TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS TUESDAY, FEB. 16, the 47th day of 2021. There are 318 days left in the year. TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY: On this date in 1959, Fidel Castro became premier of Cuba six weeks after the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista. 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 1945, American troops landed on the island of Corregidor in the Philippines during World War II. In 1948, NBC TV began airing its first nightly newscast, “The Camel Newsreel Theatre,” which consisted of Fox Movietone newsreels. In 1960, the nuclear-powered radar picket submarine USS Triton departed New London, Connecticut, on the first submerged circumnavigation by a vessel. 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 1996, 11 people were killed in a fiery collision between an Amtrak passenger train and a Maryland commuter train in Silver Spring, Maryland. 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 2001, the United States and Britain staged air strikes against radar stations and air defense command centers in Iraq. In 2006, Russia’s Evgeni Plushenko beat world champion Stephane Lambiel of Switzerland by 27.12 points to win the gold medal in men’s figure skating at the Winter Games in Turin, Italy. In 2019, the Vatican announced that former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who served as archbishop of Washington, D.C., had been found guilty by the Vatican of sex abuse and had been defrocked; McCarrick was the highest-ranking churchman and the first cardinal to face that punishment as the church dealt with clerical sex abuse. TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Jazz/pop singer-actor Peggy King is 91. Actor William Katt is 70. Actor LeVar Burton is 64. International Tennis Hall-ofFamer John McEnroe is 62. Olympic gold medal runner Cathy Freeman is 48. Actor Mahershala Ali is 47. Singer Sam Salter is 46. Rapper Lupe Fiasco is 39. Actor Chloe Wepper is 35. Rock musician Danielle Haim (HYM) and actor Elizabeth Olsen are 32.