What happened today
1955
Famous birthdays
1833
Get history's greatest tales
Subscribe to our HistoryNet Now! newsletter for a blast from the past each week in your inbox.
more events on February 11
-
1990
South African political leader Nelson Mandela is released from prison in Paarl, South Africa, after serving more than 27 years of a life sentence.
-
1975
Mrs. Margaret Thatcher becomes the first woman to lead the British Conservative Party.
-
1974
Communist-led rebels shower artillery fire into a crowded area of Phnom Pehn, killing 139 and injuring 46 others.
-
1966
Vice President Hubert Humphrey begins a tour of Vietnam.
-
1965
President Lyndon Johnson orders air strikes against targets in North Vietnam, in retaliation for guerrilla attacks on the American military in South Vietnam.
-
1964
Cambodian Prince Sihanouk blames the United States for a South Vietnamese air raid on a village in his country.
-
1962
Poet and novelist Sylvia Plath commits suicide in London at age 30.
-
1959
Iran turns down Soviet aid in favor of a U.S. proposal for aid.
-
1955
Nationalist Chinese complete the evacuation of the Tachen Islands.
-
1954
A 75,000-watt light bulb is lit at the Rockefeller Center in New York, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Thomas Edison’s first light bulb.
-
1953
Walt Disney’s film Peter Pan premieres.
-
1951
U.N. forces push north across the 38th parallel for the second time in the Korean War.
-
1945
The meeting of President Franklin Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Marshal Joseph Stalin in Yalta, adjourns.
-
1942
The German battleships Gneisenau, Scharnhorst and Prinz Eugen begin their famed channel dash from the French port of Brest. Their journey takes them through the English Channel on their way back to Germany.
-
1939
The Negrin government returns to Madrid, Spain.