TODAY IN HISTORY

FEBRUARY 11

1990:After more than 27 years behind bars, South African antiapartheid leader Nelson Mandela is released from Victor-Verster Prison on the orders of President F.W. de Klerk. Four years later, Mandela will be elected president of South Africa.

1858: Fourteen-year-old Marie-Bernarde Soubirous reports seeing a vision of the Virgin Mary in a grotto near Lourdes, France; it is the first of 18 similar apparitions she will report seeing over the next five months. Although Soubirous will initially be met with skepticism from both religious and civil authorities, she will ultimately be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church in 1933 as St. Bernadette. Close to 5 million pilgrims each year visit St. Bernadette's grotto, where the waters are believed to possess healing powers.

1958: Ruth Carol Taylor becomes the nation's first African American air stewardess, completing a Mohawk Airlines flight from Ithaca, N.Y., to New York City.