Today is Wednesday, Dec. 2, the 336th day of 2009. There are 29 days left in the year.

Today's Highlights in History:

On Dec. 2, 1859, militant abolitionist John Brown was hanged for his raid on Harpers Ferry the previous October. Artist Georges-Pierre Seurat was born in Paris.

On this date:

In 1804, Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of the French.

In 1823, President James Monroe outlined his doctrine opposing European expansion in the Western Hemisphere.

In 1927, Ford Motor Co. formally unveiled its second Model A automobile, the successor to its Model T.

In 1939, New York Municipal Airport-LaGuardia Field (later LaGuardia Airport) went into operation as an airliner from Chicago landed at one minute past midnight.

In 1942, an artificially created, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was demonstrated for the first time, at the University of Chicago.

In 1954, the Senate voted to condemn Wisconsin Republican Joseph R. McCarthy for conduct that "tends to bring the Senate into disrepute."

In 1969, the Boeing 747 jumbo jet got its first public preview as 191 people, most of them reporters and photographers, flew from Seattle to New York City.

In 1970, the Environmental Protection Agency began operating under director William Ruckelshaus.

In 1980, four American churchwomen were raped and murdered outside San Salvador. (Five national guardsmen were convicted in the killings.)

In 1989, President George H.W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev held the first talks of their wind-tossed Malta summit aboard the Soviet cruise ship Maxim Gorky.

Ten years ago: Relative calm was restored in Seattle, where a meeting of the World Trade Organization was greeted earlier with sometimes violent demonstrations. All six Republican presidential hopefuls, including Texas Gov. George W. Bush, debated in Manchester, N.H. In Northern Ireland, a power-sharing cabinet of Protestants and Catholics sat down together for the first time.