World/nation trivia 2-8-25

Feb. 9:

1825, the House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams president after no candidate received a majority of electoral votes.

1950, in a speech to the Women’s Republican Club in Wheeling, West Virginia, Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin charged that the State Department was riddled with Communists.

1964, the Beatles made their first live American television appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” broadcast from New York on CBS. The quartet played five songs, including “She Loves You” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, to a crowd of screaming teenagers in person and more than 70 million viewers across the country.

Feb. 10:

1736, the treaty ending the Seven Years’ War was signed in Paris, with France ceding its territory in Canada to Great Britain.

1959, an F4-intensity tornado tore through the St. Louis area, killing 21 people and injuring 345.

1962, on the Glienicke Bridge connecting West Berlin and East Germany, the Soviet Union exchanged captured American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers for Rudolf Abel, a Soviet spy held by the United States.

1981, eight people were killed when a fire set by a busboy broke out at the Las Vegas Hilton hotel-casino.

Feb. 11:

1945, U.S. 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.

1990, South African anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela was freed after 27 years in prison. (Mandela would be elected president of South Africa four years later.)

2013, during a routine morning meeting of Vatican cardinals, Pope Benedict XVI announced he would resign as pope effective Feb. 28; it was the first papal resignation in nearly 600 years.

Feb. 12:

1809, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was born in a log cabin at Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville, Kentucky.

1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in New York City.

1914, groundbreaking took place for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

1999, the Senate voted to acquit President Bill Clinton in his impeachment trial of charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

Feb. 13:

1935, a jury in Flemington, New Jersey, found Bruno Richard Hauptmann guilty of first-degree murder in the kidnap-slaying of Charles A. Lindbergh Jr., the 20-month-old son of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. (Hauptmann was executed by electric chair the following year.)

1980, the 13th Winter Olympics opened in Lake Placid, New York.

2021, former President Donald Trump was acquitted by the Senate at his second impeachment trial — the first to involve a former president — in which he was accused of inciting the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Seven Republicans joined all 50 Democrats in voting to convict, less than the two-thirds threshold required.

Feb. 14:

1779, English explorer James Cook was killed on the island of Hawai’i during a melee following Cook’s attempt to kidnap Hawaiian monarch Kalaniʻōpuʻu, who was to be used as leverage for the return of a boat stolen from one of Cook’s ships.

1929, the “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” took place in a Chicago garage as seven rivals of Al Capone’s gang were gunned down.

1989, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling on Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie, author of “The Satanic Verses”, a novel the Ayatollah condemned as blasphemous against Islam.

2018, a gunman identified as a former student opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 people in the nation’s deadliest school shooting since the Sandy Hook Elementary School attack in Newtown, Connecticut, more than five years earlier. (Nikolas Cruz pleaded guilty to murder in October 2021 and was sentenced in November 2022 to life in prison without the possibility of parole.)

Feb. 15:

1879, President Rutherford B. Hayes signed a law allowing female attorneys to argue cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

1961, 73 people, including all 18 members of the U.S. figure skating team en route to the World Championships in Czechoslovakia, were killed in the crash of a Sabena Airlines Boeing 707 in Belgium.

1978, boxer Leon Spinks scored a massive upset as he defeated Muhammad Ali by split decision to become the world heavyweight champion.

2005, defrocked priest Paul Shanley was sentenced in Boston to 12 to 15 years in prison on child rape charges.

– Associated Press