Today in History: Sunday, Feb. 5

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AD 62 – Earthquake in Pompeii, Italy. 756 – An Lushan, leader of a revolt against the Tang Dynasty, declares himself emperor and establishes the state of Yan. 1576 – Henry of Navarre abjures Catholicism at Tours and rejoins the Protestant forces in the French Wars of Religion. 1597 – A group of early Japanese Christians are killed by the new government of Japan for being seen as a threat to Japanese society. 1778 – South Carolina becomes the second state to ratify the Articles of Confederation. 1782 – Spanish defeat British forces and capture Minorca. 1783 – In Calabria a sequence of strong earthquakes begins. 1807 – HMS Blenheim (1761) and HMS Java disappear off the coast of Rodrigues. 1810 – Peninsular War: Siege of Cádiz begins. 1818 – Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte ascends to the thrones of Sweden and Norway. 1849 – University of Wisconsin–Madison's first class meets at Madison Female Academy. 1852 – The New Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, one of the largest and oldest museums in the world, opens to the public. 1859 – Wallachia and Moldavia are united under Alexandru Ioan Cuza as the United Principalities, an autonomous region within the Ottoman Empire, which ushered the birth of the modern Romanian state. 1869 – The largest alluvial gold nugget in history, called the "Welcome Stranger", is found in Moliagul, Victoria, Australia. 1885 – King Leopold II of Belgium establishes the Congo as a personal possession. 1905 – In Mexico, the General Hospital of Mexico is inaugurated, started with four basic specialties. 1909 – Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland announces the creation of Bakelite, the world's first synthetic plastic. 1913 – Greek military aviators, Michael Moutoussis and Aristeidis Moraitinis perform the first naval air mission in history, with a Farman MF.7 hydroplane. 1917 – The current constitution of Mexico is adopted, establishing a federal republic with powers separated into independent executive, legislative, and judicial branches. 1917 – The Congress of the United States passes the Immigration Act of 1917 over President Woodrow Wilson's veto. 1918 – Stephen W. Thompson shoots down a German airplane; this is the first aerial victory by the U.S. military. 1918 – SS Tuscania is torpedoed off the coast of Ireland; it is the first ship carrying American troops to Europe to be torpedoed and sunk. 1919 – Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith launch United Artists. 1924 – The Royal Greenwich Observatory begins broadcasting the hourly time signals known as the Greenwich Time Signal. 1933 – Mutiny on Royal Netherlands Navy warship HNLMS De Zeven Provinciën off the coast of Sumatra, Dutch East Indies. 1939 – Generalísimo Francisco Franco becomes the 68th "Caudillo de España", or Leader of Spain. 1941 – World War II: Allied forces begin the Battle of Keren to capture Keren, Eritrea. 1945 – World War II: General Douglas MacArthur returns to Manila. 1946 – The Chondoist Chongu Party is founded in North Korea. 1958 – Gamal Abdel Nasser is nominated to be the first president of the United Arab Republic. 1958 – A hydrogen bomb known as the Tybee Bomb is lost by the US Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, never to be recovered. 1962 – French President Charles de Gaulle calls for Algeria to be granted independence. 1963 – The European Court of Justice's ruling in Van Gend en Loos v Nederlandse Administratie der Belastingen establishes the principle of direct effect, one of the most important, if not the most important, decisions in the development of European Union law. 1971 – Astronauts land on the moon in the Apollo 14 mission. 1975 – Riots break in Lima, Peru after the police forces go on strike the day before. The uprising (locally known as the Limazo) is bloodily suppressed by the military dictatorship. 1985 – Ugo Vetere, then the mayor of Rome, and Chedli Klibi, then the mayor of Carthage meet in Tunis to sign a treaty of friendship officially ending the Third Punic War which lasted 2,131 years. 1988 – Manuel Noriega is indicted on drug smuggling and money laundering charges. 1994 – Byron De La Beckwith is convicted of the 1963 murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers. 1994 – Markale massacres, more than 60 people are killed and some 200 wounded as a mortar shell explodes in a downtown marketplace in Sarajevo. 1997 – The so-called Big Three banks in Switzerland announce the creation of a $71 million fund to aid Holocaust survivors and their families. 2000 – Russian forces massacre at least 60 civilians in the Novye Aldi suburb of Grozny, Chechnya. 2004 – Rebels from the Revolutionary Artibonite Resistance Front capture the city of Gonaïves, starting the 2004 Haiti rebellion. 2008 – A major tornado outbreak across the Southern United States kills 57.