On Feb. 16, 1862, the Civil War Battle of Fort Donelson in Tennessee ended with the surrender of some 12,000 Confederate soldiers. Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s victory earned him the moniker “Unconditional Surrender Grant.”

In 1923, the burial chamber of King Tutankhamen’s recently unearthed tomb was unsealed in Egypt by English archaeologist Howard Carter.

In 1959, Fidel Castro was sworn in as premier of Cuba, six weeks after dictator Fulgencio Batista fled the country into exile.

In 2018, in an indictment, special counsel Robert Mueller charged 13 Russians and three Russian companies of an elaborate plot to disrupt the 2016 U.S. presidential election via a social media trolling campaign.

In 2024, Russia’s prison agency announced that opposition leader Alexei Navalny had died in an Arctic penal colony.