Today in History.....February 16

On this day in …

* 1804, Lt. Stephen Decatur led a successful raid into Tripoli Harbor to burn the U.S. Navy frigate Philadelphia, which had fallen into the hands of pirates

* 1862, during the Civil War, some 14,000 Confederate soldiers surrendered at Fort Donelson, Tenn. (Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's victory earned him the nickname "Unconditional Surrender Grant.")

* 1918, Lithuania proclaimed its independence

* 1923, the burial chamber of King Tutankhamen's recently unearthed tomb was unsealed in Egypt

* 1945, American troops landed on the island of Corregidor in the Philippines during World War II

* 1959, Fidel Castro became premier of Cuba after the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista

* 1968, the nation's first 911 emergency telephone system was inaugurated, in Haleyville, Ala.

* 1996, world chess champion Garry Kasparov won for the second time against IBM supercomputer "Deep Blue" in the fifth game of their match in Philadelphia (Kasparov had drawn twice and lost once)

* 2001, the United States and Britain staged air strikes against radar stations and air defense command centers in Iraq. ALSO:
President Bush met with Mexican President Vicente Fox on the first foreign trip of Bush's presidency

* 2005, Israel's Knesset (parliament) gave the final approval to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to surrender the Gaza Strip and four West Bank suburbs. ALSO: The NHL canceled what was left of its decimated schedule after a round of last-gasp negotiations failed to resolve differences over a salary cap --- the flash-point issue that led to a lockout.