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History of the Day for:
February 9
- 1773: William Henry Harrison, the ninth U.S. president, was born. He was the first president to die in office, after only one month (in 1841).
- 1825: The House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams president after no candidate received a majority of electoral votes.
- 1861: Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens were elected president and vice?president of the Confederate States of America, respectively.
- 1863: The fire extinguisher was patented by Alanson Crane.
- 1870: The U.S. Weather Bureau was established by President Grant who signed a bill establishing the Federal Meteorological Service.
- 1881: Russian novelist Feodor Dostoevski, whose works included "Crime and Punishment" and "The Brothers Karamazov," died.
- 1942: Daylight-saving "war time" went into effect in the United States, with clocks turned one hour forward.
- 1943: U.S. troops reached Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands, and discovered that the Japanese had evacuated.
- 1950: U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy claimed he had evidence that there were individuals in the State Department who were card-carrying members of the Communist Party.
- 1964: The Beatles made their first live American television appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and were watched by a record?setting 73.7 million people.
- 1969: The first test flight of the Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet took place.
- 1971: Satchel Paige became the first Negro League player elected to the Baseball Hall Of Fame.
- 1984: Soviet leader Yuri Andropov died. A former KGB chief, he succeeded Leonid Brezhnev in late 1982 and was in power for less than 15 months.
- 1997: The Fox cartoon series "The Simpsons" aired its 167th episode of the series in its eighth season, becoming the longest-running animated series in cartoon history.