| On this date in: |
| 1763 | France ceded Canada to England under the Treaty of Paris, which ended the French and Indian War. |
| 1840 | Britain's Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe Coburg-Gotha. |
| 1846 | Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints – the Mormons – began an exodus west from Illinois. |
| 1962 | The Soviet Union exchanged captured American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers for a Soviet spy held by the United States. |
| 1964 | Bob Dylan's album "The Times They Are A-Changin"' was released. |
| 1967 | The 25th Amendment to the Constitution, dealing with presidential disability and succession, went into effect. |
| 1968 | Peggy Fleming of the United States won the gold medal in women's figure skating at the Winter Olympic Games in Grenoble, France. |
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| 1989 | Ron Brown was elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee, becoming the first black to head a major U.S. political party. |
| 1992 | Boxer Mike Tyson was convicted in Indianapolis of raping a Miss Black America contestant. |
| 2003 | Iraq agreed to allow U-2 surveillance flights over its territory, meeting a key demand by U.N. inspectors searching for banned weapons; President George W. Bush brushed aside Iraqi concessions as too little, too late. |
| 2004 | Rapper-producer Kanye West's debut CD, "The College Dropout," was released. |
| 2005 | North Korea boasted publicly for the first time that it possessed nuclear weapons. |
| 2007 | Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., kicked off his presidential campaign with a speech at the state house in Springfield, Ill. |
| 2007 | Gen. David Petraeus took charge of U.S. forces in Iraq. |
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