Today In History [11th February, 2015]

A chronological timetable of historical events that occurred on this day in history. Historical facts of the day in the areas of military, politics, science, music, sports, arts, entertainment and more. Discover what happened today in history.

February 11

660 BC           Traditional founding of Japan by Emperor Jimmu Tenno.
1531           Henry VIII is recognized as the supreme head of the Church of England.
1805           Sixteen-year-old Sacajawea, the Shoshoni guide for Lewis & Clark, gives birth to a son, with Meriwether Lewis serving as midwife.
1809           Robert Fulton patents the steamboat.
1815           News of the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812, finally reaches the United States.
1858           14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous, a French miller's daughter, claims to have seen an apparition of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes.
1903           Congress passes the Expedition Act, giving antitrust cases priority in the courts.
1904           President Theodore Roosevelt proclaims strict neutrality for the United States in the Russo-Japanese War.
1910           Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and Eleanor Alexander announce their wedding date–June 20, 1910.
1926           The Mexican government nationalizes all church property.
1936           The Reich arrests 150 Catholic youth leaders in Berlin.
1939           The Negrin government returns to Madrid, Spain.
1942           The German battleships Gneisenau, Scharnhorst and Prinz Eugen begin their famed channel dash from the French port of Brest. Their journey takes them through the English Channel on their way back to Germany.
1945           The meeting of the President Franklin Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Marshal Joseph Stalin in Yalta, adjourns.
1951           U.N. forces push north across the 38th parallel for the second time in the Korean war.
1953           Walt Disney's film Peter Pan premieres.
1954           A 75,000-watt light bulb is lit at the Rockefeller Center in New York, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Thomas Edison's first light bulb.
1955           Nationalist Chinese complete the evacuation of the Tachen Islands.
1959           Iran turns down Soviet aid in favor of a U.S. proposal for aid.
1962           Poet and novelist Sylvia Plath commits suicide in London at age 30.
1964           Cambodian Prince Sihanouk blames the United States for a South Vietnamese air raid on a village in his country.
1965           President Lyndon Johnson orders air strikes against targets in North Vietnam, in retaliation for guerrilla attacks on the American military in South Vietnam.
1966           Vice President Hubert Humphrey begins a tour of Vietnam.
1974           Communist-led rebels shower artillery fire into a crowded area of Phnom Pehn, killing 139 and injuring 46 others.
1975           Mrs. Margaret Thatcher becomes the first woman to lead the British Conservative Party.
1990           South African political leader Nelson Mandela is released from prison in Paarl, South Africa, after serving more than 27 years of a life sentence.

Born on February 11
1535           Gregory XIV, Roman Catholic Pope.
1800           William Henry Fox Talbot, photography pioneer, produced the first book with photographic illustrations (The Pencil of Nature).
1833           Melville Weston Fuller, eighth U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice.
1847           Thomas Alva Edison, prolific American inventor who jointly or singly held over 1,300 patents.
1855           Josephine Marshall Jewell Dodge, American educator, pioneer in the concept of day nurseries for children.
1898           Leo Szilard, physicist, instrumental in the Manhattan Project.
1907           William J. Levitt, U.S. businessman and community builder who led the postwar housing revolutions with his Levittowns.
1908           Phillipe Dunne, screenwriter and director (How Green Was My Valley).
1912           Roy Fuller, poet and novelist.