Today:
1270: The Grand Duchy of Lithuania achieved a major victory against the Livonian Order at the Battle of Karuse, fought on the frozen surface of the Baltic Sea.
1804: During the First Barbary War, Lieutenant Stephen Decatur led a daring raid into Tripoli Harbor to burn the captured frigate USS Philadelphia, preventing it from being used by pirates.
1862: In a major turning point of the American Civil War, Confederate forces surrendered Fort Donelson, Tennessee, to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, earning him the nickname Unconditional Surrender Grant.
1918: The Council of Lithuania signed the Act of Independence, declaring the restoration of an independent State of Lithuania governed by democratic principles.
1923: Archaeologist Howard Carter unsealed the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, revealing the most intact royal Egyptian tomb ever discovered.
1937: Dr. Wallace Carothers, a chemist at DuPont, received a patent for nylon, a synthetic polymer that would eventually revolutionize the textile and manufacturing industries.
1948: Astronomer Gerard Kuiper discovered Miranda, the fifth and innermost of the large moons of Uranus, using the McDonald Observatory in Texas.
1959: Fidel Castro was sworn in as the Prime Minister of Cuba after leading the revolution that overthrew the government of Fulgencio Batista.