On Feb. 9, 1964: The Beatles made their first live American television appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show," broadcast from New York on CBS.
In 1825: the House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams president after no candidate received a majority of electoral votes.
In 1861: Jefferson Davis was elected provisional president of the Confederate States of America at a congress held in Montgomery, Alabama.
In 1942: the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff held its first formal meeting to coordinate military strategy during World War II. Daylight-saving "War Time" went into effect in the United States, with clocks moved one hour forward. The SS Normandie, a former French liner being refitted for the U.S. Navy at a New York pier, caught fire (it capsized early the next morning).
In 1943: the World War II battle of Guadalcanal in the southwest Pacific ended with an Allied victory over Japanese forces.
In 1950: in a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., charged the State Department was riddled with Communists.
In 1964: the G.I. Joe action figure was introduced at the American International Toy Fair in New York.
In 1971: a magnitude 6.6 earthquake in California's San Fernando Valley claimed 65 lives. The crew of Apollo 14 returned to Earth after man's third landing on the moon.
In 1984: Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov, 69, died 15 months after succeeding Leonid Brezhnev; he was followed by Konstantin U. Chernenko.
In 2002: Britain's Princess Margaret, sister of Queen Elizabeth II, died in London at age 71.
In 2005: Hewlett-Packard Co. chief executive Carly Fiorina was forced out by board members, ending her nearly six-year reign.
In 2017: a federal appeals court refused to reinstate President Donald Trump's ban on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim nations, unanimously rejecting the administration's claim of presidential authority, questioning its motives and concluding that the order was unlikely to survive legal challenges.