TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Friday, Feb. 9, the 40th day of 2024. There are 326 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Feb. 9, 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.

On this date:

In 1825, the House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams president after no candidate received a majority of electoral votes.

In 1942, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff held its first formal meeting to coordinate military strategy during World War II.

In 1943, the World War II battle of Guadalcanal in the southwest Pacific ended with an Allied victory over Japanese forces.

In 1950, in a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin charged that the State Department was riddled with Communists.

In 1963, the Boeing 727 went on its first-ever flight as it took off from Renton, Washington.

In 2018, at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in South Korea, North and South Korean athletes entered Olympic Stadium together, waving flags showing a unified Korea; it was their first joint Olympic march in more than a decade.

Today’s birthdays: Actor Janet Suzman is 85. Nobel Prize-winning author J.M. Coetzee is 84. Actor-politician Sheila James Kuehl (TV: “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis”) is 83. Singer-songwriter Carole King is 82. Actor Joe Pesci is 81. Actor Zhang Ziyi is 45. Actor Tom Hiddleston is 43.