On Feb. 7, 1861, the general council of the Choctaw Indian nation declared allegiance with the South “in the event a permanent dissolution of the American Union takes place.”
In 1870 pioneering psychiatrist Alfred Adler was born in Austria.
In 1885 author Sinclair Lewis was born in Sauk Centre, Minn.
In 1944 the Germans launched a counteroffensive at Anzio, Italy.
In 1948 Gen. Dwight Eisenhower resigned as Army chief of staff and was succeeded by Gen. Omar Bradley.
In 1964 the Beatles began their first American tour after arriving in New York.
In 1971 women in Switzerland were given the right to vote.
In 1984 a 12-year-old boy identified only as David, born without immunity to disease, touched his mother for the first time after he was removed from a germ-free “bubble” at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston.
In 1986 Haitian President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvalier fled, ending 28 years of his family’s rule.
In 1990 the Soviet Union’s Communist Party agreed to let other political parties compete for control of the country.
In 1995 fugitive Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was arrested in Islamabad, Pakistan.
In 2000 magician Doug Henning, 52, died in Los Angeles.
In 2001 actress Dale Evans died at 88 in Apple Valley, Calif.
In 2005 Ellen MacArthur, a 28-year-old Englishwoman, broke the solo around-the-world sailing record, completing the 26,000-mile circumnavigation after 71 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes and 33 seconds at sea.
