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The Overman Committee was a special subcommittee of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary chaired by North Carolina Democrat Lee Slater Overman. Between September 1918 and June 1919, it investigated German and Bolshevik elements in the United States. It was an early forerunner of the better known House Un-American Activities Committee, and represented the first congressional committee investigation into communism. The Committee was originally tasked with investigating pro-German sentiments in the American liquor industry. After World War I ended in November 1918 and the German threat lessened, it turned its attention to communist Bolshevism. Bolshevism had appeared as a threat during the Red Scare of 1919–20 after the Russian Revolution in 1917 saw the Bolsheviks take power in Russia. The Committee's hearings into Bolshevik propaganda, conducted from February 11 to March 10, 1919, helped foster an image of communism as a threat to America. The Committee's final report was released in June 1919. It reported on German propaganda, Bolshevism, and other "un-American activities" in the United States and on likely effects of communism's implementation in the United States. It described German, but not communist, propaganda efforts. (more...)

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February 11: Fat Thursday (2010); National Foundation Day in Japan

• 660 BC – According to tradition, Emperor Jimmu founded Japan and established his capital in Yamato.
• 1858 – Fourteen year-old peasant girl Bernadette Soubirous reported the first of eighteen Marian apparitions in Lourdes, France, resulting in the town becoming a major site for pilgrimages by Catholics.
• 1979 – Iranian Revolution: The Pahlavi dynasty effectively collapsed when the military declared itself "neutral" after rebel troops overwhelmed forces loyal to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in armed street fighting.
• 1990 – Anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela (pictured), a political prisoner for 27 years, was released from Victor Verster Prison near Paarl, South Africa.
• 1991 – The international organization Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization was established to represent the interests of indigenous peoples, minorities, occupied nations, and other areas which lack international representation.

More anniversaries: February 10 – February 11 – February 12