4 years ago today, the Taliban and representatives from the United States signed the Doha Agreement to end hostilities in Afghanistan, 18 years after the US had invaded the South Asian country. The treaty came after months and months of backchannel negotiations between the Pashtuns and the Afghan-American diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad, a special representative appointed for the task. READ a bit more about the end of decades of war… (2020)
The Afghan national government declined to attend the Doha negotiation, because President Ashraf Ghani and his fractious administration was fearful that if the US military left the country, they wouldn’t be able to maintain power in Kabul, and so boycotted any talks with the Taliban.
When President Biden entered the Oval Office 11 months later, he announced he would honor the commitment his country had made under the previous administration, especially because the US had already spent over $1 trillion trying to build and train the Afghan Security Forces into a modern military to defend Kabul, and three-quarters of the American electorate wanted nothing more to do with the country.
More Good News on this Day in History:
- Composer Antonio Rossini was born in Pesaro, Italy (1792)
- Finland initiates Winter War peace negotiations (1940)
- Tony Robbins, the motivational speaker, was born 64 years ago today (1960)
- South Korea withdrew 11,000 of its 48,000 troops from Vietnam (1972)
- Gordie Howe made NHL history with the Hartford Whalers when he scored his 800th NHL goal (1980)
Today is Leap Day. Anyone with a birthday on February 29th, gets only one-quarter of the actual celebrations enjoyed by the rest of us, so we give you permission every Leap Year to act four times as happy—and one-fourth as old, too. Happy Birthday!
84 years ago today, for her performance in Gone with the Wind, Hattie McDaniel became the first African-American to win an Academy Award for acting. Born to two former slaves in Kansas as the youngest of 13 children, she not only became an actress of stage and screen, but a professional singer-songwriter and comedian. Hattie was barred from the film’s world premiere because of segregation laws in the South at the Atlanta theater—and when her co-star, the great actor Clark Gable, refused to attend because of the color ban, McDaniel urged him to go.
It was a quarter century before another black actor won the golden statuette: first in 1963 by Sidney Poitier (in Lilies of the Field), then in 1982 by Louis Gossett Jr. (in An Officer and a Gentleman), then in 2001 by Halle Berry (Monster’s Ball). WATCH her speech, accepting the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress at the 12th Academy Awards… (1940)