What happened on February 6 ?

46 BC ? Julius Caesar defeats the combined army of Pompeian followers and Numidians under Metellus Scipio and Juba at Thapsus.

337 - Julius I is elected pope.

1685 - James II of England and VII of Scotland becomes King upon the death of his brother Charles II.

1778 - American Revolutionary War: In Paris the Treaty of Alliance and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce are signed by the United States and France signaling official recognition of the new republic.

1788 - Massachusetts becomes the sixth state to ratify the United States Constitution.

1806 - Royal Navy victory off Santo Domingo - Action of 6 February 1806.

1815 - New Jersey grants the first American railroad charter to a John Stevens.

1817 - The Argentinian San Martín crosses the Andes with an army in order to liberate Chile from spanish rule.

1819 - Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles founds Singapore.

1820 - The first 86 African American immigrants sponsored by the American Colonization Society started a settlement in present-day Liberia.

1840 - Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, founding document of New Zealand.

1843 - The first minstrel show in the United States The Virginia Minstrels opens (Bowery Amphitheatre in New York City).

1862 - American Civil War: Ulysses S. Grant gives the United States its first victory of the war, by capturing Fort Henry, Tennessee, known as the Battle of Fort Henry.

1899 - Spanish-American War: The Treaty of Paris (1898), a peace treaty between the United States and Spain is ratified by the United States Senate.

1900 - The international arbitration court at The Hague is created when the Netherlands' Senate ratifies an 1899 peace conference decree.

1922 - Achille Ratti becomes Pope Pius XI.

1922 - The Washington Naval Treaty was signed in Washington, DC, limiting the naval armaments of United States, Britain, Japan, France, and Italy.

1933 - The 20th Amendment to the United States Constitution goes into effect.

1934 - February 6, 1934 political crisis in France. The far right leagues rally in front of the Palais Bourbon, an attempted coup against the Third Republic.

1936 - 1936 Winter Olympic Games open in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.

1951 - The Broker, a Pennsylvania Railroad passenger train derails near Woodbridge Township, New Jersey. The accident kills 85 people and injures over 500 more. The wreck is one of the worst rail disasters in American history.

1952 - Elizabeth II becomes Queen upon the death of her father George VI. At the exact moment of succession, she was in a treehouse at the Treetops Hotel in Kenya.

1958 - Bobby Charlton survived the Munich air disaster in Germany, which killed eight of his teammates with Manchester United F.C..

1959 - Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments filed the first patent for an integrated circuit.

1959 - At Cape Canaveral, Florida, the first successful test firing of a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile is accomplished.

1968 - 1968 Winter Olympic Games open in Grenoble, France.

1978 - The Blizzard of 1978, one of the worst Nor'easters in New England history, hit the region, with sustained winds of 65 mph and snowfall of 4" an hour.

1985 - Steve Wozniak leaves Apple Computer.

1996 - A Turkish Airlines Boeing 757 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Dominican Republic killing 189.

1998 - Washington National Airport is renamed Ronald Reagan National Airport.

2001 - Don Felder is fired from the Eagles

2004 - In Russia, a suicide-attack in a Moscow metro kills 40 commuters, and injures a hundred and twenty-nine. The blast is blamed on Chechen separatist groups.

2005 - Jerrick De Leon, born 13 weeks premature, becomes the world's smallest infant to survive an open-heart procedure called an arterial switch.

2006 - The Conservative Party of Canada becomes a minority government in Canada's Parliament, replacing the Liberals after 13 years in power.