Today in history

Today is Sunday, Feb. 16, the 47th day of 2020. There are 319 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Feb. 16, 2001, the United States and Britain staged air strikes against radar stations and air defense command centers in Iraq. On this date: In 1862, the Civil War Battle of Fort Donelson in Tennessee ended as some 12,000 Confederate soldiers surrendered; Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s victory earned him the moniker “Unconditional Surrender Grant.”

In 1868, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks was organized in New York City.

In 1945, American troops landed on the island of Corregidor in the Philippines during World War II.

In 1959, Fidel Castro became premier of Cuba a month and a-half after the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista.

In 1961, the United States launched the Explorer 9 satellite.

In 1968, the nation’s first 911 emergency telephone system was inaugurated in Haleyville, Alabama, as the speaker of the Alabama House, Rankin Fite, placed a call from the mayor’s office in City Hall to a red telephone at the police station (also located in City Hall) that was answered by U.S. Rep. Tom Bevill.

In 1988, seven people were shot to death during an office rampage in Sunnyvale, California, by a man obsessed with a coworker who was wounded in the attack. (The gunman is on death row.)

In 1996, eleven people were killed in a fiery collision between an Amtrak passenger train and a Maryland commuter train in Silver Spring, Md.

In 1998, a China Airlines Airbus A300 trying to land in fog near Taipei, Taiwan, crashed, killing all 196 people on board, plus seven on the ground.

In 2002, authorities in Noble, Ga., arrested Ray Brent Marsh, who’d been operating a crematory where hundreds of decomposing corpses were found stacked in storage sheds and scattered in the woods behind it. (Marsh later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12 years in prison.)