1841: Upper Canada and Lower Canada were proclaimed united under an Act of Union passed by the British Parliament.
1962: The Soviet Union exchanged captured American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers for Rudolf Abel, a Soviet spy held by the United States.
1967: The 25th Amendment to the Constitution, dealing with presidential disability and succession, was ratified as Minnesota and Nevada adopted it.
1968: U.S. figure skater Peggy Fleming won America's only gold medal of the Winter Olympic Games in Grenoble, France.
1989: Ron Brown was elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee, becoming the first black to head a major U.S. political party.
2005: North Korea boasted publicly for the first time that it possessed nuclear weapons.
2009: U.S. and Russian communication satellites collided in the first-ever crash of its kind in orbit, shooting out a pair of massive debris clouds.
