Caroline Mark Hibbs (born 1861)

In 1861, in the year that Caroline Mark Hibbs was born, on February 11th the U.S. House voted unanimously to guarantee noninterference with slavery in any state, allowing states to decide whether they would allow slavery or not.

In 1908, a mysterious Siberian explosion leveled over 770 square miles of forest. There were no human casualties. Explanations of the explosion have included a comet, meteorite, natural atomic explosion, or a crashed UFO. Although it is called an impact event - the largest one in recorded earth history - there is no crater and it is widely thought that the explosion was caused by a meteor exploding 3 to 6 miles above the earth.

In 1958, on January 31st, Explorer I, the United States' answer to Sputnik I (and 2,) was launched. America had entered the Space Race. The first spacecraft to detect the Van Allen radiation belt, it remained in orbit until 1970.

In 1969, one hundred countries, along with the United States and the Soviet Union signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty (NPT). It called for stopping the spread of nuclear weapons, the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and the goal of nuclear disarmament.

In 1988, on December 21st, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie Scotland. The explosion killed all 259 people on board and another 11 on the ground. The flight had left Heathrow Airport in London less than an hour before, on its way to New York. After an exhaustive (and long) investigation it came to be believed that two individuals from Libya had planted the bomb.