On This Day: Yugoslav President Milosevic's war crimes trial begins

Feb. 12 (UPI) -- On this date in history:

In 1541, Santiago, Chile, was founded.

In 1733, the American colony of Georgia was founded by James Oglethorpe.

In 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded by Moorfield Storey, Mary White Ovington and W.E.B. Du Bois.

In 1914, a dedication ceremony was held and the first stone of the Lincoln Memorial was laid. It took eight years to complete the monument honoring the 16th president.

In 1973, 116 prisoners of war were flown from Hanoi to the Philippines in the first release of U.S. POWs in North Vietnam.

File Photo by Pete Marovich/UPI

In 1988, two Soviet warships deliberately bumped two U.S. Navy ships in international waters in the Black Sea, indicating continued tensions between the two parties despite the Cold War nearing its end.

In 1993, about 5,000 demonstrators marched on Atlanta's Capitol to protest the Confederate symbol on the Georgia state flag.

In 1999, the U.S. Senate acquitted U.S. President Bill Clinton of impeachment charges.

In 2001, a NASA spacecraft landed on the asteroid Eros.

In 2002, a Russian-built Tupelov-154 aircraft crashed shortly after takeoff near the western city of Khorramabad, Iran, killing all 117 people aboard.

In 2002, former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic went on trial at The Hague, Netherlands, on charges of genocide and war crimes in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. He died four years later before the conclusion of the trial.

In 2004, South Korean scientists announced they had created the world's first mature cloned human embryos.

In 2008, General Motors, which offered buyouts to its 74,000 unionized employees, reported a loss of $38.7 billion for 2007, the largest ever for an automaker.

File Photo by John F. Martin/UPI

In 2008, U.S. military officials announced capital charges against six al-Qaida members for their roles in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The admitted mastermind, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and the others were detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In 2009, a Continental airlines turboprop commuter plane crashed into a house near Buffalo, N.Y., killing 50 people, including one person in the house.

In 2016, Pope Francis met Patriarch Kirill, the first meeting between the pontiff of the Catholic Church and the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, in Cuba.

In 2019, a federal jury in Brooklyn found Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman guilty on murder conspiracy, drug-trafficking and money-laundering charges. He received life in prison in July 2019.

File Photo by Mario Guzman/EPA