This Day in History — February 2
Today is the the 33rd day of 2021. There are 332 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
1999: Hugo Chavez takes office as Venezuela’s president, seven years after he tried to overthrow the Government in a military coup.
OTHER EVENTS
1535: Argentine city of Buenos Aires is founded by Pedro de Mendoza of Spain.
1653: New Amsterdam — now New York City — with a population of 800, gains a city charter from the Dutch.
1808: French force occupies Rome after Pope Pius VII refuses to recognise Kingdom of Naples and to join alliance against Britain.
1848: Mexico signs the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending a US invasion and ceding Texas, New Mexico and California to the United States, and receives $15 million in return.
1872: Holland sells trading posts on African Gold Coast to Britain.
1919: Monarchy is proclaimed in Portugal.
1924: Caliphate is abolished by Turkey’s National Assembly.
1943: German troops surrender to Russians in Stalingrad after losing 200,000 men.
1971: Idi Amin assumes power in Uganda following a coup that ousted President Milton Obote.
1979: After 14 years in exile, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returns from Paris and becomes the de facto leader of Iran.
1980: Reports surface that the FBI had conducted a sting operation targeting members of US Congress using phony Arab businessmen in what became known as “Abscam”, a codename protested by Arab-Americans.
1990: South African President F W de Klerk lifts ban on African National Congress and promises to release political prisoner Nelson Mandela.
1991: An earthquake jolts Afghanistan and Pakistan, killing at least 109 people and injuring more than 350.
1992: Serbian officials and a Serb leader agree to support a UN peace plan for Croatia.
1995: The leaders of Israel, Jordan, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Egypt sit down together for the first time in Cairo in an attempt to revive Israel’s troubled accord with Palestinians.
2000: The two Libyan defendants charged in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, plead innocent at a pre-trial hearing in a Scottish court. The blast killed 270 people.
2006: Foreign aid workers and journalists start leaving the Gaza Strip after masked Palestinian gunmen, incensed by cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in European newspapers, surround an EU office and threaten to attack Europeans.
2007: A UN envoy unveils a long-awaited plan for Kosovo, recommending internationally supervised statehood for the contested province. The plan is quickly rejected by Serbian President Boris Tadic.
2009: Moammar Gadhafi of Libya is elected as leader of the African Union.
2011: A massive cyclone strikes north-eastern Australia — the most powerful storm to hit the area in nearly a century.
2012: NASA, which relies solely on Russia to take US crews to the space station, says it still has confidence in the quality of Russia’s manned rockets, despite an embarrassing series of glitches and failures in Moscow’s space programme.
2013: French President Francois Hollande bathes in the cheers and accolades of thousands of people in Timbuktu, making a triumphant stop six days after French forces parachuted in to liberate Mali’s fabled city from the radical Islamists occupying it.
2014: Thousands of protesters seeking the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych hold of their largest gatherings in Kiev’s central square.
2017: Declaring that religious freedom was “under threat”, President Donald Trump vows to repeal a rarely enforced IRS rule that said pastors who endorse candidates from the pulpit risked losing their tax-exempt status. Using a backhoe to smash through a barricade of water-filled footlockers, police storm Delaware’s largest prison, ending a nearly 20-hour hostage stand-off with inmates; one hostage, a guard, is killed.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Eleanor (Nell) Gwyn, English actress (1651-1687); James Joyce, Irish author (1882-1941); Jussi Bjoerling, Swedish tenor (1911-1960); Abba Eban, Israeli ambassador, foreign minister and author (1915-2002); Valery Giscard d’Estaing, former French president (1926-2020); Graham Nash, British pop singer (1942- ); Farrah Fawcett, US actress/model (1947-2009); Christie Brinkley, US model (1954- ); Shakira, Latin singer (1977- )
— AP
