February 9
Revision as of 17:16, 9 February 2008 by OmniMediaGroup (talk | contribs) (* 1825: The U.S. House of Representatives, exercising this power for the second (and so far last) time in U.S. history, chose John Quincy Adams as president of the United States; the election went to)
February 9 in history:
- 1986: Halley's comet made its most recent closest pass of the Sun; its elliptical orbit brings it back to Earth's vicinity every 76 years or so.
- 1950: In a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, Joseph McCarthy, a relatively unknown senator from Wisconsin, declared that he had a list of 250 known Communists in the U.S. State Department; now with a national audience, he took the same charges to the Senate floor later in the month, and the Tydings Committee was appointed to investigate (it dismissed the charges).
- 1898: Deliberately fanning U.S. public opinion during the buildup to the Spanish-American War, the Hearst newspapers published a purloined private letter in which the Spanish minister to the United States sharply criticized President William McKinley.
- 1825: The U.S. House of Representatives, exercising this power for the second (and so far last) time in U.S. history, chose John Quincy Adams as president of the United States; the election went to the House because none of the five candidates had secured a majority of electoral votes, but Andrew Jackson had won more than Adams.