TODAY IN HISTORY

1847: American inventor Thomas Alva Edison was born in Milan, Ohio.

1937: A six-week-old sit-down strike against General Motors ended, with the company agreeing to recognize the United Automobile Workers Union.

1945: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin signed the Yalta Agreement, in which Stalin agreed to declare war against Imperial Japan following Nazi Germany’s capitulation.

1963: American author and poet Sylvia Plath was found dead in her London flat, a suicide; she was 30.

1975: Margaret Thatcher was elected leader of Britain’s opposition Conservative Party.

1979: Followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized power in Iran.

1990: South African Black activist Nelson Mandela was freed after 27 years in captivity.

2006: Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and wounded Harry Whittington, a companion during a weekend quail-hunting trip in Texas.

2008: The Pentagon charged Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and five other detainees at Guantanamo Bay with murder and war crimes in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks.

2011: Egypt exploded with joy after pro-democracy protesters brought down President Hosni Mubarak, whose resignation ended three decades of authoritarian rule.

2020: The World Health Organization gave the official name of COVID-19 to the disease caused by the coronavirus that had emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

2013: With a few words in Latin, Pope Benedict XVI did what no pope had done in more than half a millennium: announced his resignation. The bombshell came during a routine morning meeting of Vatican cardinals. (The 85-year-old pontiff was succeeded by Pope Francis.)

2018: A Russian passenger plane crashed into a snowy field six minutes after taking off from Moscow, killing all 65 passengers and six crew members; investigators would blame human error, saying the pilots had received flawed air speed readings. Amid swirling winds, 17-year-old snowboarder Red Gerard won the United States’ first gold medal of the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea.