Today is Friday, October 23, the 296th day of 2009. There are 69 days left in the year.

Highlights in history on this date:

1596 - Turks under Mohammed III defeat Austrian Archduke Maximillian's forces near Erlau, Hungary.

1641 - Great Irish Massacre occurs after discovery of conspiracy against British.

1764 - Hector Munro's British forces defeat Nawab of Oudh at Buxar, Bengal.

1917 - U.S. troops see first action in World War I near Luneville, France.

1942 - British Eighth Army attacks Axis forces to begin Battle of El Alamein in Egypt during World War II.

1944 - Soviet Red Army enters Hungary.

1953 - Federal Constitution of Rhodesia and Nyasaland goes into effect.

1954 - Britain, France, United States and Soviet Union agree to end occupation of Germany.

1956 - Anti-Communist revolution breaks out in Hungary. It is crushed by a Soviet invasion on November 4.

1958 - Soviet Union approves loan for Aswan Dam in Egypt.

1962 - Soviet Union warns that a U.S. blockade of arms shipments to Cuba may risk a thermonuclear war.

1969 - Laotian officials report that fresh North Vietnamese troops have reached the Plaine des Jarres and clashed with government troops on their border.

1973 - Israeli military command announces that Israel and Egypt have agreed to new cease-fire in Middle East war.

1983 - Suicide attackers blow up U.S. Marine headquarters building at Beirut Airport, Lebanon, and nearby French headquarters with bomb-laden trucks, killing 241 U.S. Marines and 58 Frenchmen.

1988 - Long-awaited Soviet election reform calls for choice of candidates but limits sharply what they can advocate.

1989 - Tens of thousands of Hungarians demand end to communism on anniversary of 1956 uprising.

1991 - The four warring factions in Cambodia sign a peace treaty in Paris paving the way for the return of refugees and democratic elections.

1992 - U.S. President George H. W. Bush announces the Vietnamese government will turn over all documents, photographs and personal effects of U.S. personnel it collected in the Vietnam War.

1993 - Irish Republican Army bomb kills 10 people in Belfast.

1994 - A Tamil rebel suicide bomber at an election rally in Colombo, Sri Lanka, kills at least 50 people, including Gamini Dissanayake, opposition candidate for president.

1995 - After a meeting in New York, Russian President Boris Yeltsin announces accord with U.S. President Bill Clinton that Russian troops would help enforce peace in Bosnia.

1996 - A historian reveals that the Swiss bank accounts of presumed Holocaust victims were used to settle Switzerland's postwar compensation disputes with Poland and Hungary.

1997 - South Africa's Nelson Mandela receives a hero's welcome in Libya, and calls for the United Nations to lift sanctions that are harming "our African brothers and sisters."

1998 - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat agree on a breakthrough land-for-peace West Bank accord after eight days of negotiations in the United States.

1999 - Illinois' George Ryan pays the first visit to communist Cuba by a U.S. governor since Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution, declaring he has come "to build bridges between people."

2001 - Indonesia's parliament passes a bill granting the rebellious province of Irian Jaya sweeping autonomy, a greater share of resource revenues and a new name — Papua.

2002 - British police detain Abu Qatada, a fugitive Muslim cleric who allegedly was an influential supporter of the al-Qaida terrorist network.

2004 - Suspected Islamic militants kill 16 people heading to a soccer match in a pre-dawn ambush south of Algeria's capital — the first bloodshed since the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

2005 - Hurricane Wilma punishes Mexico's Caribbean coastline for a second day, ripping away storefronts, peeling back roofs and forcing tourists and residents trapped in hotels and shelters to scramble to higher floors. At least seven people are killed.

2006 - Police in Hungary fire tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons to disperse protesters in anti-government demonstrations coinciding with the nation's commemoration of the 50th anniversary of its uprising against Soviet rule.

2007 - NASA's space shuttle Discovery and a crew of seven rocket into orbit in pursuit of the international space station, where a formidable construction job awaits them.

2008 - A Paris court convicts nine people of charges linked to financing and associating with a terror group, including Safe Bourada, a French-Algerian who admitted forming an Islamic group that called for armed jihad in France.

Today's Birthdays:

Louis Riel, Canadian rebel leader (1844-1885); Johnny Carson, former U.S. "Tonight Show" host (1925-2005); Pele, Brazilian soccer star (1940--); Michael Crichton, U.S. author (1942--2008); Ang Lee, Taiwanese film director (1954--); Weird Al Yankovic, U.S. musical parodist (1959--).

Thought for Today:

It is the characteristic of the most stringent censorships that they give credibility to the opinions they attack — Voltaire, French author and philosopher (1694-1778).