E-Paper
Feb 20 - Vajpayee travelled by bus to Lahore
On this day in 1986, the Mir station was launched.
Today is Sunday, February 20, the fifty first day of 2005.
There are 314 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1792 - U.S. President George Washington signs an act creating the U.S. Post Office.
1809 - Saragossa, Spain, is captured by French forces after a bloody siege; the US Supreme Court rules the power of the federal government is greater than that of any individual state.
1831 - German Protestant princes form alliance with Sweden's King Gustavus II, setting the stage for the Swedish entry into the Thirty Years' War.
1833 - Russian ships enter Bosphorus on way to Constantinople to aid Turkey against Egypt.
1928 - Britain recognizes independence of Trans-Jordan.
1942 - Japanese invade island of Bali in Dutch East Indies during World War II.
1962 - Astronaut John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit Earth on the Friendship 7 Mercury capsule.
1964 - Morocco and Algeria sign accord to end border conflict which resulted in troop clashes.
1967 - Indonesia's President Sukarno surrenders all executive power to General Suharto, keeping only the title of President.
1975 - Greek Cypriot government calls on United Nations to fix deadline for withdrawal of 40,000 Turkish troops from that island.
1986 - Russia launches the Mir space station.
1988 - Rainstorm triggers floods and mudslides in Rio de Janeiro that kill 65 people and leave up to 100 elderly hospital patients missing and feared dead.
1991 - Slovenia's legislators vote overwhelmingly to initiate secession from Yugoslavia; at least 19 people die as a Chilean airliner bound for Antarctica crashes into a freezing channel.
1995 - On the eve of peace talks in Northern Ireland, police clash with militants in the streets of Belfast, and seven Irish Republican Army members are arrested.
1996 - Gen. Hussein Kamel, son-in-law of President Saddam Hussein, returns to Iraq after having defected to Jordan. He is killed with his relatives a few days later.
1999 - Atal Bihari Vajpayee becomes the first Indian prime minister to go to Pakistan in 10 years when he rides the first commercial bus service between the two countries in 51 years.
2001 - Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe lashes out at international journalists and foreign governments, threatening to ban them from future elections. The warning follows a weekend crackdown on foreign journalists, in which two newsmen were ordered deported.
2002 - A fire breaks out on a crowded train traveling from Cairo to Luxor in southern Egypt, killing 373 people and injuring 60 in the worst train disaster in Egyptian history.
2003 - A fire sparked by heavy-metal band Great White's pyrotechnic display kills 98 people and injures 187 others at a nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island.
Today's Birthdays:
Sir William Cornwallis, English admiral (1744-1819)
Honore Daumier, French artist (1808-1879)
Lucien Pissarro, French artist (1863-1944)
Robert Altman, U.S. director (1925--)
Sidney Poitier, U.S. actor (1927--)
Peter Strauss, U.S. actor (1947--)
Cindy Crawford, U.S. model (1966--)
