Today is Saturday, Feb. 20, the 51st day of 2016. There are 315 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1437 – Scotland’s King James I is murdered by would-be usurpers in Scottish city of Perth.
1570 – Lord Hunsdon defeats Leonard Dacre’s rebel army, ending Northern Rebellion in England.
1792 – U.S. President George Washington signs an act creating the U.S. Post Office.
1809 – Saragossa, Spain, is captured by French forces after a bloody siege; the U.S. Supreme Court rules the power of the federal government is greater than that of any individual state.
1631 – German Protestant princes form alliance with Sweden’s King Gustavus II, setting the stage for the Swedish entry into the Thirty Years’ War.
1833 – Russian ships enter Bosphorus on way to Constantinople —today’s Istanbul — to aid Turkey against Egypt.
1928 – Britain recognizes independence of Trans-Jordan.
1933 – U.S. House of Representatives completes congressional action on an amendment to repeal Prohibition, the ban on the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcoholic beverages.
1942 – Japanese invade island of Bali in Dutch East Indies during World War II.
1962 – Astronaut John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit Earth on the Friendship 7 Mercury capsule.
1964 – Morocco and Algeria sign accord to end border conflict which resulted in troop clashes.
1967 – Indonesia’s President Sukarno surrenders all executive power to General Suharto, keeping only the title of President.
1975 – Greek Cypriot government calls on United Nations to fix deadline for withdrawal of 40,000 Turkish troops from that island.
1986 – Russia launches the Mir space station.
1988 – Rainstorm triggers floods and mudslides in Rio de Janeiro that kill 65 people and leave up to 100 elderly hospital patients missing and feared dead.
1991 – Slovenia’s legislators vote overwhelmingly to initiate secession from Yugoslavia.
1992 – Israeli troops break through U.N. barricades in Lebanon to attack rocket-launching Shiite militias.
1996 – Gen. Hussein Kamel, son-in-law of President Saddam Hussein, returns to Iraq after having defected to Jordan. He is killed with his relatives a few days later.
1999 – Atal Bihari Vajpayee becomes the first Indian prime minister to go to Pakistan in 10 years when he rides the first commercial bus service between the two countries in 51 years.
2002 – A fire breaks out on a crowded train traveling from Cairo to Luxor in southern Egypt, killing 373 people and injuring 60 in the worst train disaster in Egyptian history.
2004 – A police-commission audit says that Atlanta underreported crimes for years to help land the 1996 Olympics and pump up tourism.
2005 – The Irish government identifies three top Sinn Fein figures — including leader Gerry Adams — as members of the Irish Republican Army command.
2009 – Israeli President Shimon Peres chooses Benjamin Netanyahu to form new government.
2010 – Darfur’s most powerful rebel group initials a truce with the Sudanese government, marking the rebel group’s return to peace talks aimed at ending the conflict in the western part of Africa’s largest country.
2011 – Libyan protesters defy a fierce crackdown by Moammar Gadhafi’s regime, returning to a square outside a court building in the flashpoint city of Benghazi to demand the overthrow of the longtime ruler.
2013 – Egypt’s powerful military shows signs of growing impatience with the country’s Islamist leaders, indirectly criticizing their policies and issuing thinly veiled threats that it might seize power again.
2014 — Protesters advance on police lines in the heart of Kiev, prompting government snipers to shoot back and kill scores of people in Ukraine’s deadliest day since the breakup of the Soviet Union.
2015 —Islamic State militants have unleased suicide bombings in eastern Libya, killing at least 40 people in what the group says is retaliation for Egyptian airstrikes against the extremists’ new branch in North Africa.
Today’s Birthdays:
Sir William Cornwallis, English admiral (1744-1819); Honore Daumier, French artist (1808-1879); Lucien Pissarro, French artist (1863-1944); Robert Altman, U.S. director (1925-2006); Sidney Poitier, U.S. actor (1927–); Peter Strauss, U.S. actor (1947–); Cindy Crawford, U.S. model (1966–); Lili Taylor, U.S. actress (1967–).
Thought For Today:
The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous — Frederick Douglass (1817-1895).
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