THIS WEEK IN HISTORY
Sunday, Feb. 4
1783: Britain’s King George III proclaimed a formal cessation of hostilities in the American Revolutionary War. 1789: Electors chose George Washington to be the first president of the United States.
1801: John Marshall was confirmed by the Senate as chief justice of the United States.
1945: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin began a wartime conference at Yalta.
1974: Newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, 19, was kidnapped in Berkeley, California, by the radical Symbionese Liberation Army.
1997: A civil jury in Santa Monica, California, found O.J. Simpson liable for the deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman, after he had been acquitted at his criminal trial.
2004: Facebook had its beginnings as Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg launched “Thefacebook.”
2018: The Philadelphia Eagles, led by backup quarterback Nick Foles, became NFL champs for the first time since 1960, beating Tom Brady and the New England Patriots 41-33 in the Super Bowl.
Monday, Feb. 5
1917: The U.S. Congress passed, over President Woodrow Wilson’s veto, an act severely curtailing Asian immigration.
1922: The first edition of Reader’s Digest was published.
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.
1971: Apollo 14 astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell stepped onto the surface of the moon in the first of two lunar excursions.
1973: Services were held at Arlington National Cemetery for U.S. Army Col. William B. Nolde, the last official American combat casualty before the Vietnam cease-fire took effect.
1983: Former Nazi Gestapo official Klaus Barbie, expelled from Bolivia, was brought to Lyon, France, to stand trial. (He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison – he died in 1991.)
1993: President Bill Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act, granting workers up to 12 weeks unpaid leave for family emergencies.
2012: Eli Manning and the New York Giants one-upped Tom Brady and the New England Patriots, coming back with a last-minute score to win 21-17 in Super Bowl XLVI.
2014: CVS Caremark announced it would pull cigarettes and other tobacco products from its stores.
2023: Beyoncé won her 32nd Grammy to become the most decorated artist in the history of the award.
Tuesday, Feb. 6
1778: During the American Revolutionary War, the United States won official recognition and military support from France with the signing of a Treaty of Alliance in Paris.
1788: Massachusetts became the sixth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution. 1815: The state of New Jersey issued the first American railroad charter to John Stevens, who proposed a rail link between Trenton and New Brunswick. (The line, however, was never built.) 1922: Cardinal Archille Ratti was elected pope; he took the name Pius XI.
1933: The 20th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the so-called “lame duck” amendment, was proclaimed in effect by Secretary of State Henry Stimson. 1952: Britain’s King George VI, 56, died at Sandringham House in Norfolk, England; he was succeeded as monarch by his 25-year-old elder daughter, who became Queen Elizabeth II.
1993: Tennis Hall of Famer and human rights advocate Arthur Ashe died in New York at age 49.
1998: Carl Wilson, a founding member of The Beach Boys, died in Los Angeles at age 51.
Wednesday, Feb. 7
1857: A French court acquitted author Gustave Flaubert of obscenity for his serialized novel “Madame Bovary.” 1943: The government abruptly announced that wartime rationing of shoes made of leather would go into effect in two days, limiting consumers to buying three pairs per person per year. (Rationing was lifted in October 1945.)
1962: President John F. Kennedy imposed a full trade embargo on Cuba. 1964: The Beatles arrived to screaming fans at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to begin their first American tour.
1971: Women in Switzerland gained the right to vote through a national referendum, 12 years after a previous attempt failed.
2009: A miles-wide section of ice in Lake Erie broke away from the Ohio shoreline, trapping about 135 fishermen, some for as long as four hours before they could be rescued (one man fell into the water and later died of an apparent heart attack).
Thursday, Feb. 8
1587: Mary, Queen of Scots was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle in England after she was implicated in a plot to murder her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I. 1910: The Boy Scouts of America was incorporated.
1952: Queen Elizabeth II proclaimed her accession to the British throne following the death of her father, King George VI.
1960: Work began on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located on Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street in Los Angeles.
1965: Eastern Air Lines Flight 663, a DC-7, crashed shortly after takeoff from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport; all 84 people on board were killed.
1968: Three Black students were killed in a confrontation between demonstrators and highway patrolmen at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg in the wake of protests over a whites-only bowling alley.
1971: NASDAQ, the world’s first electronic stock exchange, held its first trading day.
Friday, Feb. 9
1825: The House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams president after no candidate received a majority of electoral votes.
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, Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin charged that the State Department was riddled with Communists.
1964: The Beatles made their first live American television appearance on
“The Ed Sullivan Show,” broadcast from New York on CBS. The quartet played six songs, including “Love Me Do” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” to a crowd of screaming teenagers in person and more than 70 million viewers across the country.
1984: Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov, 69, died 15 months after succeeding Leonid Brezhnev; he was followed by Konstantin U. Chernenko, who would only be in power for 13 months.
1986: Halley’s Comet visited the solar system for the first time since 1910. (Its next return will be in 2061).
2009: New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez admitted to taking performance-enhancing drugs, telling ESPN he’d used banned substances while with the Texas Rangers for three years.
Saturday, Feb. 10
1763: Britain, Spain and France signed the Treaty of Paris, ending the Seven Years’ War (also known as the French and Indian War in North America).
1840: Britain’s Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
1936: Nazi Germany’s Reichstag passed a law investing the Gestapo secret police with absolute authority, exempt from any legal review.
1959: A major tornado tore through the St. Louis area, killing 21 people and causing heavy damage.
1962: The Soviet Union exchanged captured American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers for Rudolf Abel, a Soviet spy held by the United States.
1967: The 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, dealing with presidential disability and succession, was ratified as Minnesota and Nevada adopted it. 1989: Ron Brown was elected the first Black chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
1992: Boxer Mike Tyson was convicted in Indianapolis of raping Desiree Washington, a Miss Black America contestant. (Tyson served three years in prison.)
1996: World chess champion Garry Kasparov lost the first game of a match in Philadelphia against an IBM computer dubbed “Deep Blue.” (Kasparov ended up winning the match, 4 games to 2; he was defeated by Deep Blue in a rematch the following year.)