A few of the great historical events that happened today in history, February 16th!

1760	Cherokee Indians held hostage at Fort St. George are killed in revenge for Indian attacks on frontier settlements.
1804	Lt. Stephen Decatur led a successful raid into Tripoli harbor to burn the U.S. Navy frigate Philadelphia, which had fallen into the hands of pirates.
1862	Fort Donelson, Tennessee, falls to Grant’s Federal forces, but not before Nathan Bedford Forrest escapes.
1865	Columbia, South Carolina, surrenders to Federal troops.
1868	The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks was organized in New York City.
1918	Lithuania proclaimed its independence.
1923	Bessie Smith makes her first recording “Down Hearted Blues.” Bessie Smith
1934	Thousands of Socialists battle Communists at a rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden.
1937	Wallace H. Carothers, a research chemist for Du Pont, received a patent for nylon.
1940	The British destroyer HMS Cossack rescues British seamen from a German prison ship, theAltmark, in a Norwegian fjord.
1942	Tojo outlines Japan’s war aims to the Diet, referring to “new order of coexistence” in East Asia.
1945	American paratroopers land on Corregidor, in a campaign to liberate the Philippines.
1948	NBC-TV aired the first nightly newscast, “The Camel Newsreel Theatre,” which consisted of Fox Movietone newsreels.
1951	Stalin contends the U.N. is becoming the weapon of aggressive war.
1952	The FBI arrests 10 members of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina.
1957	A U.S. flag flies over an outpost in Wilkes Land, Antarctica.
1959	Fidel Castro takes the oath as Cuban premier in Havana. Fidel Castro
1965	Four persons are held in a plot to blow up the Statue of Liberty, Liberty Bell and the Washington Monument.
1966	The World Council of Churches being held in Geneva, urges immediate peace in Vietnam.
1968	The nation’s first 911 emergency telephone system was inaugurated in Haleyville, Ala.
1978	China and Japan sign a $20 billion trade pact, which is the most important move since the 1972 resumption of diplomatic ties.
2005	The Kyoto global warming pact, which the U.S. never ratified, went into effect.
2005	The NHL canceled what was left of its season after a round of last-gasp negotiations failed to resolve differences over a salary cap.
2011	Bookstore chain Borders filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
2012	A federal judge in Detroit ordered life in prison for Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian man who’d tried to blow up a packed Northwest jetliner with a bomb concealed in his underwear.

Today in History facts are from various sites including, but not limited too: the History Channel, The New York Times, WHG Historynet.com, and HistoryOrb.com.