Today’s highlight in history
On Feb. 18, 1970, the “Chicago Seven” defendants were found not guilty of conspiring to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention; five were convicted of violating the Anti-Riot Act of 1968 (those convictions were reversed).
On this date
In 1861, Jefferson Davis was sworn in as provisional president of the Confederate States of America in Montgomery, Ala.
In 1930, photographic evidence of Pluto (now designated a “dwarf planet”) was discovered by Clyde W. Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz.
In 1943, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, wife of the Chinese leader, addressed members of the Senate and then the House, becoming the first Chinese national to address both houses of the U.S. Congress.
In 1972, the California Supreme Court struck down the state’s death penalty.
In 1988, Anthony M. Kennedy was sworn in as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 1997, astronauts on the space shuttle Discovery completed their tune-up of the Hubble Space Telescope after 33 hours of spacewalking; the Hubble was then released using the shuttle’s crane.
In 2001, auto racing star Dale Earnhardt Sr. died in a crash at the Daytona 500; he was 49.
Ten years ago: President Barack Obama launched a $75 billion foreclosure rescue plan aimed at saving homes.
Five years ago: Megan Rice, an 84-year-old nun, was sentenced in Knoxville, Tenn., to nearly three years in prison for breaking into a nuclear weapons complex and defacing a bunker holding bombgrade uranium, a demonstration that exposed serious security flaws at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge. (Two other activists received sentences of just over five years.)
One year ago: “Black Panther,” the Marvel superhero film from the Walt Disney Co., blew past expectations to take in $192 million during its debut weekend in U.S. and Canadian theaters.