Today is Friday, Feb. 26, the 57th day of 2016. There are 309 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Feb. 26, 1916, actor-comedian Jackie Gleason was born in Brooklyn, New York.

On this date:

In 1616, astronomer Galileo Galilei met with a Roman Inquisition official, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, who ordered him to abandon the “heretical” concept of heliocentrism, which held that the earth revolved around the sun, instead of the other way around.

In 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from exile on the Island of Elba and headed back to France in a bid to regain power.

In 1904, the United States and Panama proclaimed a treaty under which the U.S. agreed to undertake efforts to build a ship canal across the Panama isthmus.