On Feb. 6, 1778, the United States won official recognition from France with the signing of treaties in Paris.
In 1895 baseball legend George Herman “Babe” Ruth was born in Baltimore.
In 1911 Ronald Reagan, the 40th U.S. president, was born in Tampico, Ill.
In 1917 actress Zsa Zsa Gabor was born in Budapest, Hungary.
In 1933 the Constitution’s 20th Amendment took effect. It designated Jan. 20 as the date of presidential inaugurations and moved up the start of congressional terms from March to January.
In 1943 Gen. Dwight Eisenhower was named commander in chief of Allied forces in North Africa during World War II.
In 1952 Britain’s King George VI died; he was succeeded as reigning monarch by his daughter, Elizabeth II.
In 1956 Autherine Lucy, the first black student admitted to the University of Alabama, was expelled after she accused school officials of conspiring in riots that marred her court-ordered enrollment five days earlier.
In 1959 the United States successfully test-fired for the first time a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile from Cape Canaveral, Fla.
In 1964 Cuba cut off the normal water supply to the U.S. Navy’s base at Guantanamo Bay.In 1979, in an indirect warning to Vietnam, President Jimmy Carter told Thailand’s visiting prime minister that the U.S. remained committed to the inviolability of Thai borders.
In 1980 Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr denounced the militants holding 52 Americans hostage in Tehran.
In 1983 Chief Justice Warren Burger asked Congress to create a court with judges borrowed from other federal courts to try to ease the Supreme Court’s workload.
In 1985 Australian Prime Minister Robert Hawke told President Ronald Reagan that politics forced him to cancel an agreement allowing the United States to use Australian bases to monitor tests of MX missiles in the Pacific.
In 1991 comedian Danny Thomas, who had starred in the television series “Make Room for Daddy,” died in Los Angeles at 79.
In 1992 16 people were killed when a C-130 military transport plane crashed in Evansville, Ind.
In 1994 actor Joseph Cotten died in Los Angeles at 88.
In 1996 a Turkish-owned Boeing 757 jetliner crashed into the Atlantic Ocean shortly after takeoff from the Dominican Republic, killing 189 people, mostly German tourists.
In 1998 President Bill Clinton signed a bill changing the name of Washington National Airport to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
In 2000 First Lady Hillary Clinton launched her successful candidacy for the U.S. Senate.
In 2001 Ariel Sharon was elected Israeli prime minister in a landslide win over Ehud Barak.
In 2003 ABC’s “20/20” aired a British documentary on Michael Jackson in which the King of Pop revealed he sometimes let children sleep in his bed.
In 2004 an explosion ripped through a Moscow subway car during rush hour, killing 41 people.
In 2005 the New England Patriots won their third Super Bowl in four years, defeating the Philadelphia Eagles, 24-21.
In 2006 President George W. Bush submitted a $2.77 trillion budget blueprint for fiscal 2007.
