Today is Monday, Feb. 12, the 43rd day of 2018 with 322 to follow.
The moon is waning. Morning stars are Jupiter, Mars, Mercury and Saturn. Evening stars are Neptune, Uranus and Venus.
Those born on this date are under the sign of Aquarius. They include French architect Etienne-Louis Boullee in 1728; Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States, in 1809; biologist Charles Darwin in 1809; labor leader John L. Lewis in 1880; Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova in 1881; actor Lorne Greene in 1915; Italian film director Franco Zeffirelli in 1923 (age 95); baseball player and sports commentator Joe Garagiola in 1926; Charles Van Doren, subject of U.S. TV quiz scandals, in 1926 (age 92); former U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., in 1930; basketball Hall of Fame member Bill Russell in 1934 (age 84); actor Joe Don Baker in 1936 (age 82); author Judy Blume in 1938 (age 80); former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 1942 (age 76); actor Maud Adams in 1945 (age 73); actor Joanna Kerns in 1953 (age 65); former talk show host Arsenio Hall in 1956 (age 62); actor Josh Brolin in 1968 (age 50); singer Chynna Phillips in 1968 (age 50); actor Jesse Spencer in 1979 (age 39); actor Christina Ricci in 1980 (age 38); rapper Gucci Mane in 1980 (age 38); singer Elle Varner in 1989 (age 29); football quarterback Robert Griffin III (nicknamed “RG3”) in 1990 (age 28).
On this date in history:
In 1541, Santiago, Chile, was founded.
In 1733, the American colony of Georgia was founded by James Oglethorpe.
In 1877, Alexander Graham Bell’s new invention, the telephone, was publicly demonstrated with a hookup between Boston and Salem, Mass.
In 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded by Moorfield Storey, Mary White Ovington and W.E.B. Du Bois.
In 1914, a dedication ceremony was held and the first stone of the Lincoln Memorial was laid. It took eight years to complete the monument honoring the 16th president.
In 1973, 116 prisoners of war were flown from Hanoi to the Philippines in the first release of U.S. POWs in North Vietnam.
In 1988, two Soviet warships deliberately bumped two U.S. Navy ships in international waters in the Black Sea, indicating continued tensions between the two parties despite the Cold War nearing its end.
In 1993, about 5,000 demonstrators marched on Atlanta’s Capitol to protest the Confederate symbol on the Georgia state flag.
In 1999, the U.S. Senate acquitted U.S. President Bill Clinton of impeachment charges.
In 2000, Charles Schulz, creator of the popular comic strip “Peanuts” and the world of Charlie Brown and Snoopy, died of colon cancer at age 77.
In 2001, a NASA spacecraft landed on the asteroid Eros.
In 2002, a Russian-built Tupelov-154 aircraft crashed shortly after takeoff near the western city of Khorramabad, Iran, killing all 117 people aboard.
In 2004, South Korean scientists announced they had created the world’s first mature cloned human embryos.
In 2008, General Motors, which offered buyouts to its 74,000 unionized employees, reported a loss of $38.7 billion for 2007, the largest ever for an automaker.
In 2008, U.S. military officials announced capital charges against six al-Qaida members for their roles in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The admitted mastermind, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and the others were detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
In 2013, North Korea said it safely tested its third nuclear device underground, drawing condemnation from the U.N. Security Council.
In 2014, U.S. comedian Sid Caesar, one of TV’s first big stars, died after a brief illness at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 91.
In 2016, Pope Francis met Patriarch Kirill, the first meeting between the pontiff of the Catholic Church and the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, in Cuba.
In 2017, officials in California evacuated more than 180,000 people after Oroville Dam developed a structural fault, threatening flooding in the surrounding area.
A thought for the day: “The trouble with telling a good story is that it invariably reminds the other fellow of a dull one.” — Sid Caesar
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