According to the 8th-century chronicles Nihon Shoki and Kojiki, Emperor Jimmu, descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu, ascended the throne on this date in 660 BC, founding the Japanese imperial line. Modern Japan commemorates the date as National Foundation Day, a holiday revived in 1966 after being abolished following World War II for its association with State Shinto and imperial nationalism.
In the winter of 800, Charlemagne held court at his palace in Aachen, consolidating Frankish authority across Western Europe before departing for Rome, where Pope Leo III would crown him Emperor on Christmas Day. The Aachen court, with its palace chapel modeled on Byzantine designs, served as the administrative and cultural hub of the Carolingian Renaissance, a revival of learning, law, and architecture that reshaped medieval Europe.
Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio. Largely self-taught after leaving school at age seven, he went on to establish the first industrial research laboratory at Menlo Park, New Jersey, and develop the phonograph, the practical incandescent light bulb, and early motion picture technology, fundamentally reshaping daily life and industry.
On February 11, 1958, the Hashemite Kingdoms of Jordan and Iraq announced the formation of the Arab Federation, a political union between the two cousin-monarchs, King Hussein and King Faisal II, intended as a counterweight to the Egyptian-Syrian union declared days earlier under Gamal Abdel Nasser. The federation dissolved just six months later, in July 1958, when a military coup in Baghdad violently overthrew and killed Faisal II and much of the Iraqi royal family.
Apollo 14 astronauts Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell, and Stuart Roosa returned to Earth on February 9-11, 1971, splashing down in the South Pacific after a nine-day mission that included the third crewed Moon landing, at the Fra Mauro highlands originally targeted for the aborted Apollo 13. Shepard, America's first man in space a decade earlier, became the fifth person to walk on the Moon and famously hit two golf balls across the lunar surface.
On February 11, 1990, in Tokyo, journeyman boxer James 'Buster' Douglas knocked out undefeated heavyweight champion Mike Tyson in the tenth round, ending Tyson's reign and pulling off odds of 42 to 1, one of the most shocking upsets in modern sports history. Douglas had trained through personal turmoil, including his mother's death weeks before the fight, which he dedicated to her memory.
After 27 years of imprisonment, Nelson Mandela walked out of Victor Verster Prison near Paarl, South Africa, hand in hand with his wife Winnie, into a wall of cameras and cheering supporters. President F.W. de Klerk's decision to release him, following secret negotiations and mounting international sanctions, signaled the beginning of the end for apartheid. Mandela's calm, unbroken bearing after nearly three decades behind bars became one of the century's defining images.