Today is Friday, Feb. 5, the 36th day of 2016. There are 330 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1679 – Peace of Nijmegen is declared between Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I and France’s King Louis XIV.
1782 – Spanish forces capture Minorca Island, off Spain, from British.
1792 – Tippoo of Mysore, India, who is defeated in war with British and Hyderabad, cedes half of Mysore to British.
1811 – British Regency Act is passed, whereby the Prince of Wales becomes Prince Regent during King George III’s temporary insanity.
1885 – Congo state is established as a personal possession of Belgium’s King Leopold II.
1887 – Verdi’s opera “Otello” premieres at La Scala, in Milan, Italy.
1917 – Mexico becomes a federated republic of 28 states.
1958 – Gamel Abdel Nasser is formally nominated to become the first president of the new United Arab Republic, the union of Egypt and Syria.
1962 – France’s President Charles de Gaulle calls for independence for Algeria on basis of friendly cooperation with France.
1971 – U.S. Apollo 14 astronauts land on Moon.
1976 – Earthquake in Guatemala takes almost 23,000 lives.
1989 – Algeria’s president proposes new national constitution, dropping references to socialism and opening door to multiparty system.
1990 – Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, addressing the party plenum, says the Communist Party must abandon its monopoly on power.
1991 – Iraq, under attack by the U.S. and its allies, suspends fuel sales to its citizens.
1994 – A single mortar shell kills 68 people in a Sarajevo marketplace.
1997 – Three Swiss banking giants announce they will contribute US$71 million to open a humanitarian fund for Holocaust victims.
1999 – The 80-year-old President Nelson Mandela of South Africa delivers his last major address to Parliament.
2001 – Four men go on trial in New York in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa, which killed 224 people.
2002 – Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel apologizes for his country’s role in the 1961 assassination of then-Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba. He offers a US$3.25 million fund in Lumumba’s name to promote democracy in Congo.
2006 – A bomb explosion rips through a passenger bus, killing at least 13 people and wounding 20 others in a province of southwestern Pakistan wracked by growing tribal unrest.
2008 – At least seven civilians, including four children, are killed during a military operation against al-Qaida-linked militants on a southern Philippine island.
2009 – As U.S. Navy ships look on, Somali pirates speed away with $3.2 million in ransom after releasing an arms-laden Ukrainian freighter — ending a four-month standoff that focused world attention on piracy off Somalia’s lawless coast.
2010 – Toyota’s president emerges from seclusion to apologize and address criticism that the automaker mishandled a crisis over sticking gas pedals. Yet he stops short of ordering a recall for the company’s Prius hybrid for braking problems.
2013 – Investigators say Hezbollah was behind a bus attack that killed five Israeli tourists in Bulgaria last year, describing a sophisticated bombing carried out by a terrorist cell that included Canadian and Australian citizens.
2014— Pope Francis comes under new pressure to punish bishops who covered up for pedophile priests when a U.N. human rights panel accuses the Vatican of systemically protecting its reputation instead of looking after the welfare of children.
2015 — A North Korean defector whose memoir describes his meeting with Kim Jong Il says the world’s intense focus on the regime’s human rights record fails to see the full scope of its inhumanity to its people.
Today’s Birthdays:
Sir Robert Peel, English statesman after whom British police are called “Bobbies” (1788-1850); Johan Ludvig Runeberg, Finnish national poet (1804-1877); John Lindley, English botanist (1799-1865); William S. Burroughs, U.S. writer (1914-1997); Andreas Papandreou, Greek prime minister (1919-1996); Jennifer Jason Leigh, U.S. actress (1962–); Bobby Brown, U.S. singer (1969–); Laura Linney, U.S. actress (1964–).
Thought For Today:
Many excellent words are ruined by too definite a knowledge of their meaning. — Aline Kilmer, American poet (1888-1941).
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
