Today is Tuesday, Feb. 2, the 33rd day of 2016. There are 333 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1535 – Argentine city of Buenos Aires is founded by Pedro de Mendoza of Spain.
1653 – New Amsterdam — now New York City — with a population of 800, gains a city charter from the Dutch.
1797 – Mantua, Italy, surrenders to the French.
1808 – French force occupies Rome after Pope Pius VII refuses to recognize Kingdom of Naples and to join alliance against Britain.
1848 – Mexico signs the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending a U.S. invasion and ceding Texas, New Mexico and California to the United States, and receives $15 million in return.
1872 – Holland sells trading posts on African Gold Coast to Britain.
1878 – Greece declares war on Turkey.
1905 – Insurrection breaks out in Welle District of Belgian Congo.
1919 – Monarchy is proclaimed in Portugal.
1924 – Caliphate is abolished by Turkey’s National Assembly.
1943 – German troops surrender to Russians in Stalingrad after losing 200,000 men.
1953 – United States announces that it no longer will block Chinese Nationalist raids against mainland China.
1971 – Idi Amin assumes power in Uganda following a coup that ousted President Milton Obote.
1974 – Khmer Rouge bombard city of Phnom Penh, killing 17 people.
1975 – Ethiopia’s military government orders bombers, armored units and troops into operations against guerrillas in Eritrea Province.
1979 – After 14 years in exile, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returns from Paris and becomes the de facto leader of Iran.
1990 – South African President F.W. de Klerk lifts ban on African National Congress and promises to release political prisoner Nelson Mandela.
1991 – An earthquake jolts Afghanistan and Pakistan, killing at least 109 people and injuring more than 350.
1992 – Serbian officials and a Serb leader agree to support a U.N. peace plan for Croatia.
1993 – Rebels fire rockets on besieged Afghan capital of Kabul, killing 72 people.
1994 – U.S administration headed by President Bill Clinton praises Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams for showing an inclination to promote peace in Northern Ireland.
1999 – Hugo Chavez takes office as Venezuela’s president, seven years after he tried to overthrow the government in a military coup.
2000 – The two Libyan defendants charged in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, plead innocent at a pretrial hearing in a Scottish court. The blast killed 270 people.
2006 – Foreign aid workers and journalists start leaving the Gaza Strip after masked Palestinian gunmen, incensed by cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in European newspapers, surround an EU office and threaten to attack Europeans.
2007 – A U.N. envoy unveils a long-awaited plan for Kosovo, recommending internationally supervised statehood for the contested province. The plan is quickly rejected by Serbian President Boris Tadic.
2009 – Moammar Gadhafi of Libya is elected as leader of the African Union.
2012 – NASA, which relies solely on Russia to take U.S. crews to the space station, says it still has confidence in the quality of Russia’s manned rockets, despite an embarrassing series of glitches and failures in Moscow’s space program.
2013 – French President Francois Hollande bathes in the cheers and accolades of thousands of people in Timbuktu, making a triumphant stop six days after French forces parachuted in to liberate Mali’s fabled city from the radical Islamists occupying it.
2014 – Thousands of protesters seeking the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych hold one of their largest gatherings in Kiev’s central square.
2015 — The United Nations raises the death toll from fighting in eastern Ukraine to more than 5,350 people and is condemning the high number of civilians killed in the indiscriminate shelling there.
Today’s Birthdays:
Eleanor (Nell) Gwyn, English actress (1651-1687); James Joyce, Irish author (1882-1941); Jussi Bjoerling, Swedish tenor (1911-1960); Abba Eban, Israeli ambassador, foreign minister and author (1915-2002); Valery Giscard d’Estaing, former French president (1926–); Graham Nash, British pop singer (1942–); Farrah Fawcett, U.S. actress/model (1947-2009); Christie Brinkley, U.S. model (1954–); Shakira, Latin singer (1977–).
Thought For Today:
Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now — always. — Albert Schweitzer, German-born missionary and Nobel laureate (1875-1965).
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