1795 – The 11th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified.

1818 – “Academician” began publication in New York City.

1877 – The first Guernsey Cattle Club was organized in New York City.

1882 – The last bareknuckle fight for the heavyweight boxing championship took place in Mississippi City.

1913 – The Turks lost 5,000 men in a battle with the Bulgarian army in Gallipoli.

1922 – DeWitt and Lila Acheson Wallace offered 5,000 copies of “Reader’s Digest” magazine for the first time.

1931 – The American opera “Peter Ibbetson,” by Deems Taylor, premiered in New York City.

1936 – The U.S. Vice President’s flag was established by executive order.

1940 – “Pinocchio” world premiered at the Center Theatre in Manhattan.

1941 – The Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and Frank Sinatra recorded “Everything Happens to Me.”

1943 – The U.S. government announced that shoe rationing would go into effect in two days.

1944 – During World War II, the Germans launched a counteroffensive at Anzio, Italy.

1959 – The play “The Rivalry” opened in New York City.

1962 – The U.S. government banned all Cuban imports and re-export of U.S. products to Cuba from other countries.

1966 – “Crawdaddy” magazine was published by Paul Williams for the first time.

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.

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.

1985 – “New York, New York” became the official anthem of New York City.

1986 – Haitian President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvalier fled his country ending 28 years of family rule.

1991 -was sworn in as Haiti’s first democratically elected president.

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.

on-this-day.com

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The first organized immigration of freed enslaved people to Africa from the United States departs New York harbor on a journey to Freetown, Sierra Leone, in West Africa. The immigration was largely the work of the American Colonization Society, a U.S. organization founded in 1816 by Robert Finley to return formerly enslaved African people to Africa.

However, the expedition was also partially funded by the U.S. Congress, which in 1819 had appropriated $100,000 to be used in returning displaced Africans, illegally brought to the United States after the abolishment of the slave trade in 1808, to Africa.

Source: history.com for the complete article

On February 5, 1777, Georgia formally adopts a new state constitution and becomes the first U.S. state to abolish the inheritance practices of primogeniture and entail.

Primogeniture ensured that the eldest son in a family inherited the largest portion of his father’s property upon the father’s death. The practice of entail, guaranteeing that a landed estate remain in the hands of only one male heir, was frequently practiced in conjunction with primogeniture. (Virginia abolished entail in 1776, but permitted primogeniture to persist until 1785.)

Georgians restructured inheritance laws in Article LI of the state’s constitution by abolishing entail in all forms and proclaiming that any person who died without a will would have his or her estate divided equally among their children; the widow shall have a child’s share, or her dower at her option.

Source: history.com for the complete article