Feb 12, when human embryo was first cloned

Today is Saturday, February 12, the forty third day of 2005.
There are 322 days left in the year.

Highlights in history on this date:

1554 - Lady Jane Grey, who claimed the throne of England for nine days, is beheaded after being charged with treason.
1577 - Don John of Austria, new Governor of the Netherlands, issues edict to settle civil war.

1610 - France's King Henry IV signs alliance with German Protestant Union.
1689 - Declaration of Rights in England, in which William and Mary are proclaimed King and Queen for life.

1733 - James Oglethorpe and a group of unemployed and newly freed British debtors land in Savannah, Georgia, as part of England's colonial expansion plan.
1736 - Nadir Shah becomes King of Persia.

1870 - Women in the Utah Territory gain the right to vote.
1885 - German East Africa Company is chartered.
1895 - Japanese forces score impressive victory at Wei-hai-wei in China.

1912 - Pu Yi, the last emperor of China, abdicates, ending more than 2,000 years of imperial rule.
1953 - Britain and Egypt agree to end Anglo-Egyptian rule of Sudan and take steps toward granting self-rule.
1970 - Israeli air raid on scrap metal plant in Egypt kills 70 civilians.
1973 -The first release of American prisoners of war from the Vietnam conflict takes place after American and Vietnamese representatives meet in Paris and sign an agreement in January.
1974 - Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Soviet Nobel Prize winner, is arrested at his Moscow apartment and is exiled the following day.
1990 - At least 18 die in ethnic rioting in Dushanbe, capital of Soviet republic of Tajikistan.
1994 - Norwegian Edvard Munch's painting The Scream is stolen from a museum in Oslo. It is recovered three months later in a police sting operation.
1995 - Zairian soldiers begin to police Rwandan refugee camps in Zaire as part of a UN peacekeeping operation.
1996 - More than 300 cars pile up on a fog-shrouded highway in northern Italy, killing at least 11 people and injuring hundreds. 
 1999 - U.S. President Bill Clinton is acquitted by the Senate in an impeachment trial stemming from the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

2000 - "Peanuts" creator Charles Schulz dies at 77 following a battle with colon cancer, just as the last original cartoon of his half-century career was being published in newspapers worldwide.
2002 - Pakistani authorities arrest Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British-born Islamic militant, as the prime suspect in the January kidnapping of Daniel Pearl, a U.S. reporter for the Wall Street Journal newspaper.
2003 - At least 30 people died and 160 others were injured in riots in La Paz, Bolivia, as striking police officers and protesters clashed with the military.
2004 - Researchers at South Korea's Seoul National University become the first to successfully clone a human embryo, and then cull from it master stem cells that many doctors consider key to one day creating customized cures for diabetes, Parkinson's and other diseases.

Today's Birthdays:
Charles Darwin, English scientist (1809-1882)
Abraham Lincoln, U.S. president (1809-1865)
Franco Zeffirelli, Italian director (1923--)
Michael Ironside, Canadian actor (1950--)
Christina Ricci, U.S. actress (1980--)