This Day in History – February 6
This is the 37th day of 2013. There are 328 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
1945: Jamaican reggae icon Robert Nesta “Bob” Marley, who achieved international stardom by blending early ska, rocksteady, and reggae forms into an electrifying hybrid, is born in Nine Miles, St Ann, to 18-year-old Cedella Booker and 60-year-old Norval Marley — a captain in the British Marines and a plantation overseer of English and Syrian descent.
OTHER EVENTS
1508: Maximilian I is proclaimed Holy Roman Emperor, the first emperor in centuries not to be crowned by the pope.
1643: Dutch mariner Abel Tasman discovers the Fiji Islands in the Pacific.
1701: The War of Spanish Succession begins.
1715: The Peace of Utrecht ends the war between Spain and Portugal.
1778: France recognises USA and signs the Treaty of Alliance in Paris — the first US treaty. Britain declares war on France.
1819: The British East India Company, represented by Stamford Raffles, establishes a settlement at Singapore.
1840: The Treaty of Waitangi is signed, guaranteeing Maori tribal chiefs their lands and certain other rights in return for British sovereignty over New Zealand.
1869: Greece agrees to leave Crete following a Turkish ultimatum.
1897: Crete proclaims its union with Greece.
1899: The Treaty of Paris is ratified whereby Spain cedes Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines to the United States for US$20 million.
1902: A French agreement with Ethiopia to finance railway construction provokes protests from Britain and Italy.
1952: Britain’s King George VI dies and is succeeded by his daughter, Elizabeth II.
1959: The United States successfully test-fires a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile.
1964: England and France agree on constructing the English Channel rail tunnel.
1965: The Righteous Brothers’ You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ hits number one.
1971: American astronaut Alan Shepard is the first to hit a golf ball on the moon. US Apollo 14 astronauts prepare to head back to earth after spending 33 hours on the moon.
1975: Three paintings — one by Raphael and two by Piero della Francesca — are stolen from the National Gallery in Urbino, Italy.
1983: US Chief Justice Warren Burger asks Congress to ease the Supreme Court’s load by creating a court of federal judges.
1990: West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl says he favours immediate talks with East Germany on introducing the Deutsche mark there.
1991: Colombian President Cesar Gaviria pleads for peace after a two-day rebel offensive that leaves at least 47 people dead.
1992: Three days of clashes between Islamist protesters and security forces kill 12 and injure dozens in Batna, Algeria.
1993: Armenian forces capture 12 settlements in a major offensive in the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave in Azerbaijan. African American tennis player Arthur Ashe, ranked number one in the world, the first black player ever selected to the United States Davis Cup team, and the only black man ever to win the singles Grand Slam title three times at Wimbledon, the US Open, and the Australian Open, dies at age 49 of AIDS-related pneumonia likely contracted through a tainted blood transfusion received during coronary bypass surgeries.
1994: Martti Ahtisaari wins Finland’s first direct presidential election.
1995: Two 100-ton spaceships — the biggest ever to converge in space — fly in formation in the first US-Russian rendezvous in 20 years.
1996: More than 1,000 Palestinians challenge Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem by filing claims for property they once owned in the Jewish part of the disputed city.
1997: Marking his first year as president of Haiti, Rene Preval distributes land to peasants.
1998: A Tamil separatist rebel suicide bombing kills nine people at a military checkpoint in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
1999: The first peace talks between Kosovo Albanians and Yugoslavia open in Rambouillet, France.
2000: Hillary Rodham Clinton announces her candidacy for US Senate in New York; she later defeats the Republican candidate in November, becoming the only US first lady ever elected to public office.
2001: Ariel Sharon is elected Israeli prime minister in a landslide win over Ehud Barak.
2002: Athanase Seromba, a Roman Catholic priest accused of participating in the 1994 slaughter of Tutsis by ethnic Hutus in Rwanda, surrenders to the UN tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania.
2005: The African Union says the military in Togo conducted a virtual coup by ignoring the constitution and appointing the son of Africa’s longest-ruling leader, Gnassingbe Eyadema, to take over as the country’s new leader just hours after his father died of a heart attack.
2006: Anger over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad spills violently onto the streets of Afghanistan where protesters direct their anger against the US; police gun down at least four people, some as they try to break into a US military base.
2007: African, Asian and South American nations where child fighters have been used in war are among 60 countries worldwide to endorse the Paris Commitments, an agreement that commits them to stopping the practice and punishing those who recruit youngsters as combatants.
2008: Seven doctors and pharmacists go on trial in Paris for the deaths of more than 100 young people who contracted a brain-destroying illness, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, after being treated with tainted human growth hormones; the trial follows a more than 16-year investigation.
2009: Nigerian health workers hunt down errant bottles of a poisonous teething formula following the death of 84 infants and children after swallowing a syrup laced with a chemical normally found in antifreeze.
2010: Top finance officials of the seven major industrial countries seek to calm jittery markets by pledging to keep providing government aid to sustain a fledgling economic rebound.
2011: Two Americans accused of spying appear in a closed-door Iranian court session to begin trial after an 18-month detention that brought impassioned family appeals, a stunning bail deal to free their companion, and backdoor diplomatic outreach by Washington through an Arab ally in the Gulf.
2014: A suicide bomber blows himself up at the gates of a Syrian prison and rebels storm in behind him, freeing hundreds of inmates as part of an offensive aimed at capturing key government symbols around the northern city of Aleppo.
2018: Brazilian jockey Jorge Ricardo equals the world record number of victories for a jockey — 12,844 — in Rio de Janeiro. SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket has its first test flight; on-board is a Tesla automobile owned by SpaceX’s founder, Elon Musk.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Christopher Marlowe, English poet-dramatist (1564-1593); Queen Anne of England (1665-1714); Babe Ruth, US baseball star (1895-1948); Ronald Reagan, US president (1911-2004); Zsa Zsa Gabor, Hungarian actress (1917-2016); Bob Marley, Jamaican musician (1945-1981); Natalie Cole, US singer (1950-2015); Rick Astley, British singer (1966- ); William Alexander Anthony “Bunny Rugs” Clarke, Jamaican musician (1948-2014); Derrick Clifton Harriott, Jamaican singer and record producer (1939- )
— AP/ Jamaica Observer