Local

Feb. 16, 1990: The Freeborn County chapter of the League of Women Voters Minnesota endorsed gun control.

Feb. 15, 1990: The 45th annual Tigers Roar talent show was presented for the public at the high school auditorium.

Feb. 11, 1990: United Methodist Church held an organ dedication recital by Robert E. Scoggin on a newly installed Rutz organ.

Feb. 11, 1980: The Evening Tribune ran a front-page photo of Tigers wrestler Scott Hannan in action against Faribault’s Dan Tousignant. Hanna earned a 10-5 decision to help the Albert Lea Tigers claim their 10th straight Big Nine title.

 

National

2019: Mexico’s most notorious drug lord, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, was convicted in New York of running an industrial-scale smuggling operation; a jury whose members’ identities were kept secret as a security measure had deliberated for six days. (Guzman is serving a life sentence at the federal supermax prison facility in Florence, Colorado.)

Feb. 14, 2018: A gunman identified as a former student opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School near Fort Lauderdale, Florida, killing 17 people in the nation’s deadliest school shooting since the attack in Newtown, Connecticut, more than five years earlier.

2015: Vowing that Islamic State forces were “going to lose,” President Barack Obama urged Congress to authorize military action while ruling out large-scale U.S. ground combat operations reminiscent of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Calling cyberspace the new “Wild West,” President Barack Obama told the private sector during a White House cybersecurity summit at Stanford University that it needed to do more to stop cyber attacks aimed at the U.S. every day.

2013: With a few words in Latin, Pope Benedict XVI did what no pope had done in more than half a millennium: announced his resignation. The bombshell came during a routine morning meeting of Vatican cardinals. (The 85-year-old pontiff was succeeded by Pope Francis.)

2012: Pop singer Whitney Houston, 48, was found dead in a hotel room bathtub in Beverly Hills, California.

2010: On the day the Winter Olympics opened in Vancouver, British Columbia, Nodar Kumaritashvili, a 21-year-old luger from the republic of Georgia, was killed in a high-speed crash during a practice run.

Three University of Alabama-Huntsville professors were gunned down during a faculty meeting; police charged neurobiologist Amy Bishop with capital murder. (Bishop later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.)

2008: The Pentagon charged Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and five other detainees at Guantanamo Bay with murder and war crimes in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks.

General Motors reported losing $38.7 billion in 2007, a record annual loss in automotive history, and offered buyouts to 74,000 hourly workers.

2006: Figure skater Michelle Kwan effectively retired from competition as she withdrew from the Turin Olympics due to injury (she was replaced on the U.S. team by Emily Hughes). Snowboarder Shaun White beat American teammate Danny Kass to win the Olympic gold medal.

2004: The White House, trying to end doubts about President George W. Bush’s Vietnam-era military service, released documents it said proved he had met his requirements in the Texas Air National Guard.

2000: Charles M. Schulz, creator of the “Peanuts” comic strip, died in Santa Rosa, California, at age 77.

Tiger Woods saw his streak of six consecutive victories come to an end as he fell short to Phil Mickelson in the Buick Invitational.

1999: The Senate voted to acquit President Bill Clinton of perjury and obstruction of justice.

1997: A civil jury heaped $25 million dollars in punitive damages on O.J. Simpson for the slayings of his ex-wife and her friend, on top of $8.5 million dollars in compensatory damages awarded earlier.

1992: Boxer Mike Tyson was convicted in Indianapolis of raping Desiree Washington, a Miss Black America contestant. (Tyson served three years in prison.)

1991: During Operation Desert Storm, allied warplanes destroyed an underground shelter in Baghdad that had been identified as a military command center; Iraqi officials said 500 civilians were killed.

1990: South African black activist Nelson Mandela was freed after 27 years in captivity.

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-year-old boy on a riverbank of the Columbia River in Washington state.

1973: Operation Homecoming began as the first release of American prisoners of war from the Vietnam conflict took place.

1968: New York City’s fourth and current Madison Square Garden, located on Manhattan’s West Side at the site of what used to be the Pennsylvania Station building, opened with a “Salute to the USO” hosted by Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. (The same evening, the New York Rangers played their final game at the third Garden, tying the Detroit Red Wings 3-3.)

1965: During the Vietnam War, President Lyndon B. Johnson authorized Operation Rolling Thunder, an extended bombing campaign against the North Vietnamese.

1959: A major tornado tore through the St. Louis area, killing 21 people and causing heavy damage.

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

1945: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin signed the Yalta Agreement, in which Stalin agreed to declare war against Imperial Japan following Nazi Germany’s capitulation.

1937: A six-week-old sit-down strike against General Motors ended, with the company agreeing to recognize the United Automobile Workers Union.

1936: Nazi Germany’s Reichstag passed a law investing the Gestapo secret police with absolute authority, exempt from any legal review.

1914: Groundbreaking took place for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. (A year later on this date, the cornerstone was laid.)

1861: President-elect Abraham Lincoln bade farewell to his adopted hometown of Springfield, Illinois, as he headed to Washington for his inauguration.