Today in history—February 9

1409: Constantine XI, the Byzantine emperor whose head will adorn a pike on the gate after the Muslims conquer Constantinople and extinguish the last remnant of the Roman empire, is born.

1748: Luther Martin is born. He will serve as attorney general of Maryland for 28 years, and as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention will refuse to sign the final document.

1825: The U.S. House of Representatives elects John Quincy Adams president of the United States after no candidate gets a majority of the popular vote.

1875: After 20 years of work and the loss of 200 lives, the Boston & Maine Railroad’s Hoosic Tunnel opens in the Berkshires. It is the first in which the compressed-air drill and nitroglycerine are used for excavation.

1883: Mining engineer and industrialist William E. Dodge (Phelps, Dodge & Co.) dies at New York City.

1883: Real estate developer Garnet Carter, the inventor of miniature golf, is born. He opens his first course at the Fairyland Club at Lookout Mountain, Georgia, in 1926. By 1930 there will be 25,000 in the U.S.

1893: Congress creates the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the second least important court in the country for contracts professors.

1902: Dr. Eugène-Louis Doyen of Paris performs the first successful operation separating Siamese twins, but one dies.

1909: David Dean Rusk, whose career will prove that being a law professor is easier than being Secretary of State, is born at Lickskillet, Georgia.

1994: President Clinton appoints Guido Calabresi to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

1996: Scientists at the Gesellschaft für schwerionenforschung facility at Darmstadt, Germany, create element 112, which they name “ununbium.” It has little practical use, since it always disintegrates within one-thousandth of a second.