On February 1,1960, four black college students began a sit-in protest at a lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., where they'd been refused service.

On February 2, 1943, the remainder of Nazi forces from the Battle of Stalingrad surrendered in a major victory for the Soviets in World War II.

On February 3, 1917, the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, which had announced a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare.

On February 4, 1974, the Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapped newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst in Berkeley, Calif.

On February 5, 1937, President Roosevelt proposed increasing the number of Supreme Court justices; critics charged Roosevelt was attempting to "pack" the court.

On February 6, 1952, Britain's King George VI died; his daughter, Elizabeth II, succeeded him.

On February 7, 1984, space shuttle astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart went on the first untethered spacewalk.

On February 7, 1986, the Haitian ousted Jean Calude Duvalier after Papa and Baby Doc governed Haiti for 28 years. He was transported with his family by American warplane to France.

On February 8, 1996, in a ceremony at the Library of Congress, President Clinton signed legislation revamping the telecommunications industry, saying it would "bring the future to our doorstep."

On February 9, 1943, the World War II battle of Guadalcanal in the southwest Pacific ended with an American victory over Japanese forces.

On February 10,1962, the Soviet Union exchanged captured American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers for Rudolph Ivanovich Abel, a Soviet spy held by the United States.

On February 11, 1945, President Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin signed the Yalta Agreement during World War II.

On February 12, 1973, the first release of American prisoners of war from the Vietnam conflict took place.

On February 13, 1935, a jury in Flemington, N.J., found Bruno Richard Hauptmann guilty of first-degree murder in the kidnap-death of the infant son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh. Hauptmann was later executed.

On February 14, 1929, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre took place in a Chicago garage as seven rivals of Al Capone's gang were gunned down.

On February 15, 1898, the U.S. battleship Maine blew up in Havana Harbor, killing 260 crewmembers and escalating tensions with Spain.

On February 16,1923, the burial chamber of King Tutankhamen's recently unearthed tomb was unsealed in Egypt.

On February 17, 1972, President Nixon departed on his historic trip to China.

On February 18, 1861, Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president of the Confederate States of America in Montgomery, Ala.

On February 19, 1945, during World War II, some 30,000 U.S. Marines landed on the Western Pacific island of Iwo Jima, where they encountered ferocious resistance from Japanese forces. The Americans took control of the strategically important island after a month-long battle.

On February 20, 1962, astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth as he flew aboard the Friendship 7 Mercury capsule.

On February 21, 1965, former Black Muslim leader Malcolm X was shot and killed by assassins identified as Black Muslims as he was about to address a rally in New York City; he was 39.

On February 22,1980, at Lake Placid, N.Y., in a stunning upset, the United States Olympic hockey team defeated the Soviets 4-to-3.

On February 23, 1954, in Pittsburgh, the first mass inoculation of children against polio with the Salk vaccine began.

On February 24,1868, the U.S. House of Representatives impeached President Johnson following his attempted dismissal of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton; the Senate later acquitted Johnson.

On February 25, 1870, Hiram R. Revels, R-Miss., became the first black member of the U.S. Senate as he was sworn in to serve out the unexpired term of Jefferson Davis.

On February 26, 1993, a bomb exploded in the garage of New York's World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000 others.

On February 27, 1991, President Bush declared that "Kuwait is liberated, Iraq's army is defeated," and announced that the allies would suspend combat operations at midnight.

On February 28, 1993, a gun battle erupted near Waco, Texas, when Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents tried to serve warrants on the Branch Davidians; four agents and six Davidians were killed as a 51-day standoff began.

On February 29, 1968, President Johnson's National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (also known as the Kerner Commission) warned that racism was causing America to move ''toward two societies, one black, one white -- separate and unequal.''