TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS FRIDAY, FEB. 5, the 36th day of 2021. There are 329 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY: On this date in 2020, the Senate voted to acquit President Donald Trump, bringing to a close the third presidential trial in American history, though a majority of senators expressed unease with Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine that resulted in the two articles of impeachment. Just one Republican, Mitt Romney of Utah, broke with the GOP and voted to convict.
In 1631, the founder of Rhode Island, Roger Williams, and his wife, Mary, arrived in Boston from England.
In 1811, George, the Prince of Wales, was named Prince Regent due to the mental illness of his father, Britain’s King George III.
In 1917, the U.S. Congress passed, over President Woodrow Wilson’s veto, an act severely curtailing Asian immigration.
In 1918, during World War I, the Cunard liner SS Tuscania, which was transporting about 2,000 American troops to Europe, was torpedoed by a German U-boat in the Irish Sea with the loss of more than 200 people.
In 1922, the first edition of Reader’s Digest was published.
In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed increasing the number of U.S. Supreme Court justices; the proposal, which failed in Congress, drew accusations that Roosevelt was attempting to “pack” the nation’s highest court.
In 1971, Apollo 14 astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell stepped onto the surface of the moon in the first of two lunar excursions.
In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act, granting workers up to 12 weeks unpaid leave for family emergencies. In 1994, white separatist Byron De La Beckwith was convicted in Jackson, Mississippi, of murdering civil rights leader Medgar Evers in 1963, and was immediately sentenced to life in prison. (Beckwith died Jan. 21, 2001, at age 80.)
In 2001, four disciples of Osama bin Laden went on trial in New York in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. (The four were convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole.)
In 2008, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a guru to the Beatles who introduced the West to transcendental meditation, died at his home in the Dutch town of Vlodrop; he was believed to be about 90.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Actor Stuart Damon is 84. Tony-winning playwright John Guare is 83. Financial writer Jane Bryant Quinn is 82. Actor David Selby and singer-songwriter Barrett Strong are 80. Football Hall-of-Famer Roger Staubach is 79. Movie director Michael Mann is 78. Rock singer Al Kooper is 77. Actor Charlotte Rampling is 75. Racing Hall-of-Famer Darrell Waltrip is 74. Actors Barbara Hershey, Christopher Guest and Tom Wilkinson are 73. Actor-comedian Tim Meadows is 60. Actor Jennifer Jason Leigh is 59. Actor Laura Linney and rock musician Duff McKagan (Velvet Revolver) are 57. World Golf Hall-of-Famer Jose Maria Olazabal is 55. Actor-comedian Chris Parnell is 54. Rock singer Chris Barron (Spin Doctors) is 53. Singer Bobby Brown and actor Michael Sheen are 52. Actor David Chisum is 51. Country singer Sara Evans is 50. Actorsinger Darren Criss, and actors Alex Brightman and Henry Golding are 34. Drummer Graham Sierota (Echosmith) is 22.