TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

Feb. 12, 1999

The Senate voted to acquit President Bill Clinton of perjury and obstruction of justice.

ALSO ON THIS DATE 1809

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was born in a log cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky.

1909

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded.

1912

Pu Yi, the last emperor of China, abdicated, marking the end of the Qing Dynasty.

1914

Groundbreaking took place for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

1959

The redesigned Lincoln penny _ with an image of the Lincoln Memorial replacing two ears of wheat on the reverse side _ went into circulation.

1963

A Northwest Orient Airlines Boeing 720 broke up during severe turbulence and crashed into the Florida Everglades, killing all 43 people aboard.

1973

Operation Homecoming began as the first release of American prisoners of war from the Vietnam conflict took place.

1980

The FBI announced that about $5,800 of the $200,000 ransom paid to hijacker “D.B. Cooper” before he parachuted from a Northwest Orient jetliner in 1971 had been found by an 8-yearold boy on a riverbank of the Columbia River in Washington state.

1993

In a crime that shocked and outraged Britons, two 10-year-old boys lured 2-year-old James Bulger from his mother at a shopping mall near Liverpool, England, and beat him to death.

2000

Charles M. Schulz, creator of the “Peanuts” comic strip, died in Santa Rosa, Calif. at age 77.