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Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a 2011 role-playing video game developed and published by Square Enix. XIII-2 is a direct sequel to the 2009 role-playing game Final Fantasy XIII and part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis subseries. Development of the game began in early 2010 and involved many of the key designers from the previous game. It includes modified features from the previous game, including fast-paced combat and a customizable "Paradigm" system. The development team wanted to improve on the gameplay of Final Fantasy XIII, while making the story's tone more mysterious and darker than the previous game. The new game's plot features heavy use of time travel, allowing players to jump between different time periods in the same location. The game was first released on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and later ported to Microsoft Windows, iOS, and Android. Final Fantasy XIII-2 received generally positive reviews from critics. The game was the fifth-best selling game of 2011 in Japan, and was followed by a sequel, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII. (Full article...)

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Toronto Eaton Centre

... that Eberhard Zeidler envisaged Toronto Eaton Centre (pictured), which opened 45 years ago today, to be an "interior street" instead of simply a shopping mall?
... that New York City's Broadhurst, Plymouth, Shubert, and Booth Theatres were all designed with curved corners facing Broadway?
... that Holger Mühlbauer, who currently serves as the managing director of the German IT security association TeleTrusT, originally trained as a metalworker?
... that the annual street painting festival in downtown Lake Worth Beach, Florida, attracts approximately 100,000 people?
... that Swiss archaeologist Marguerite Gautier-van Berchem created a service for the International Committee of the Red Cross to help prisoners of war from the French colonies during World War II?
... that a 1971 format change and firing of three Black disc jockeys contributed to the Mississippi radio station WSWG losing its broadcast license?
... that British barrister Jonathan Cooper was "at the forefront of efforts to decriminalise homosexuality around the world"?
... that the act of trying a burger at Slutty Vegan for the first time is known as being "sluttified"?

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Cyclone Batsirai

Cyclone Batsirai (satellite image shown) makes landfall in Madagascar, displacing more than 112,000 people and leaving at least 92 others dead.
Indian playback singer and composer Lata Mangeshkar dies at the age of 92.
The Winter Olympics open in Beijing, China.

On this day

February 10: Saint Scholastica's Day; National Memorial Day of the Exiles and Foibe in Italy (1947)

Roy Lichtenstein

1712 – Huilliches in Chile's Chiloé Archipelago rose up against Spanish encomenderos as vengeance for perceived injustices.
1763 – Britain, France, and Spain signed the Treaty of Paris to end the Seven Years' War, significantly reducing the size of the French colonial empire while at the same time marking the beginning of an extensive period of British dominance outside of Europe.
1906 – The Royal Navy battleship HMS Dreadnought was launched, representing such a marked advance in naval technology that her name came to be associated with an entire generation of battleships.
1962 – The first solo exhibition by Roy Lichtenstein (pictured) opened, and it included Look Mickey, which featured his first employment of Ben Day dots, speech balloons, and comic imagery sourcing.

Robert Garran (b. 1867)
Árpád Göncz (b. 1922)
Lilly King (b. 1997)

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The Tales of Hoffmann is an opéra fantastique by the French composer Jacques Offenbach. The French libretto was written by Jules Barbier, based on three short stories by E. T. A. Hoffmann, the opera's protagonist. It was Offenbach's final work; he died in October 1880, four months before it premiered on 10 February 1881 at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. This illustration of the premiere, attributed to Pierre-Auguste Lamy, depicts the opera's prologue (or possibly epilogue).

Illustration credit: Pierre-Auguste Lamy (attributed); restored by Adam Cuerden

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