1820, Britain's King George III died at Windsor Castle, ending a reign that had seen both the American and French revolutions.
1843, the 25th president of the United States, William McKinley, was born in Niles, Ohio.
1845, Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven" was first published, in the New York Evening Mirror.
1861, Kansas became the 34th state of the Union.
1919, the ratification of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, which launched Prohibition, was certified by Acting Secretary of State Frank L. Polk.
1929, The Seeing Eye, a New Jersey-based school which trains guide dogs to assist the blind, was incorporated by Dorothy Harrison Eustis and Morris Frank.
1936, the first members of baseball's Hall of Fame, including Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth, were named in Cooperstown, N.Y.
1939, Irish poet-dramatist William Butler Yeats died in Menton, France.
1963, the first members of pro football's Hall of Fame were named in Canton, Ohio.
1979, President Jimmy Carter formally welcomed Chinese Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping to the White House, following the establishment of diplomatic relations.
1998, a bomb rocked an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Ala., killing security guard Robert Sanderson and critically injuring Emily Lyons, a nurse. (The bomber, Eric Rudolph, was captured in May 2003 and is serving a life sentence.)
Ten years ago: The Senate delivered subpoenas for Monica Lewinsky and two of President Bill Clinton's advisers, summoning them for private, videotaped testimony in the impeachment trial. Attorney General Janet Reno rejected a special prosecutor investigation of former White House deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes.
Five years ago: A suicide bomber struck a bus in Jerusalem, killing 10 Israelis. British author M.M. Kaye died in Lavenham, England, at age 95.
One year ago: John McCain won a breakthrough triumph in the Florida primary, easing past Mitt Romney for his first-ever triumph in a primary open only to Republicans. Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton claimed victory in a campaign-free Florida presidential primary in which all the candidates had signed pledges not to compete. (The national Democratic Party had stripped the state of its delegates as punishment for moving its primary ahead of Feb. 5.) Margaret Truman, the only child of President Harry S. Truman, died in Chicago at age 83. Raymond Jacobs, believed to be the last surviving member of the group of Marines photographed during the first U.S. flag-raising on Iwo Jima, died in Redding, Calif., at age 82.
