Events on February 8 50
Year 1347
The Byzantine civil war of 1341-47 ends with a power-sharing agreement between John VI Kantakouzenos and John V Palaiologos.
Year 1587
Mary, Queen of Scots, is executed on suspicion of having been involved in the Babington Plot to murder her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I.
Year 1601
Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, rebels against Queen Elizabeth I and the revolt is quickly crushed.
Year 1693
The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, is granted a charter by King William III and Queen Mary II.
Year 1807
After two days of bitter fighting, the Russians under Bennigsen and the Prussians under L'Estocq concede the Battle of Eylau to Napoleon.
Year 1817
Las Heras crosses the Andes with an army to join San Martín and liberate Chile from Spain.
Year 1837
Richard Johnson becomes the first Vice President of the United States chosen by the United States Senate.
Year 1865
Delaware refuses to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Slavery was outlawed in the United States, including Delaware, when the Amendment was ratified by the requisite number of states on December 6, 1865. Delaware ratified the Thirteenth Amendment on February 12, 1901, which was the ninety-second anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.
Year 1879
Sandford Fleming first proposes adoption of Universal Standard Time at a meeting of the Royal Canadian Institute.
Year 1879
The England cricket team led by Lord Harris is attacked during a riot during a match in Sydney.
Year 1887
The Dawes Act authorizes the President of the United States to survey Native American tribal land and divide it into individual allotments.
Year 1904
Battle of Port Arthur: A surprise torpedo attack by the Japanese at Port Arthur, China starts the Russo-Japanese War.
Year 1904
Aceh War: Dutch Colonial Army's Marechaussee regiment led by General G.C.E. van Daalen launch military campaign to capture Gayo Highland, Alas Highland, and Batak Highland in Dutch East Indies' Northern Sumatra region, which ends with genocide to Acehnese and Bataks people.
Year 1915
D. W. Griffith's controversial film The Birth of a Nation premieres in Los Angeles.
Year 1922
United States President Warren G. Harding introduces the first radio set in the White House.
Year 1924
Capital punishment: The first state execution in the United States by gas chamber takes place in Nevada.
Year 1942
World War II: Dutch Colonial Army General Destruction Unit (AVC, Algemene Vernielings Corps) burns Banjarmasin, South Borneo to avoid Japanese capture.
Year 1945
World War II: The United Kingdom and Canada commence Operation Veritable to occupy the west bank of the Rhine.
Year 1946
The first portion of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, the first serious challenge to the popularity of the Authorized King James Version, is published.
Year 1955
The Government of Sindh, Pakistan, abolishes the Jagirdari system in the province. One million acres (4000 km2) of land thus acquired is to be distributed among the landless peasants.
Year 1960
Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom issues an Order-in-Council, stating that she and her family would be known as the House of Windsor, and that her descendants will take the name Mountbatten-Windsor.
Year 1962
Charonne massacre. Nine trade unionists are killed by French police at the instigation of Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon, then chief of the Paris Prefecture of Police.
Year 1963
Travel, financial and commercial transactions by United States citizens to Cuba are made illegal by the John F. Kennedy administration.
Year 1963
The regime of Prime Minister of Iraq, Brigadier General Abd al-Karim Qasim is overthrown by the Ba'ath Party.
Year 1965
Eastern Air Lines Flight 663 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean and explodes, killing everyone aboard.
Year 1968
American civil rights movement: The Orangeburg massacre: An attack on black students from South Carolina State University who are protesting racial segregation at the town's only bowling alley, leaves three or four dead in Orangeburg, South Carolina.
Year 1971
South Vietnamese ground troops launch an incursion into Laos to try to cut off the Ho Chi Minh trail and stop communist infiltration.
Year 1974
After 84 days in space, the crew of Skylab 4, the last crew to visit American space station Skylab, returns to Earth.
Year 1978
Proceedings of the United States Senate are broadcast on radio for the first time.
Year 1981
Twenty-one association football spectators are trampled to death at Karaiskakis Stadium in Neo Faliro, Greece, after a football match between Olympiacos F.C. and AEK Athens F.C.
Year 1983
The Melbourne dust storm hits Australia's second largest city. The result of the worst drought on record and a day of severe weather conditions, a 320 metres (1,050 ft) deep dust cloud envelops the city, turning day to night.
Year 1986
Hinton train collision: Twenty-three people are killed when a VIA Rail passenger train collides with a 118-car Canadian National freight train near the town of Hinton, Alberta, west of Edmonton. It is the worst rail accident in Canada until the Lac-Mégantic, Quebec derailment in 2013 which killed forty-seven people.
Year 1989
Independent Air Flight 1851 strikes Pico Alto mountain while on approach to Santa Maria Airport (Azores) killing all 144 passengers on board.
Year 1993
General Motors sues NBC after Dateline NBC allegedly rigs two crashes intended to demonstrate that some GM pickups can easily catch fire if hit in certain places. NBC settles the lawsuit the next day.
Year 2005
Sri Lankan Civil War: Sri Lankan Tamil politician and former MP A. Chandranehru dies of injuries sustained in an ambush the previous day.
Year 2010
A freak storm in the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan triggers a series of at least 36 avalanches, burying over two miles of road, killing at least 172 people and trapping over 2,000 travelers.
Year 2013
A blizzard disrupts transportation and leaves hundreds of thousands of people without electricity in the Northeastern United States and parts of Canada.
Year 2014
A hotel fire in Medina, Saudi Arabia kills 15 Egyptian pilgrims with 130 others injured.