TODAY IN HISTORY

Feb. 8, 1587

Mary, Queen of Scots was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle in England after she was implicated in a plot to murder her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I. ALSO ON THIS DATE

1693

A charter was granted for the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg in the Virginia Colony.

1862

The Civil War Battle of Roanoke Island, North Carolina, ended in victory for Union forces led by Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside.

1904

The Russo-Japanese War, a conflict over control of Manchuria and Korea, began as Japanese forces attacked Port Arthur.

1910

The Boy Scouts of America was incorporated.

1922

President Warren G. Harding had a radio installed in the White House.

1924

The first execution by gas in the United States took place at the Nevada State Prison in Carson City as Gee Jon, a Chinese immigrant convicted of murder, was put to death.

1952

Queen Elizabeth II proclaimed her accession to the British throne following the death of her father, King George VI.

1965

Eastern Air Lines Flight 663, a DC-7, crashed shortly after takeoff from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport; all 84 people on board were killed.

1968

Three college students were killed in a confrontation between demonstrators and highway patrolmen at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg in the wake of protests over a whites-only bowling alley. The science-fiction film “Planet of the Apes,” starring Charlton Heston, had its world premiere in New York

1989

144 people were killed when an American-chartered Boeing 707 filled with Italian tourists slammed into a fog-covered mountain in the Azores.