Shimla, Feb.
2002
Princess Margaret—who, as King George VI’s second daughter and the younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II, struggled to balance her independent spirit with her duties as a member of Britain’s royal family—died in London.
1996
German physicist Peter Armbruster and his team of scientists synthesized chemical element 112, a heavy transuranium element that was later named copernicium.
1984
Soviet Premier Yury Andropov died, 15 months after succeeding Leonid Brezhnev, and was replaced by Konstantin Chernenko.
1943
The Battle of Guadalcanal ended with an Allied victory over Japan.
1940
South African novelist, critic, and translator J.M. Coetzee, who won the 2003 Nobel Prize for Literature, was born.
1796
Qianlong, the fourth emperor of the Qing dynasty, abdicated and was succeeded by Jiaqing.
