Today is Wednesday July 29, the 210th day of 2009. There are 155 days left in the year.

Highlights in history on this date:

• 1499 - Lepanto in Greece surrenders to forces of Turkey's Sultan.

• 1588 - The English defeat the Spanish Armada in the Battle of Gravelines.

• 1656 - Poles under John Casimir are defeated at Warsaw by combined Swedish-Brandenburg force.

• 1696 - Russian forces of Peter the Great take Azov from the Turks.

• 1858 - United States and Japan sign their first commercial treaty.

• 1900 - Italy's King Humbert I is assassinated by an anarchist.

• 1914 - Transcontinental telephone service begins with the first phone conversation between New York and San Francisco.

• 1921 - All-India Congress decides to boycott Prince of Wales' visit to India.

• 1922 - Allied powers issue ultimatum forbidding Greeks to occupy Istanbul in Turkey.

• 1937 - Japanese seize Tianjin in China. Eighteen-year-old Crown Prince Farouk is crowned king of Egypt.

• 1940 - Germany's aerial blitz against Britain begins during World War II.

• 1941 - Vichy France and Japan sign agreement for "joint protection" of Indochina. This allows France to continue administering colonies, but Japan sends in troops.

• 1941 - Group of Maori chiefs sells about 1,200 hectares (3,000 acres) of land around Waitemata Harbor, present site of Auckland, to the New Zealand government.

• 1957 - U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs an act to create NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

• 1968 - Pope Paul VI reaffirms the Roman Catholic Church's stance against artificial methods of birth control.

• 1973 - Voters in Greece endorse decisions by their leaders to abolish Greek monarchy and install George Papadopoulos as president.

• 1975 - President Gerald Ford is the first U.S. president to visit Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz in Poland.

• 2000 - A U.S. soldier, Staff Sgt. Frank J. Ronghi, pleads guilty to the murder and forcible sodomy of an ethnic Albanian girl in Kosovo. He is later convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

• 2007 - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ruling party suffers a humiliating defeat in parliamentary elections, one of the Liberal Democratic Party's worst showings in its almost five-decade rule.

Today's Birthdays:

Alexis de Toqueville, French political scientist (1805-1859); Benito Mussolini, Italian dictator (1883-1945); Booth Tarkington, U.S. novelist (1869-1946), Sigmund Romberg, Hungarian-born composer (1887-1951); Dag Hammarskjold, Swedish U.N. Secretary-General and Nobel Peace Prize laureate (1905-1961); Clara Bow, U.S. actress (1905-1965), Mikis Theodorakis, Greek composer (1925--); Peter Jennings, Canadian-born ABC newsman (1938-2005), Ken Burns, U.S. documentary filmmaker (1953--), Martina McBride, U.S. country singer (1966--).

Thought For Today:

The fellow who says he'll meet you halfway usually thinks he's standing on the dividing line —O.A. Battista, Canadian-born author-scientist.