On Feb. 12, 1999, the Senate voted to acquit President Bill Clinton of perjury and obstruction of justice.

In 1809, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was born in a log cabin in Kentucky.

In 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded.

In 1912, Pu Yi, the last emperor of China, abdicated, marking the end of the Qing Dynasty.

In 1924, George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” premiered in New York.

In 1959, the redesigned Lincoln penny — with an image of the Lincoln Memorial replacing two ears of wheat on the reverse side — went into circulation.

In 1963, a Northwest Orient Airlines Boeing 720 broke up during severe turbulence and crashed into the Florida Everglades, killing all 43 people aboard.

In 1980, the FBI announced that about $5,800 of the $200,000 ransom paid to hijacker “D.B. Cooper” before he parachuted from a Northwest Orient jetliner in 1971 had been found by an 8-year-old boy on a riverbank of the Columbia River in Washington state.

In 1993, in a crime that shocked and outraged Britons, two 10-year-old boys lured James Bulger, 2, from his mother at a mall near Liverpool, England, and beat him to death.

In 2000, Charles M. Schulz, creator of the “Peanuts” comic strip, died in Santa Rosa, Calif. at age 77.

In 2008, General Motors reported losing $38.7 billion in 2007, a record annual loss in automotive history, and offered buyouts to 74,000 hourly workers.

Today’s Birthdays: Movie director Franco Zeffirelli is 96. Movie director Costa-Gavras is 86. Basketball Hall of Famer Bill Russell is 85. Author Judy Blume is 81. Actor-talk show host Arsenio Hall is 63. Actress Christina Ricci is 39. NFL quarterback Robert Griffin III is 29.

Thought for Today: “Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way.” — Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865).