In the day of my trouble I sought the Lord; In the night my hand was stretched out without weariness; My soul refused to be comforted.


Psalm 72:2 

0457: Leo proclaimed Eastern Roman Emperor

1301: Edward I revives the title Prince of Wales, confers it on his son

1313: Robert, "the Bruce," captures Dumfries, Scotland

1550: Accession of Julius III as Pope

1554: Surrender of Thomas Wyatt and end of Wyatt's Rebellion

1569: King Philip II establishes the Inquisition in province of South America

1579: Francis Drake reaches Arica, Chile

1623: Treaty of Paris

1639: French Academy begins it's great dictionary of the French language

1649: The "Rump" Parliament prohibits government by a single person or King

1783: The Siege of Gibraltar, which was pursued by the Spanish and the French since July 24, 1779, is finally lifted.

1795: The 11th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. This curbed the power of the federal judiciary in relation to the states and reaffirmed the sovereignty of the states.

1818: The first successful U.S. educational magazine, Academician, begins publication in New York City.

1827: French danseuse Mme. Francisquy Hutin introduced ballet to the United States with a performance of "The Deserter," staged at the Bowery Theater in New York. The scanty attire of the troupe caused a minor scandal.

1882: The last bareknuckle fight for the heavyweight boxing championship took place in Mississippi City. John L. Sullivan punched KO'd Paddy Ryan in round nine.

1901: Fires rage at the Baku oil fields in Russia.

1904: A fire began in Baltimore that raged for about 30 hours and destroyed more than 1,500 buildings.

1905: Congress grants statehood to Oklahoma. New Mexico and Arizona are the only remaining territories.

1911: The Swiss national council votes to begin importing U.S. meat.

1913: Turks lose 5,000 men in a battle with the Bulgarian army in Gallipoli.

1915: Hindenburg moves on Russians at Masurian Lakes.

1917: The British steamer California is sunk off the coast of Ireland by a German U-boat.

1919: The new German President Ebert, denounces the terms of the armistice.

1922: Marie Curie is elected to the Academy of Sciences.

1922: Reader's Digest was first published. DeWitt and Lila Acheson Wallace offered 5,000 copies of their magazine for sale for the first time.

1928: The U.S. signs an arbitration treaty with France.

1931: Amelia Earhart weds George Putnam in Connecticut.

1931: The American opera, "Peter Ibbetson", by Deems Taylor premiered at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.

1936: President Roosevelt authorized a flag for the office of the vice president.

1943: The government announced that shoe rationing would go into effect in two days, limiting consumers to buying three pairs per person for the remainder of the year.

1944: During World War Two, the Germans launched a counteroffensive at Anzio, Italy.

1944: Bing Crosby and the John Scott Trotter Orchestra recorded "Swinging on a Star" for Decca Records in Los Angeles.

1944: Helsinki is twice bombed by waves of Soviet planes.

1948: General Dwight D. Eisenhower resigned as Army chief of staff and was succeeded by General Omar Bradley.

1949: Hoover Commission recommends the removal of Postal Department from government control.

1950: The U.S. recognizes Vietnam under the leadership of Emperor Bao Dai, not the radical Ho Chi Minh who was recognized by the Soviets.

1963: The "Mona Lisa" is unveiled at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

1964: The Beatles began their first American tour as they arrived at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. They are greeted by 25,000 fans upon their arrival.

1965: U.S. jets hit Don Hoi guerrilla base in reprisal for the Viet Cong raids.

1968: North Vietnamese use 11 Soviet-built light tanks to overrun the U.S. Special Forces camp at Langvei at the end of an 18-hour long siege.

1971: Women in Switzerland won the right to vote.

1974: The island nation of Grenada won independence from Britain.

1974: Barry White’s Love Unlimited Orchestra received a gold record for the disco hit, "Love’s Theme."

1978: Ethiopia mounts a counter attack against Somalia.

1983: Iran opens invasion in the southeast of Iraq.

1983: President Ronald Reagan fired Environmental Protection Agency official Rita M. Lavelle after she refused a request from EPA administrator Anne M. Gorsuch that she resign.

1984: President Reagan announced he had ordered U.S. Marines in Lebanon to move to ships offshore.

1984: Space shuttle astronauts Bruce McCandless the Second and Robert L. Stewart went on the first untethered space walk.

1984: A 12-year-old boy publicly identified only as "David," born without immunity to disease, touched his mother for the first time after he was removed from a germ-free "bubble" at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston.

1985: A court in Torun, Poland, found four security officers guilty of the murder of pro-Solidarity priest Jerzy Popieluszko, and handed out prison sentences ranging up to 25 years.

1985: "New York, New York" became the official anthem of the Big Apple.

1986: Haitian President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvalier fled his country, ending 28 years of his family's rule.

1986: The Philippines held a presidential election marred by charges of fraud against the incumbent, Ferdinand E. Marcos.

1987: The crew of the Stars and Stripes, skippered by Dennis Conner, brought the America's Cup back to the United States to the cheers of about 60,000 people in San Diego.

1988: Leslie Manigat was sworn in as Haiti's president (however, he was removed from power the following June).

1989: Bowing to public outrage, both houses of Congress voted to kill their scheduled 51-percent pay increase.

1990: The Soviet Union's Communist Party agreed to let alternative political parties compete for control of the country, thereby giving up its monopoly on power.

1990: An 811-foot tanker, the American Trader, spilled hundreds of thousands of gallons of Alaskan crude oil off the coast of Huntington Beach, California.

1991: Defense secretary Dick Cheney and Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, left for a visit to the Gulf War zone.

1991: The Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide was sworn in as Haiti's first democratically elected president.

1992: Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin and French President Francois Mitterrand signed a cooperation treaty in Paris.

1993: Commerce Secretary Ron Brown acknowledged on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he'd failed to pay Social Security taxes for a domestic worker over a number of years.

1994: President Clinton sent Congress his $1.5 trillion budget plan, declaring cuts in hundreds of programs would achieve a deficit-reduction record unequaled since President Truman's administration.

1995: Ramzi Yousef, the alleged mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing, was arrested in Islamabad, Pakistan, after two years as a fugitive.

1996: During a Central America tour, Pope John Paul II received a warm welcome in Nicaragua, his first there since 1983.

1996: Ten years to the day after the collapse of the Duvalier family dictatorship, Rene Preval became Haiti's second freely elected president.

1997: The Air Force suspended all its flights in restricted training areas on the East Coast after a pair of close calls between National Guard jets and civilian airliners.

1997: Mindful of Boris Yeltsin's ailments, President Clinton agreed to shift their March summit meeting from the United States to Helsinki, Finland.

1998: The Winter Olympic Games opened in Nagano, Japan.

1998: It was announced that Carl Wilson, a founding member of The Beach Boys, had died in Los Angeles from complications of lung cancer; he was 51.

1999: Jordan's King Hussein died of cancer at age 63; he was succeeded by his eldest son, Abdullah.

1999: NASA launched the Stardust spacecraft on a mission to chase a comet in hopes of collecting a sample of comet dust.

2000:  With an astonishing comeback to win the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, Tiger Woods gained his sixth straight PGA Tour victory, becoming the first player since Ben Hogan in 1948 to win six in a row. 

2000: The Web site Yahoo! came under a "denial of service" attack by Internet vandals who overwhelmed the site with junk messages that blocked legitimate users from gaining access. 

2000: Yugoslav Defense Minister Pavle Bulatovic was gunned down in a Belgrade restaurant and died later in a hospital. 

2000: Magician Doug Henning died in Los Angeles at age 52.