Today in history
Today is Tuesday, Feb. 28, the 59th day of 2012. There are 307 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date: 1525: Cuauhtemoc, the last Aztec emperor, is tortured and executed by Spanish conqueror Hernan Cortes. 1594: Britain’s Royal Physician Roger Loper is arrested for alleged conspiracy to poison Queen Elizabeth. 1653: English fleet defeats Dutch off Portland, England. 1806: French forces capture Barcelona, Spain. 1825: Britain and Russia sign treaty covering respective rights in Pacific Ocean area. 1849: The ship California arrives at San Francisco, carrying the first of the gold-seekers. 1854: Some 50 slavery opponents meet in Ripon, Wisconsin, to call for creation of a new political group, which becomes the Republican Party. 1861: The Territory of Colorado is organized. 1868: Benjamin Disraeli replaces Lord Derby as Britain’s prime minister. 1877: Peace treaty is signed between Turkey and Serbia. 1911: Australia’s Premier Andrew Fisher announces plans to nationalise monopolies. 1920: Hungary adopts constitution. 1933: Nazi decree suppresses civil liberties in Germany. 1942: Japanese forces land in Java, Indonesia, in World War II. 1947: Taiwanese rebel against Nationalist forces moving in from mainland China. Thousands are killed in a month of fighting. 1951: A Senate committee headed by Estes Kefauver, a Tennessee Democrat, issues a preliminary report saying at least two major crime syndicates were operating in the United States. 1962: United States announces that new atomic tests will be conducted in atmosphere near Johnson Island in Pacific. 1974: United States and Egypt reestablish diplomatic relations after seven-year breach. 1975: More than 40 people are killed in London’s Underground when a subway train smashes into the end of a tunnel. 1986: Sweden’s Prime Minister Olof Palme is assassinated on a street in Stockholm while walking home from a movie theater. 1990: Soviet legislature passes a landmark law allowing citizens to acquire land and bequeath it to their children. 1991: Allied and Iraqi forces suspend fighting and Iraq pledges to accept all UN resolutions on Kuwait. 1992: UN Security Council approves a 22,000-strong peacekeeping force for Cambodia. 1993: Four U.S. federal agents and six members of a Christian sect are killed when authorities raid the sect headquarters in Waco, Texas. A 51-day standoff ensues, ending with the deaths of about 80 sect members in a fire. 1994: US jets down four Serb warplanes in Bosnia, NATO’S first air attack in the war. 1996: Daiwa Bank Ltd. of Japan agrees to plead guilty to a criminal cover-up of $1.1 billion in bondtrading losses and pay $340 million in fines, settling one of history’s biggest banking frauds. 1997: An 7.3 magnitude earthquake hits Pakistan, killing at 35 people. 1998: Yugoslav security forces launch an offensive to halt growing resistance to Serb rule in Kosovo province. At least 20 people die on the first day. 2000: Right-wing leader Joerg Haider, criticised for his antiforeigner statements and past praise of some Nazi-era policies, resigns as head of the Freedom Party in an apparent bid to end Austria’s international ostracism following his party’s rise to a place in the governing coalition. 2003: A US District Court finds reputed Ku Klux Klan member Ernest Avants guilty of aiding and abetting the 1966 murder of Ben Chester White, a 67-year-old black farm worker in Jackson, Mississippi. 2004: An Israeli helicopter fires two missiles at a car in the Gaza Strip, killing three people, including an Islamic Jihad militant Ayman Dahdouh. 2007: Two Picasso paintings, Mayaandthedoll and Portraitof Jacqueline, worth a total of nearly $66 million, are stolen from the house of the artist’s granddaughter in Paris. 2008: Kenya’s rival politicians sign a power-sharing agreement and shake hands after weeks of bitter negotiations on how to end the country’s postelection crisis that set off violence that killed more than 1,000 people and eviscerated the East African country’s economy. 2009: With the economy in shambles, President Robert Mugabe throws himself a lavish birthday party and calls on Zimbabwe’s white farmers to leave. 2010: Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameni, charges that the U.S. and its allies are behind the UN nuclear watchdog agency’s claim that Iran may be making nuclear bombs, despite its repeated denials.