Feb 16 - when Castro became Cuba's premier

Today is Wednesday, February 16, the forty seventh day of 2005.
There are 318 days left in the year.

Highlights in history on this date:

1808 - France invades Spain.
1862 - Gen. Ulysses Grant demands the Confederate forces' unconditional surrender during America's Civil War. Some 14,000 troops surrender.
1871 - Franco-Prussian War ends in defeat for France.
1873 - Republic is proclaimed in Spain, but only lasts two years.

1918 - England's port Dover is bombarded by German submarine in World War I.
1923 - The burial chamber of King Tutankhamen's recently unearthed tomb is unsealed in Egypt.
1933 - Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia, fearing German threats, reorganize Little Entente with permanent council.
1936 - Left-wing Popular Front wins elections in Spain. Reaction from the military later leads to Spanish Civil War.
1942 - German submarines fire upon oil refineries in Aruba, Dutch West Indies, during World War II.
1945 - American troops land on the island of Corregidor in the Philippines during World War II and begin massive air raids on Tokyo.
1959 - Fidel Castro becomes premier of Cuba after the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista.
1968 - United States' first 911 emergency telephone system is inaugurated, in Haleyville, Alabama.
1970 - Moscow says Arab nations will ge`necessary support" from Soviet Union in their conflict with Israel.
1977 - Anglican Archbishop of Uganda and two government ministers are arrested in alleged plot to overthrow Ugandan President Idi Amin.
1992 - OPEC nations agree to slash oil production by 1 million barrels a day.
1994 - An earthquake kills at least 134 people and seriously injures 550 more in Indonesia.
1995 - Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin agrees to gradually lift the closure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and permit 15,000 Palestinian workers to return to their jobs in Israel.
1997 - Rebel leader Laurent Kabila, after a plea from the United Nations, agrees to delay an attack on Zaire's largest refugee camp. The camp in Tingi-Tingi is attacked two weeks later, scattering 170,000 Rwandans.
1998 - A China Airlines Airbus A-300 jetliner returning from Bali crashes short of Taipei's airport, killing all 203 passengers and crew and seven people on the ground.

2001 - Finance ministers of the world's biggest industrial economies prepare for their first meeting in Palermo, Italy with U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who believes the United States should intervene less in economic crises.
2003 - A record-breaking snowstorm sweeps onto the eastern U.S. seaboard, blanketing many areas in more than two feet (0.6 m) of snow and leading to at least 59 deaths.
2004 - Kuwait's Parliament decides to investigate charges that a Kuwaiti supplier to a subsidiary of U.S. conglomerate Halliburton charged too much for fuel deliveries to Iraq after the U.S.-led war toppled Saddam Hussein.

Today's Birthdays:
Nicolaus Copernicus, Polish astronomer, (1473-1543)
G.M. Travelyan, British historian (1876-1964)
John Schlesinger, English film director (1926--)
Kim Jong Il, North Korean leader (1942--)
James Ingram, US singer (1956--)
Ice-T, US actor/rapper (1958--)
Andy Taylor, guitarist for pop group Duran Duran (1961--)