1950  In Wheeling, West Virginia, Senator Joe McCarthy charges the State Department is riddled with communist.McCarthy’s speech sets the stage for his controversial campaign to root out communist in the U.S. government. "Traitors are not gentlemen, my good friends. They don't understand being treated like gentlemen! "1943 – During World War II , allied forces defeat the Japanese in the months-long battle in Guadalcanal in the Southwest Pacific.

1984 The Soviet Union’s leader Yuri Andropov dies in Moscow at the age of 69.Andropov spent less than 15 months in power after succeeding Leonid Brezhnev in the Kremlin. And In 1944 Alice Walker, author of the Color Purple and other novels about African American culture is born in Georgia. Today in history, February 9th, Tim Maguire, the Associate Press.