TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Saturday, February 9, the 40th day of 2019. There are 325 days left in the year.
1825: The US House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams president after no candidate received a majority of electoral votes.
1861: Jefferson Davis was elected provisional president of the Confederate States of America at a congress held in Montgomery, Alabama.
1942: The US Joint Chiefs of Staff held its first formal meeting to co-ordinate military strategy during World War II. Daylightsaving "War Time" went into effect in the United States, with clocks moved one hour forward.
1943: The World War II battle of Guadalcanal in the southwest Pacific ended with an Allied victory over Japanese forces.
1950: In a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, Senator Joseph McCarthy,
R-Wis., charged that the State Department was riddled with Communists.
1960: Adolph Coors Co chairman Adolph Coors III, 44, was shot to death in suburban Denver during a botched kidnapping attempt.
1964: The Beatles made their first live American television appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. The G.I. Joe action figure was introduced at the American International Toy Fair in New York.
1971: A magnitude 6.6 earthquake in California's San Fernando Valley claimed 65 lives. The crew of Apollo 14 returned to Earth after man's third landing on the moon.
1984: Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov, 69, died 15 months after succeeding Leonid Brezhnev; he was followed by Konstantin U. Chernenko (chehr-NYEN'-koh).
2002: Britain's Princess Margaret, sister of Queen Elizabeth II, died in London at age 71.
2005: Hewlett-Packard Co chief executive Carly Fiorina was forced out by board members, ending her nearly six-year reign.
2017: A federal appeals court refused to reinstate President Donald Trump's ban on travellers from seven predominantly Muslim nations.
Ten years ago: President Barack Obama used his first news conference since taking office to urgently pressure lawmakers to approve a massive economic recovery bill.
Five years ago: Despite a wave of online protests, Copenhagen Zoo in Denmark killed a healthy male giraffe named Marius because of rules imposed by a European zoo association to deter inbreeding.
One year ago: President Donald Trump signed a $400 billion budget deal that sharply boosted spending, swelling the federal deficit; the measure ended a brief overnight federal government shutdown. The shortage of houses in Auckland is causing serious inconvenience to would be tenants and owing to the slackness in the building trade no improvement is expected in the near future.