1985 – “Sports Illustrated” released its annual swimsuit edition. It was the largest regular edition in the magazine’s history at 218 pages.
0457 – Leo I becomes emperor of the Byzantine Empire.
1074 – Battle of Montesarchio wherein the prince of Benevento, Pandulf IV, is killed battling the encroaching Normans.
1238 – Mongolian forces led by General Batu capture and burn the important Russian city of Vladimir, after an eight-day siege
1301 – Edward of Caernarvon (later King Edward II of England) becomes the first English Prince of Wales.
1569 – King Philip II forms inquistion in South America
1613 – Michail Romanov (16) becomes czar of Russia
1783 – Great Siege of Gibraltar, launched by France and Spain against the British colony during the American War of Independence is lifted after 3 years and 7 months
1792 – Austria & Prussia sign anti-French covenant
1795 – The 11th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified.
1807 – The Battle of Eylau February 7 to 8 pits Prussian and Russian forces against the French in a bloody slaughter that ends indecisively
1818 – “Academician” began publication in New York City.
1839 – Henry Clay declares in Senate “I had rather be right than president”
1845 – The Portland Vase, thought to date to the 1st century BC is shattered into more than 80 pieces by a drunken visitor to the British Museum
1856 – The colonial Tasmanian Parliament passes the first piece of legislation (the Electoral Act 1856) anywhere in the world providing for elections by way of a secret ballot.
1857 – French writer Gustave Flaubert is acquitted on a charge of obscenity for his work “Madame Bovary”
1882 – The last bareknuckle fight for the heavyweight boxing championship took place in Mississippi City.
1893 – Elisha Gray patented a machine called the telautograph. It automatically signed autographs to documents.
1894 – The Cripple Creek miner’s strike, led by the Western Federation of Miners, begins in Cripple Creek, Colorado.
1904 – Fire erupts in Baltimore, Maryland, burning for nearly 30 hours and destroying over 1500 buildings
1905 – Dominican Republic signs treaty turning over customs collection to US
1907 – Conservative coalition take over Reichstag in Germany after rallying conservatives against the threat of a socialist government
1913 – The Turks lost 5,000 men in a battle with the Bulgarian army in Gallipoli.
1920 – Russian Imperial Navy Admiral Kolchak, leader of anti-communist “White Movement” executed by Bolshevik firing squad in Irkutsk, Russian SFSR
1922 – DeWitt and Lila Acheson Wallace offered 5,000 copies of “Reader’s Digest” magazine for the first time.
1933 – Social-Democrat meeting in Berlin “As thousands cheer” Marxism is dead
1936 – The U.S. Vice President’s flag was established by executive order.
1940 – “Pinocchio” world premiered at the Center Theatre in Manhattan.
1943 – Shoe rationing begins in US (may purchase up to 3 more pairs in 1942)
1944 – During World War II, the Germans launched a counteroffensive at Anzio, Italy.
1945 – London, Washington and Moscow discuss final phase of World War II
1947 – Arabs & Jews reject British proposal to split Palestine
1948 – Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower resigned as Army chief of staff and was succeeded by Gen. Omar Bradley.
1950 – Senator Joe McCarthy finds “communists” in US Ministry of Foreign Affairs
1956 – Autherine Lucy, first black admitted to University of Alabama, is expelled
1960 – Old handwriting found in at Qumran, near the Dead Sea
1962 – The U.S. government banned all Cuban imports and re-export of U.S. products to Cuba from other countries.
1964 – Cassius Clay becomes a Muslim & adopts the name Muhammad Ali
1973 – Senate creates Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities
1974 – The nation of Grenada gained independence from Britain.
1976 – Darryl Sittler (Toronto Maple Leafs) set a National Hockey League (NHL) record when he scored 10 points in a game against the Boston Bruins. He scored six goals and four assists.
1977 – Russia launched Soyuz 24.
1979 – Neptune becomes farthest planet from the sun in our solar system (will remain that way for 20 years)
1984 – Space shuttle astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart made the first untethered space walk.
1985 – “Sports Illustrated” released its annual swimsuit edition. It was the largest regular edition in the magazine’s history at 218 pages.
1986 – Haiti’s president, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, flees the country, ending 28 years of family rule
1987 – Police in South Korea make hundreds of arrests during protest demonstrations, the country’s biggest for 6 years, after a student died in custody
1988 – The Fox Television Network premiered “”America’s Most Wanted,”” a program that featured dramatizations of crimes committed by federal and state fugitives
1991 – The Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide was sworn in as Haiti’s first democratically elected president.
1992 – The Maastricht Treaty is signed, which will lead to the creation of the European Union.
1995 – Terrorist Ramzi Yousef is arrested in Islamabad, Pakistan, where he had been hiding for two years, for his part in the World Trade Center bombing.
1999 – NASA’s Stardust space probe was launched. The mission was to return comet dust samples from comet Wild 2. The mission was completed on January 15, 2006 when the sample return capsule returned to Earth.
2000 – California’s legislature declared that February 13 would be “Charles M. Schulz Day.”
2008 – The Space Shuttle Atlantis launched with the mission of delivering the Columbus science laboratory to the International Space Station.
2009 – The Black Saturday bushfires in Australia kill 173 people
2014 – German treasurer Helmut Linssen resigns amid a scandal involving offshore banking accounts in the Bahamas and Panama
2018 – “The Los Angeles Times” is bought by LA doctor Patrick Soon-Shiong from Tronc for $500 million
2019 – Measles cases in Europe highest in a decade, tripling in a year to 82,596 according to WHO
2022 – European security facing its most dangerous moment since the Cold War, amid fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to EU foreign policy chief
2023 – UK Metropolitan police officer David Carrick jailed for life for 85 serious offences including 48 rapes over 17 years, amid calls for a radical overhaul of the police servic
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
