Today is Monday, Feb. 11, the 42nd day of 2019. There are 323 days left in the year.
Today’s highlight: On Feb. 11, 1990, South African black activist Nelson Mandela was freed after 27 years in captivity.
On this date:
In 1531, the Church of England grudgingly accepted King Henry VIII as its supreme head.
In 1929, the Lateran Treaty was signed, with Italy recognizing the independence and sovereignty of Vatican City.
In 1937, a six-week-old sit-down strike against General Motors ended, with the company agreeing to recognize the United Automobile Workers Union.
In 1945, 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.
In 1963, American author and poet Sylvia Plath was found dead in her London flat, a suicide; she was 30.
In 1968, New York City’s fourth and current Madison Square Garden, located on Manhattan’s West Side at the site of what used to be the Pennsylvania Station building, opened with a “Salute to the USO” hosted by Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. (The same evening, the New York Rangers played their final game at the third Garden, tying the Detroit Red Wings 3-3.)
Today’s birthdays: Actor Conrad Janis is 91. Fashion designer Mary Quant is 85. Actress Tina Louise is 81.
Thought for today: “Life does not count by years. Some suffer a lifetime in a day, and so grow old between the rising and the setting of the sun.” — Augusta Jane Evans, American novelist (1835-1909).
— Associated Press
