On this day in history...

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February 3:


1160: Emperor Frederick Barbarossa attacked the Italian city of Crema, using prisoners and even children to attack, but forced their surrender.

1690: The first paper money in America was issued by the Massachusetts Bay Company.

1783: Spain recognized the independence of the United States.

1809: Birthday of Felix Mendelssohn, German composer

1811: Birthday of Horace Greely, abolitionist and founder of the New York Tribune

1874: Birthday of Gertrude Stein, American poet and novelist

1904: Colombian troops clashed with U.S. Marines in Panama. The U.S. aided the Panamanians in their rebellion against Colombia and was rewarded with exclusive rights to build a canal.

1904: Birthday of Norman Rockwell, American artist

1907: Birthday of James Michener, American novelist who wrote Tales of the South Pacific, The Source, Centennial, Texas, and many other books

1908: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Loewe v. Lawlorthat union sponsored boycotts were illegal, applying the Sherman Antitrust Act to labor as well as management.

1912: Establishment of new football rules: field shortened to 100 yards, 6 points for a touchdown instead of 5, 4 downs instead of 3, and the kickoff was moved from midfield to the 40 yard line.

1917: A German U-boat sank an American liner off the coast of Sicily. As a result, the U.S. severed diplomatic relations with Germany.

1920: The Allies demanded that 890 German military leaders stand trial for war crimes during WWI.

1924: Death of Woodrow Wilson

1927: Pres. Calvin Coolidge signed a bill creating the Federal Radio Commission to regulate the airwaves.

1944: U.S. forces captured the Marshall Islands.

1945: The Allies dropped 3,000 tons of bombs on Berlin.

1945: The Battle of Manilla began. It would last a month.

1950: Klaus Fuchs was arrested for passing nuclear secrets to the Soviets.

1962: Pres. John F. Kennedy imposed an embargo on Cuba, banning all trade with the communist nation.

1959: Plane crash killed Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson.

1966: Soviet unmanned probe Lunik 9 landed on the moon.

1971: OPEC decided to fix oil prices, mainly because they could and that is what cartels do.

1994: Pres. Bill Clinton ended the trade embargo against Vietnam.

2005: Alberto Gonzales became the first Hispanic Attorney General.
LIB,MR BEARS
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historian said:

February 3:


1160: Emperor Frederick Barbarossa attacked the Italian city of Crema, using prisoners and even children to attack, but forced their surrender.

1690: The first paper money in America was issued by the Massachusetts Bay Company.

1783: Spain recognized the independence of the United States.

1809: Birthday of Felix Mendelssohn, German composer

1811: Birthday of Horace Greely, abolitionist and founder of the New York Tribune

1874: Birthday of Gertrude Stein, American poet and novelist

1904: Colombian troops clashed with U.S. Marines in Panama. The U.S. aided the Panamanians in their rebellion against Colombia and was rewarded with exclusive rights to build a canal.

1904: Birthday of Norman Rockwell, American artist

1907: Birthday of James Michener, American novelist who wrote Tales of the South Pacific, The Source, Centennial, Texas, and many other books

1908: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Loewe v. Lawlorthat union sponsored boycotts were illegal, applying the Sherman Antitrust Act to labor as well as management.

1912: Establishment of new football rules: field shortened to 100 yards, 6 points for a touchdown instead of 5, 4 downs instead of 3, and the kickoff was moved from midfield to the 40 yard line.

1917: A German U-boat sank an American liner off the coast of Sicily. As a result, the U.S. severed diplomatic relations with Germany.

1920: The Allies demanded that 890 German military leaders stand trial for war crimes during WWI.

1924: Death of Woodrow Wilson

1927: Pres. Calvin Coolidge signed a bill creating the Federal Radio Commission to regulate the airwaves.

1944: U.S. forces captured the Marshall Islands.

1945: The Allies dropped 3,000 tons of bombs on Berlin.

1945: The Battle of Manilla began. It would last a month.

1950: Klaus Fuchs was arrested for passing nuclear secrets to the Soviets.

1962: Pres. John F. Kennedy imposed an embargo on Cuba, banning all trade with the communist nation.

1959: Plane crash killed Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson.

1966: Soviet unmanned probe Lunik 9landed on the moon.

1971: OPEC decided to fix oil prices, mainly because they could and that is what cartels do.

1994: Pres. Bill Clinton ended the trade embargo against Vietnam.

2005: Alberto Gonzales became the first Hispanic Attorney General.
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February 4:


1194: Richard I, King of England, was freed from captivity in Germany after a ransom was paid

1787: Shays's Rebellion was crushed by the Massachusetts state milita

1789: First election of a U.S. president: George Washington was unanimously chosen by the Electoral College.

1795: France abolished slavery in all her territories and granted the former slaves full citizenship.

1826: Publication of The Last of the Mohicans

1861: Establishment of the Confederacy

1899: Fighting broke out between American troops and Filipinos opening the Philippine-American War.

