles, Marquise de Pompadour, mistress of France's King Louis XV (1721-1764); Pablo Casals, Spanish cellist (1876-1973); Viveca Lindfors, Swedish-born actress (1920-1995); Mary Tyler Moore, US actress (1937-2017); Gelsey Kirkland, US ballet dancer (1952- ); Ted Danson, US actor (1947- ); Jude Law, British actor (1972- )- AP