1336 – 4,000 defenders of Pilėnai commit a mass suicide rather than be taken captive by the Teutonic Knights.
1570 – Pope Pius V excommunicates Queen Elizabeth I of England.
1797 – Colonel William Tate and his force of 1000-1500 soldiers surrender after the Last Invasion of Britain.
1836 – Samuel Colt is granted a United States patent for the Colt revolver.
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.
1901 – Zeppo Marx, American actor and agent (d. 1979) was born.
1913 – The Sixteenth Amendment, which paved the way for the United States adoption of income tax, was ratified
1919 – Oregon places a 1 cent per U.S. gallon tax on gasoline, becoming the first U.S. state to levy a gasoline tax.
1928 – Charles Jenkins Laboratories of Washington, D.C. becomes the first holder of a television license from the Federal Radio Commission.
1930 – With the continuing debate in congress between wets and drys over the prohibition laws , the enforcement in each state also continues to be dependent on the position of the politicians in that state. In states where the wets are in control the boats used to enforce prohibition could not catch a cold let alone a fast rum runners boat , and speakeasies are very rarely raided by law enforcement. In other states where the dry’s are in control fast patrol boats and many raids occur.
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. It is the first US Navy ship to be built solely as an aircraft carrier.
1937 – Bob Schieffer, American journalist was born.
1941 – February Strike: In occupied Amsterdam, a general strike is declared in response to increasing anti-Jewish measures instituted by the Nazis.
1943 – George Harrison, English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (The Beatles, The Quarrymen, Traveling Wilburys, and Plastic Ono Band) (d. 2001) was born.
1948 – The Communist Party takes control of government in Czechoslovakia and the period of the Third Republic ends.
1949 – Ric Flair, American wrestler was born.
1956 – In his speech On the Personality Cult and its Consequences Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union denounces the cult of personality of Joseph Stalin.
1964 – North Korean Prime Minister Kim Il-sung calls for the removal of feudalistic land ownership aimed at turning all cooperative farms into state-run ones.
1968 – Vietnam War: 135 unarmed citizens of Hà My village in South Vietnam’s Quảng Nam Province are killed and buried en masse by South Korean troops in what would come to be known as the Hà My massacre.
1971 – The first unit of the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, the first commercial nuclear power station in Canada, goes online.
1987 – Southern Methodist University’s football program is the first college football program to receive the Death Penalty by the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions. It was revealed that athletic officials and school administrators had knowledge of a “slush fund” used to make illegal payments to the school’s football players as far back as 1981.
1991 – Gulf War: An Iraqi scud missile hits an American military barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia killing 28 U.S. Army Reservists from Pennsylvania.
1991 – The Warsaw Pact is declared disbanded.
1994 – Mosque of Abraham massacre: In the Cave of the Patriarchs in the West Bank city of Hebron, Baruch Goldstein opens fire with an automatic rifle, killing 29 Palestinian worshippers and injuring 125 more before being subdued and beaten to death by survivors.
2005 – Dennis Rader is arrested for the BTK ( Bind, Torture and Kill, ) serial killings that terrorized Wichita, Kan. (He later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 life prison terms.)
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