TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

Feb. 11, 1990

South African black activist Nelson Mandela was freed after 27 years in captivity.

ALSO ON THIS DATE 1531

The Church of England grudgingly accepted King Henry VIII as its supreme head.

1929

The Lateran Treaty was signed, with Italy recognizing the independence and sovereignty of Vatican City.

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.

1968

New York City’s fourth and current Madison Square Garden, located on Manhattan’s West Side at the site of what used to be the Pennsylvania Station building, opened with a “Salute to the USO” hosted by Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.

1979

Followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized power in Iran.

1986

Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky was released by the Soviet Union after nine years of captivity as part of an EastWest prisoner exchange.

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.