Today is Monday, Feb. 29, the 60th day of 2016. There are 306 days left in the year. This is Leap Day.

Today’s birthdays: Actress Michele Morgan is 96. Former astronaut Jack Lousma is 80. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople is 76. Legal affairs blogger Eugene Volokh is 48. Actor Antonio Sabato Jr. is 44. Poet, musician and hip-hop artist Saul Williams is 44. Rapper Ja Rule is 40. Singer-musician Mark Foster (Foster the People) is 32.

In 1504, Christopher Columbus, stranded in Jamaica during his fourth voyage to the West, used a correctly predicted lunar eclipse to frighten hostile natives into providing food.

In 1796, President George Washington proclaimed Jay’s Treaty, which settled some outstanding differences with Britain, in effect.

In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed a commission to facilitate completion of the Panama Canal.

In 1940, ‘‘Gone with the Wind’’ won eight Academy Awards, including best picture of 1939; Hattie McDaniel won for best supporting actress, the first black performer so honored.

In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (also known as the Kerner Commission) warned that racism was causing America to move ‘‘toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.’’

In 2012, violent weather packing tornadoes continued to ravage the Midwest and South, resulting in some 15 deaths. Davy Jones, 66, the heartthrob singer of The Monkees died in Stuart, Fla.