Today is Friday, Dec. 17, the 351st day of 2010. There are 14 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Dec. 17, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright of Dayton, Ohio, conducted the first successful manned powered-airplane flights, near Kitty Hawk, N.C., using their experimental craft, the Wright Flyer.

On this date:

In 1777, France recognized American independence.

In 1830, South American patriot Simon Bolivar (see-MOHN’ boh-LEE’-vahr) died in Colombia.

In 1925, Col. William “Billy” Mitchell was convicted at his court-martial in Washington, D.C. of insubordination for accusing senior military officials of incompetence and criminal negligence; he was suspended from active duty.

In 1939, the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee was scuttled by its crew, ending the World War II Battle of the River Plate off Uruguay.

In 1957, the United States successfully test-fired the Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time.

In 1960, a London-bound Convair Samaritan operated by the U.S. Air Force crashed shortly after takeoff from Munich, West Germany, killing all 20 occupants of the plane, including 13 University of Maryland students, and 32 people on the ground.

In 1969, the U.S. Air Force closed its Project “Blue Book” by concluding there was no evidence of extraterrestrial spaceships behind thousands of UFO sightings. An estimated 50 million TV viewers watched singer Tiny Tim marry his fiancee, Miss Vicky, on NBC’s “Tonight Show.”

In 1975, Lynette Fromme was sentenced in Sacramento, Calif. to life in prison for her attempt on the life of President Gerald R. Ford. (She was paroled in Aug. 2009.)

In 1979, in a case that aggravated racial tensions, Arthur McDuffie, a black insurance executive, was fatally injured after leading police on a chase with his motorcycle in Miami. (Four white police officers accused of beating McDuffie were later acquitted, sparking riots.)

In 1980, the Peter Shaffer play “Amadeus” opened on Broadway, starring Tim Curry as Mozart and Ian McKellen as Antonio Salieri.

Ten years ago:

President-elect George W. Bush named Stanford professor Condoleezza Rice his national security adviser and Alberto Gonzales to the White House counsel’s job, the same day he was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year.

Five years ago:

President George W. Bush, in his weekly radio address, acknowledged he’d personally authorized a secret eavesdropping program in the U.S. following 9/11, calling it “crucial to our national security.” Protesters in Hong Kong tried to storm a convention center where World Trade Organization delegates were negotiating a global accord on farming, manufacturing and services. John Ruiz lost the WBA heavyweight title, dropping a disputed majority decision to Nikolay Valuev of Russia in Berlin. Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Jack Anderson died in Bethesda, Md. at age 83.

One year ago:

World leaders starting flooding into Copenhagen, where a U.N. conference on global warming was already under way. Cincinnati Bengals receiver Chris Henry, 26, died a day after falling out of the back of a pickup truck in Charlotte, N.C. Academy Award-winning actress Jennifer Jones died in Malibu, Calif. at age 90.