February 11

AD 55 – Tiberius Claudius Caesar Britannicus, heir to the Roman emperorship, dies under mysterious circumstances in Rome. This clears the way for Nero to become Emperor.

1534 – Henry VIII of England is recognized as supreme head of the Church of England.

1790 – The Religious Society of Friends, also known as Quakers, petitions U.S. Congress for the abolition of slavery.

1808 – Jesse Fell burns anthracite on an open grate as an experiment in heating homes with coal.

1937 – The Flint sit-down strike ends when General Motors recognizes the United Auto Workers trade union.

1938 – BBC Television produces the world’s first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of the Karel Čapek play R.U.R., that coined the term “robot”.

1953 – Cold War: President Dwight D. Eisenhower denies all appeals for clemency for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

1978 – Censorship: China lifts a ban on works by Aristotle, William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens.

1990 – Nelson Mandela is released from Victor Verster Prison outside Cape Town, South Africa after 27 years as a political prisoner.

2001 – A Dutch programmer launched the Anna Kournikova virusinfecting millions of emails via a trick photo of the tennis star.

2006 – Dick Cheney shot Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old Texas attorney, while participating in a quail hunt on a ranch in Riviera, Texas.

2011 – Arab Spring: The first wave of the Egyptian revolution culminates in the resignation of Hosni Mubarak and the transfer of power to the Supreme Military Council after 18 days of protests.

2017 – North Korea test fires a ballistic missile across the Sea of Japan.

1466 – Elizabeth of York (d. 1503)

	Mr. Edison

1796 – Giovanni Pacini,Italian composer and educator (d. 1867)

1800 – Henry Fox Talbot, English photographer and politician, invented the calotype (d. 1877)

1847 – Thomas Edison, American engineer and businessman, developed the light bulb and phonograph (d. 1931)

1881 – Carlo Carra, Italian painter (d. 1966)

1909 – Max Baer, American boxer and actor (d. 1959)

1921 – Lloyd Bentsen, American colonel and politician, 69th United States Secretary of the Treasury (d. 2006)

1953 – Jeb Bush, American banker and politician, 43rd Governor of Florida

1964 – Sarah Palin, American journalist and politician, 9th Governor of Alaska

1503 – Elizabeth of York (b. 1466)

1650 – Rene Descartes, French mathematician and philosopher (b. 1596)

1948 – Sergei Eisenstein, Russian director and screenwriter (b. 1898)

1963 – Sylvia Plath, poet, novelist, and short story writer (b. 1932)

2006 – Peter Benchley, American author and screenwriter (b. 1940)