This Week In History
Let’s learn about our past!
1887: The United States enacted the Dawes General Allotment Act, which called for dividing Native American reservation land into individual allotments; the legislation was sponsored by Senator Henry L. Dawes.
2/8
2/9
1996: German physicist Peter Armbruster led a team that successfully produced element 112, a superheavy transuranium element that was later named copernicium.
1990: The Galileo spacecraft made a close pass by Venus while traveling toward Jupiter.
2/10
2/11
1990: After spending 27 years incarcerated, Nelson Mandela was freed and then entered into talks with President F. W. de Klerk that ultimately brought an end to apartheid in South Africa.
2/12
1818: Even though the final defeat of Spanish forces did not occur until April at the Battle of Maipú, Chile officially proclaimed its independence from Spain on this date in 1818, marking the first anniversary of its victory at Chacabuco.
1960: France carried out its first nuclear test, detonating an atomic bomb known as *Gerboise Bleue* in the Sahara Desert of Algeria, making France the world’s fourth nuclear power at the time.
2/13
Annually: Valentine’s Day is observed today in honor of St. Valentine, a Roman priest and physician who was martyred around 270 ce, and the custom of exchanging messages of love comes from a legend that he signed a farewell note to his jailer’s daughter, whom he loved, “from your Valentine.”