Today is Thursday, May 28, the 148th day of 2009. There are 217 days left in the year.

Highlights in history on this date:

1674 - Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I declares war on France.

1863 - The first black regiment from the North leaves Boston to fight in the American Civil War.

1864 - Austria-Hungary's Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian lands in Veracruz, Mexico, to become Emperor.

1919 - Armenia declares its independence, breaking up the short-lived Transcaucasian Federal Republic. Armenia joins the Soviet Union in 1922.

1923- The U.S. Attorney General determines it is legal for women to wear trousers.

1934 - The Dionne quintuplets, world's first known surviving quintuplets, are born near Callander, Ontario.

1937 - U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt pushes a button in Washington signaling that vehicular traffic could cross the just-opened Golden Gate Bridge in California.

1940 - Two weeks after being invaded, Belgium capitulates to Germany while British and French troops begin evacuation from Dunkerque, France.

1961 - Paris-Bucharest Orient Express train makes final trip after 78 years; human rights organization Amnesty International is founded.

1971 - Soviet Union launches spacecraft toward planet Mars, containing the first capsules to land on the planet.

1976 - United States and Soviet Union sign treaty limiting size of underground nuclear explosions set off for peaceful purposes.

1977 - Fire races through the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Kentucky, killing 165 people.

1979 - Egypt's President Anwar Sadat announces opening of air corridors between Egypt and Israel.

1984 - U.S. President Ronald Reagan leads a state funeral at Arlington National Cemetery for an unidentified American soldier killed in the Vietnam War.

1985 - David Jacobsen, director of the American University Hospital in Beirut, Lebanon, is abducted by pro-Iranian kidnappers. He is freed 17 months later.

1987 - Mathias Rust, a 19-year-old West German pilot, lands a private plane in Moscow's Red Square after evading Soviet air defenses.

1988 - Yugoslav government introduces new austerity program that includes devaluation of dinar and massive price increases.

1989 - Muslim rebels renew offensive against Afghan city of Jalalabad.

1990 - Lech Walesa persuades rail workers to suspend a strike that had crippled train service in northern Poland.

1991 - Oil tanker explodes, killing one crewman and spilling undetermined amount of oil into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Angola.

1992 - To raise pressure on Haiti, the United States announces it will close the refugee camp at the naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba, and bar ships that trade with Haiti from U.S. ports.

1993 - Bosnian Serbs subject Sarajevo to heavy shelling and sniper fire despite a new accord on demilitarizing the city.

1994 - U.N. troops step up evacuations of trapped civilians in Kigali, capital of Rwanda, and appeal for protection for convoys moving people across battle lines.

1995 - At least 1,500 people die in an earthquake that destroys a coastal village on Sakhalin Island in Russia's Far East.

1997 - Ethnic Uzbek troops turn on their Taliban allies and take the city of Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan after fierce fighting, marking a major setback for the Islamist Taliban movement.

1998 - Pakistan says it has matched India's recent nuclear test with the detonation of five devices, then declares a state of emergency citing unspecified threats of "external aggression."

1999 - An Indian helicopter gunship is blasted from the skies by Islamic militants in Kashmir when Indian forces try to dislodge them with airstrikes.

2000 - Sierra Leonean rebels free what appear to be the last of some 500 U.N. hostages held for nearly a month.

2002 - The Libyan government offers to pay $2.7 billion to the families of 270 victims of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in exchange for an end to U.S. and United Nations sanctions against Libya.

2004 - The International Atomic Energy Agency says that suppliers for Libya's nuclear weapons program stretched over three continents. Diplomats identify the former Soviet Union, Pakistan and South Africa as among them.

2005 - Major increases in the price of staple foods go into effect as President Robert Mugabe, who had recently refused assistance claiming the country had a bumper harvest, admits that Zimbabwe needs food aid to avert famine.

2006 - Pope Benedict XVI visits the Auschwitz concentration camp as "a son of the German people" and asks God why he remained silent during the "unprecedented mass crimes" of the Holocaust.

2007 - The United States and Iran break a 27-year diplomatic freeze with a four-hour meeting in Baghdad about Iraqi security.

2008 - Lawmakers declare Nepal the world's newest republic and bring to an end a centuries-old Hindu monarchy, giving the king two weeks to leave the royal compound.

Today's Birthdays:

William Pitt, English statesman (1759-1806); Edouard Benes, Czechoslovak statesman (1884-1948); Ian Fleming, British writer (1908-1964); Patrick White, Australian author (1912-1990); Carroll Baker, U.S. actress (1931--); Gladys Knight, U.S. singer (1944--); Jeff Fenech, Australian boxer (1964--); Kylie Minogue, Australian singer (1968--).

Thought For Today:

All the troubles of man come from his not knowing how to sit still — Blaise Pascal, French philosopher (1623-1662).

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.