Today is Saturday, Feb. 13, the 44th day of 2021. There are 321 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Feb. 13, 2016, Justice Antonin Scalia, the influential conservative and most provocative member of the U.S. Supreme Court, was found dead at a private residence in the Big Bend area of West Texas; he was 79. During a Republican presidential debate that evening in South Carolina, the candidates, with the exception of Jeb Bush, insisted that President Barack Obama should let his successor nominate Scalia’s replacement.

On this date:

In 1633, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome for trial before the Inquisition, accused of defending Copernican theory that the Earth revolved around the sun instead of the other way around. In 1861, Abraham Lincoln was officially declared winner of the 1860 presidential election as electors cast their ballots.

In 1965, during the Vietnam War, President Lyndon B. Johnson authorized an extended bombing campaign against the North Vietnamese.

In 2000, Charles Schulz’s final “Peanuts” strip ran in Sunday newspapers, the day after the cartoonist died in his sleep at his California home at age 77.

In 2002, John Walker Lindh pleaded not guilty in federal court in Alexandria, Va., to conspiring to kill Americans and supporting the Taliban and terrorist organizations. (Lindh later pleaded guilty to lesser offenses and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He was released in September 2019 after serving 17 years of that sentence.)

In 2013, beginning a long farewell to his flock, a weary Pope Benedict XVI celebrated his final public Mass as pontiff, presiding over Ash Wednesday services inside St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican.

Ten years ago: Egypt’s military leaders dissolved parliament, suspended the constitution and promised elections in moves cautiously welcomed by protesters who’d helped topple President Hosni Mubarak. Lady Antebellum was the big winner at the Grammys with five awards, including record and song of the year for the band’s yearning crossover ballad “Need You Now,” but rockers Arcade Fire won the biggest prize, album of the year, for their highly acclaimed “The Suburbs.”

Five years ago: On his first full day in Mexico, Pope Francis issued a tough-love message to the country’s political and church elites, telling them they had a duty to provide their people with security, justice and courageous pastoral care.