Actor Robert Mitchum, center right, and actress Lila Leeds, left, are sentenced to 60 days in jail on charges of conspiracy to possess marijuana cigarettes in Los Angeles, February 9, 1949.

Actor Robert Mitchum was released from a Los Angeles County prison farm
after spending the final week of his two-month sentence for marijuana
possession there.

In the fall of 1948, Mitchum, the star of classics such as Cape Fear and Night
of the Hunter, was smoking a joint at a small party in the Laurel Canyon area
of Los Angeles when detectives burst in and arrested him. Mitchum reportedly
said at the time, “Well, this is the bitter end of everything—my career, my
marriage, everything.” In fact, it wasn’t really that bad. Mitchum was separated 
from his wife Dorothy at the time, but the two reconciled when she returned to
support him through the scandal and the public didn’t mind much either;
 Rachel and the Stranger, the first movie released after his troubles,
was a box-office hit.

1948

Robert Charles Durman Mitchum (August 6, 1917 – July 1, 1997)

A lifelong heavy smoker, Mitchum died on July 1, 1997, in Santa Barbara,
California, due to complications of lung cancer and emphysema. He was
about five weeks shy of his 80th birthday.

BRIAN THOMAS

Former professional basketball player Michael Jeffrey Jordan is 57 years
old today. He played 15 seasons in the NBA, winning six championships
with the Chicago Bulls. He is considered by many fans of the sport the
greatest basketball player of all time. Known by his initials, MJ is the
principal owner of the Charlotte Hornets basketball team. 

On this day in 1931, one of the most famous gangsters of all time Al Capone
is sentenced to eleven years in Federal prison for tax evasion. He is also
fined $80,000. This is the beginning of the end for Capone and his criminal
empire, that in the 1920s and 1930s, had virtually run the city of Chicago
and its environs.

    
Cell 181 in Alcatraz where Capone was imprisoned. 
       
    

Alphonse Gabriel "Al" Capone (January 17, 1899 – January 25, 1947)       
        .

Capone was released early from Alcatraz in 1939 for good behavior,
after spending his final year in a prison hospital, suffering from
syphilis. He died in 1947 at age 48 at his home in Palm Island,
Florida.

Geronimo (Mescalero-Chiricahua) “the one who yawns”
(June 1829 – February 17, 1909)

 Apache chief Geronimo and the Indians he led, surrendered in Skeleton
Canyon in Arizona to U.S. Gen. Nelson Miles. For 30 years, the mighty
Native American warrior had battled to protect his tribe’s homeland;
however, by 1886 the Apaches were exhausted and outnumbered. Gen.
Miles accepted Geronimo’s surrender, making him the last Indian warrior
to formally give in to U.S. forces and signaling the end of the Indian Wars
in the Southwest. Geronimo died of pneumonia on February 17, 1909, as
a prisoner of the United States at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

Geronimo’s grave at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

CARLATA BRADLEY

On this day in 1990, Nelson Mandela was freed by South Africa after
27 years in captivity.

A bronze statue depicting former South African president Nelson Mandela as he walked to freedom outside the Groot Drakenstein
prison in Paarl.

On this day in 1945, during World War II, the Yalta Agreement was
signed by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt (center) British Prime 
Minister Winston Churchill (left) and Soviet leader Josef Stalin. 


The leaders agreed to demand Germany’s unconditional surrender 
and began plans for a post-war world. Most of the agreements were 
initially kept secret, but the revelations of the conference particulars became controversial after Soviet-American wartime cooperation degenerated into the Cold War.