After 19 years of imprisonment, Mary, Queen of Scots is beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle in England for her complicity in a plot to murder Queen Elizabeth I.

Union General Ambrose Burnside scores a major victory when his troops capture Roanoke Island in North Carolina. It was one of the first major Union victories of the Civil War and gave the Yankees control of the mouth of Albemarle Sound, allowing them to threaten the Rebel capital of Richmond, Virginia, from the south.

Following the Russian rejection of a Japanese plan to divide Manchuria and Korea into spheres of influence, Japan launches a surprise naval attack against Port Arthur, a Russian naval base in China. The Russian fleet was decimated.

On February 8, 1915, D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, a landmark film in the history of cinema, premieres at Clune’s Auditorium in Los Angeles. The film was America’s first feature-length motion picture and a box-office smash, and during its unprecedented three hours Griffith popularized countless filmmaking techniques that remain central to the art today. However, because of its explicit racism, Birth of a Nation is also regarded as one of the most offensive films ever made.

On February 8, 1936, at Philadelphia’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel, University of Chicago halfback Jay Berwanger, the first Heisman Trophy winner, is picked No. 1 overall by the Philadelphia Eagles in the first NFL draft. His rights are traded to the Chicago Bears, but Berwanger never plays for them or any other NFL team.

Cardinal József Mindszenty, the highest Catholic official in Hungary, is convicted of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment by the Communist People’s Court. Outraged observers in Western Europe and the United States condemned both the trial and Mindszenty’s conviction as “perversions” and “lynchings.”

An idea floated by a Hollywood business leader in 1953 comes to fruition on February 8, 1960, when construction begins on the Hollywood Walk of Fame—today one of the Los Angeles area’s main tourist attractions.

Gunmen steal the champion Irish race horse Shergar from a stud farm owned by the Aga Khan in County Kildare, Ireland. The five-year-old thoroughbred stallion, named European horse of the year in 1981, was worth $13.5 million and commanded stud fees of approximately $100,000.

Born Charles Westover in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1934, the singer-songwriter known as Del Shannon dies by suicide on February 8, 1990. In a period when the American pop charts were dominated by cookie-cutter teen idols and novelty acts, he stood out as an all-too-rare example of an American pop star whose work reflected real originality.

Years later, he would play a therapist counseling Adam Sandler in the black comedy Anger Management (2003), but on February 8, 1994, it was the Oscar-winning actor Jack Nicholson who let his anger get out of control.