By The Associated Press

Today in History

Today is Tuesday, Feb. 5, the 36th day of 2019. There are 329 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Feb. 5, 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed increasing the number of U.S. Supreme Court justices; the proposal, which failed in Congress, drew accusations that Roosevelt was attempting to “pack” the nation’s highest court.

On this date:

In 1917, Mexico’s present constitution was adopted by the Constitutional Convention in Santiago de Queretaro. The U.S. Congress passed, over President Woodrow Wilson’s veto, an act severely curtailing Asian immigration.

In 1918, during World War I, the Cunard liner SS Tuscania, which was transporting about 2,000 American troops to Europe, was torpedoed by a German U-boat in the Irish Sea with the loss of more than 200 people.

In 1958, Gamal Abdel Nasser was formally nominated to become the first president of the new United Arab Republic (a union of Egypt and Syria which lasted until 1961).

In 1971, Apollo 14 astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell stepped onto the surface of the moon in the first of two lunar excursions.

In 1983, former Nazi Gestapo official Klaus Barbie, expelled from Bolivia, was brought to Lyon (lee-OHN’), France, to stand trial. (He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison — he died in 1991.)

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