This Day In History for February 29

1940, "Gone with the Wind" won eight Academy Awards, including best picture of 1939.

On this date:
In 1504, Christopher Columbus, stranded in Jamaica during his fourth voyage to the West, used a correctly predicted lunar eclipse to frighten hostile natives into providing food for his crew.

In 1792, composer Gioacchino Antonio Rossini was born in Pesaro, Italy.

In 1796, President Washington proclaimed Jay's Treaty, which settled some outstanding differences with Great Britain, in effect.

In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed a seven-member commission to facilitate completion of the Panama Canal.

In 1956, President Eisenhower announced he would seek a second term of office.

In 1960, the first Playboy Club, featuring waitresses clad in "bunny" outfits, opened in Chicago. (Hugh Hefner closed the corporate-owned clubs in 1986, calling them "passe.")

In 1968, the discovery of the first "pulsar," a star which emits regular radio waves, was announced by Dr. Jocelyn Bell Burnell at Cambridge, England.

In 1968, President Johnson's National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (also known as the Kerner Commission) warned that racism was causing America to move "toward two societies, one black, one white -- separate and unequal."

In 1980, former Israeli foreign minister Yigal Allon, who had played an important role in the Jewish state's fight for independence, died at age 61.

In 1984, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau announced he was stepping down after more than 15 years in power.