Today is Friday, Feb. 19, the 50th day of 2010. There are 315 days left in the year.

On this date:

In 1881, Kansas prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages.

In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorised the military to relocate and intern US residents, including native-born Americans, of Japanese ancestry. Japanese warplanes raided the Australian city of Darwin; at least 243 people were killed.

In 1945, during World War II, some 30,000 US Marines began landing on Iwo Jima, where they commenced a successful month-long battle to seize control of the island from Japanese forces.

In 1959, an agreement was signed by Britain, Turkey and Greece granting Cyprus its independence.

In 1999, President Bill Clinton posthumously pardoned Henry O. Flipper, the first black graduate of West Point, whose military career had been tarnished by a racially motivated discharge.

In 2008, an ailing Fidel Castro resigned the Cuban presidency after nearly a half-century in power; his brother Raul was later named to succeed him.

Thought for Today: "There is, I think, nothing in the world more futile than the attempt to find out how a task should be done when one has not yet decided what the task is." — Alexander Meiklejohn, American educator (1872-1964).