📜 This Day in History

February 9

• 1234Caizhou, the capital of the Jin dynasty, was captured by the Mongol Empire and their Song allies, bringing an end to Jurchen rule.
• 1861Jefferson Davis was named the provisional president of the Confederate States of America.
• 1923Stanley Bruce became prime minister of Australia as leader of the country's first Coalition government.
• 1964As Beatlemania swept the United States, the Beatles made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show before a record-breaking audience, beginning a musical phenomenon known as the British Invasion.
• 1996Researchers at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany, first created the chemical element copernicium.
• 2020Japanese figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu won the Four Continents Championships to become the only man to complete a Super Slam.

Born on this day

• 1737Thomas Paine, English-American philosopher, author, and activist (died 1809)
• 1773William Henry Harrison, American general and politician, 9th President of the United States (died 1841)
• 1940J. M. Coetzee, South African-Australian novelist, essayist, and linguist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1944Alice Walker, American novelist, short story writer, and poet