By The Associated Press

Today in History

Today is Monday, Feb. 10, the 41st day of 2020. There are 325 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Feb. 10, 1967, the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, dealing with presidential disability and succession, was ratified as Minnesota and Nevada adopted it.

On this date:

In 1840, Britain’s Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg (KOHí-borg) and Gotha (GAHí-thuh).

In 1936, Nazi Germany’s Reichstag passed a law investing the Gestapo secret police with absolute authority, exempt from any legal review.

In 1949, Arthur Miller’s play “Death of a Salesman” opened at Broadway’s Morosco Theater with Lee J. Cobb as Willy Loman.

In 1959, a major tornado tore through the St. Louis area, killing 21 people and causing heavy damage.

In 1962, the Soviet Union exchanged captured American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers for Rudolf Abel, a Soviet spy held by the United States.

In 1968, U.S. figure skater Peggy Fleming, 19, won America’s only gold medal of the Winter Olympic Games in Grenoble, France, in the ladies’ singles event. (Gabriele Seyfert of East Germany earned the silver medal, Hana Maskova of Czechoslovakia, the bronze.)

In 1992, boxer Mike Tyson was convicted in Indianapolis of raping Desiree Washington, a Miss Black America contestant. (Tyson served three years in prison.) ìRootsî author Alex Haley died in Seattle at age 70.

In 1997, a civil jury heaped 25 (M) million dollars in punitive damages on O.J. Simpson for the slayings of his ex-wife and her friend, on top of eight-point-five (M) million dollars in compensatory damages awarded earlier.

In 2001, the space shuttle Atlantis’ astronauts installed the $1.4 billion Destiny laboratory on the international space station. Former New York City Mayor Abraham D. Beame died at age 94.

In 2004, the White House, trying to end doubts about President George W. Bush’s Vietnam-era military service, released documents it said proved he had met his requirements in the Texas Air National Guard. Democrat John Kerry won the Virginia and Tennessee primaries.

In 2005, Britain’s Prince Charles announced he would marry his divorced lover, Camilla Parker Bowles, in April. North Korea boasted publicly for the first time that it possessed nuclear weapons.

In 2006, Dr. Norman Shumway, who performed the first successful U.S. heart transplant, died in Palo Alto, California, at age 83.

Ten years ago: Shuttle Endeavour arrived to a warm welcome at the International Space Station, delivering a new room and observation deck. Former Congressman Charlie Wilson, a Texas Democrat whose funding of Afghanistan’s resistance to the Soviet Union was chronicled in the movie and book “Charlie Wilson’s War,” died in Dallas at age 76.

Five years ago: The parents of Kayla Jean Mueller and U.S. officials confirmed the death of the 26-year-old aid worker who had been held captive by the Islamic State group