February 8 in History

February 8 is the 39th day of the year. There are 327 days remaining until the end of the year.

• 1587 – Mary, Queen of Scots was executed on suspicion of being involved in a plot to murder Queen Elizabeth I.
• 1692 – A doctor in Salem Village, Massachusetts Bay Colony suggested that two girls may be suffering from bewitchment, leading to the Salem witch trials.
• 1865 – Delaware voters rejected the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution and voted to continue slavery.
• 1887 – The Dawes Act authorized the President of the United States to survey Native American tribal land and divide it into allotments for individual Native Americans.
• 1910 – The Boy Scouts of America was incorporated.
• 1918 – The “Stars and Stripes” newspaper was published for the first time.
• 1922 – President Warren G. Harding introduced the first radio in the White House.
• 1924 – The first state execution in a US gas chamber took place in Nevada.
• 1946 – The first portion of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, the first serious challenge to the popularity of the Authorized King James Version, was published.
• 1952 – Elizabeth II was proclaimed Queen of the United Kingdom.
• 1960 – Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom issued an Order-in-Council stating she and her family would be known as the House of Windsor and her descendants would take the name Mountbatten-Windsor.
• 1978 – Proceedings of the US Senate were broadcast on radio for the first time.