February 18th

Today's Highlight in History:
On February 18th, 1861, Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president of the Confederate States of America in Montgomery, Alabama.

On this date:
In 1516, Mary Tudor, the Queen of England popularly known as "Bloody Mary," was born in Greenwich Palace.

In 1546, Martin Luther, leader of the Protestant Reformation in Germany, died.

In 1564, the artist Michelangelo died in Rome.

In 1885, Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" was published in the US for the first time.

In 1930, the ninth planet of our solar system, Pluto, was discovered.

In 1960, the Eighth Winter Olympic Games were formally opened in Squaw Valley, California, by Vice President Nixon.

In 1970, the Chicago Seven defendants were found innocent of conspiring to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic national convention.

In 1972, the California Supreme Court struck down the state's death penalty.

In 1977, the space shuttle "Enterprise," sitting atop a Boeing 747, went on its maiden "flight" above the Mojave Desert.

In 1988, Anthony M. Kennedy was sworn in as the 104th justice of the US Supreme Court.

Ten years ago: In general elections, Japan's conservative governing party held onto its 34-year-old majority in the Parliament's lower house.

Five years ago: The NAACP replaced veteran chairman William Gibson with Myrlie Evers-Williams, the widow of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers, after the rank-and-file declared no confidence in Gibson's leadership.

One year ago: The Clinton administration warned Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to choose peace with ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, or face a devastating military strike.

"Opinion is that exercise of the human will which helps us to make a decision without information."

-- John Erskine, American author and educator (1879-1951).