Events

• 138 - The Emperor Hadrian adopts Antoninus Pius, effectively making him his successor.
• 1570 - Pope Pius V excommunicates Queen Elizabeth I of England.
• 1793 - George Washington holds the first Cabinet meeting as President of the United States.
• 1797 - Colonel William Tate and his force of 1000-1500 soldiers surrender after the Last Invasion of Britain
• 1836 - Samuel Colt receives an American patent for the Colt revolver.
• 1836 - US Showman Phineas Taylor Barnum exhibits African American slave Joice Heth.
• 1837 - The first practical electric motor in the US is patented by Thomas Davenport.
• 1870 - Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Mississippi, is sworn into the United States Senate, becoming the first African American ever to sit in the U.S. Congress.
• 1901 - J.P. Morgan incorporates the United States Steel Corporation.
• 1912 - Marie-Adélaïde, the eldest of six daughters of Guillaume IV, becomes the first reigning Grand Duchess of Luxembourg.
• 1919 - Oregon places a 1 cent per U.S. gallon tax on gasoline, becoming the first U.S. state to levy a gasoline tax.
• 1921 - Tbilisi, capital of the Democratic Republic of Georgia, occupied by Bolshevist Russia.
• 1925 - Glacier Bay National Monument (now Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve) is established in Alaska.
• 1925 - The diplomatic relations between Japan and the Soviet Union were established.
• 1928 - Charles Jenkins Laboratories of Washington, DC becomes the first holder of a television license from the Federal Radio Commission.
• 1932 - Adolf Hitler obtains German citizenship by naturalization, which allows him to run in the 1932 election for Reichspräsident.
• 1933 - The USS Ranger is launched, becoming the first custom-built aircraft carrier.
• 1941 - February strike: First general & physical protest against Nazi anti-Jewish behaviour & -laws (Amsterdam)
• 1945 - World War II: Turkey declares war on Germany.
• 1948 - The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia takes control of government in Czechoslovakia and the period of the ends.
• 1951 - The first Pan American Games are held in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 1954 - Gamal Abdul Nasser is made premier of Egypt.
• 1956 - In his speech On the Personality Cult and its Consequences Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev denounces the cult of personality of Joseph Stalin.
• 1969 - Germany gives $5 million to an Arab terrorist as ransom for the passengers and crew of a hijacked jumbo jet.
• 1971 - The first unit of the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, first commercial nuclear power station in Canada, goes online.
• 1980 - The Suriname government (elected after gaining independence from the Netherlands in 1975 ) was overthrown by a military coup which was initiated with the bombing of the police station from an army ship of the coast of the nations capital; Paramaribo
• 1986 - People Power Revolution: President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines flees the nation after 20 years of rule; Corazon Aquino becomes the first Filipino woman president.
• 1991 - Gulf War: An Iraqi Scud missile hits an American military barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia killing 28 U.S. Army Reservists from Pennsylvania.
• 1992 - Khojaly massacre: about 613 civilians killed by Armenian armed forces during the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan
• 1994 - Mosque of Abraham massacre: In the Cave of the Patriarchs in the West Bank city of Hebron, Dr. Baruch Kappel Goldstein opens fire with an automatic rifle, killing 29 Palestinian worshippers and injuring 125 more before being subdued and beaten to death by survivors. Subsequent rioting kills 26 more Palestinians and 9 Israelis.
• 2000 - The Swedish political party New Democracy is declared financially bankrupt.
• 2008 - The country of Kosovo declares independence from Serbia.

Births