Today is Sunday, Feb. 16, the 47th day of 2025. There are 318 days left in the year.
Today in history:
On Feb. 16, 1959, Fidel Castro was sworn in as premier of Cuba, six weeks after dictator Fulgencio Batista announced his resignation and fled the country into exile.
Also on this date:
In 1862, the Civil War Battle of Fort Donelson in Tennessee ended with the surrender of some 12,000 Confederate soldiers; Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s victory earned him the moniker “Unconditional Surrender Grant.”
In 1923, the burial chamber of King Tutankhamen’s recently unearthed tomb was unsealed in Egypt by English archaeologist Howard Carter.
In 1960, the nuclear submarine USS Triton departed New London, Connecticut, on the first submerged circumnavigation by a vessel.
In 1996, eleven people were killed in a fiery collision between an Amtrak passenger train and a Maryland commuter train in Silver Spring, Maryland.
In 2018, in an indictment, special counsel Robert Mueller charged 13 Russians and three Russian companies of an elaborate plot to disrupt the 2016 U.S. presidential election via a social media trolling campaign, aimed in part at helping Donald Trump win the presidency.
In 2024, Russia’s prison agency announced that Alexei Navalny, activist and Russian opposition leader, had died in the Arctic penal colony where he was serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism; the news brought outrage and criticism from world leaders toward Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Today’s birthdays:
- Businessman Carl Icahn is 89.
- Author Eckhart Tolle is 77.
- Actor William Katt is 74.
- Model-TV personality Janice Dickinson is 70.
- Actor LeVar Burton is 68.
- Actor-rapper Ice-T is 67.
- Tennis Hall of Famer John McEnroe is 66.
- Football Hall of Famer Jerome Bettis is 53.
- Olympic track and field gold medalist Cathy Freeman is 52.
- Actor Mahershala Ali is 51.
- Rapper Lupe Fiasco is 43.
- Sen. John Ossoff, D-Ga., is 38.
- Actor Elizabeth Olsen is 36.
- Singer-actor The Weeknd is 35.
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