1902: Birthday of Charles Lindbergh, American aviator who was the first to fly non-stop across the Atlantic

1906: Birthday of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German theologian

1906: Birthday of Clyde Tombaugh, astronomer who discovered Pluto

1913: Birthday of Rosa Parks, American civil rights hero

1915: Germany declared the waters around Britain to be a war zone and warned that all ships in them would be sunk without warning.

1921: Birthday of Betty Friedan, American feminist

1932: Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt inaugurated the Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, NY.

1941: The United Services Organization (USO) was established to cater to the armed forces and defense industries.

1944: The Japanese attacked the 7thArmy in Burma.

1945: Beginning of Yalta Conference between Churchill, Roosevelt & Stalin--the touchstone of the Cold War.

1947: Birthday of Dan Quayle, American vice president under Pres. George H.W. Bush

1966: The Senate Foreign Relations Committee began televised hearings on the Vietnam War.

1974: Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army.

2004: Launch of Facebook.
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February 5:

146 B.C.: End of the Punic Warsbetween Rome & Carthage.

1631: Roger Williams, eventual founder of Rhode Island, arrived in America.

1762: Martinique, an important French base in the Caribbean, surrendered to the British.

1783: Sweden recognized American independence.

1788: Birthday of Sir Robert Peel, British Prime Minister

1837: Birthday of Dwight L. Moody, evangelist

1846: Publication of the first newspaper on the Pacific coast, the Oregon Spectator.

1900: Birthday of Adlai Stevenson, Illinois governor and twice presidential candidate (he lost to Eisenhower both times)

1917: Proclamation of the Mexican constitution

1918: The Soviets proclaimed the separation of church and state. Like everything else communists do, it was a sham.

1922: Publication of the Reader's Digestbegan in New York.

1934: Birthday of Hank Aaron, baseball legend

1937: Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt announced his "court packing" scheme. It was probably his greatest failure.

1952: New York adopted three-colored traffic lights.

1971: Two Apollo 14 astronauts walked on the moon. Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell gathered samples including a rock that weighed almost 20 lbs. Shepard also hit two golf balls with a makeshift club.

1972: Announcement that the US would sell 42 F-4 Phantom jets to Israel.

1994: White supremacist Byron De La Beckwith was convicted of the murder of Medgar Evers in 1963.

2003: Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke at the UN to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
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February 6:

1626: The French signed the Treaty of Pariswith the city of La Rochelle which preserved the religious freedoms of the Huguenots.

1756: Birthday of Aaron Burr, U.S. Vice President and later conspirtor

1778: U.S. diplomats signed treaties with France formalizing the alliance that would be central to American success in the War for Independence.

1788: Massachusetts became the 6thstate to ratify the constitution.

1891: Dalton Gang committed their first train robbery.

1895: Birthday of Herman "Babe" Ruth, baseball legend, the first to hit 60 home runs in one season

1899: End of the Spanish-American War

1900: Pres. William McKinley appointed William H. Taft commissioner to report on the Philippines.

1904: Japan severed ties with Russia after failed negotiations over Manchuria

1911: Birthday of Pres. Ronald Reagan

1916: Germany accepted full liability for the sinking of the Lusitaniaincluding the U.S. right to claim indemnity.

1922: End of the Washington Disarmament Conference

1928: A woman claiming to be Anastasia Romanov arrived in the U.S. The real Anastasia was murdered with her family by the Bolsheviks in 1918.

1929: Germany accepted the Kellogg-Briand Pactoutlawing war.

1933: The Third Reich began press censorship in Germany.

1936: Adolf Hitler opened the 4thWinter Olympicsin Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the Bavarian Alps..

1937: John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men was published.

1945: Gen. MacArthur reported the capture of Manillaand the liberation of 5,000 prisoners.

1952: George VI died and Elizabeth IIbecame Queen of England.

1963: The U.S. reported that the Soviets had removed all offensive weapons from Cuba.

1964: Paris & London agreed to build a rail tunnel underneath the English Channel. Typical of political/bureaucratic efficiency, the Chunnel opened in 1994.

1965: A Viet Cong attack on an American base in Pleikuleft 7 dead.

1977: Queen Elizabeth IImarked her Silver Jubilee.

1985: Pres. Reagan delivered a major foreign policy speech outlining his agenda in what became known as the "Reagan Doctrine."
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February 7:

1477: Birthday of Sir Thomas More, English statesman and writer, author of Utopia, beheaded for refusing to accept Henry VIII as head of the Anglican Church

1668: The Netherlands, England, and Sweden formed the Triple Alliance against Louis XIV. This was during the first of the wars of Louis XIV, fueled by his ambitions and Europe's fear of those ambitions.

1783: The siege of Gibraltar which the Spanish and French had maintained against the British there since 1779 was finally lifted.

1804: Birthday of John Deere, farm equipment manufacturer

1812: An earthquake caused a fluvial tsunami on the Mississippi River as the river flowed up river for several hours near Missouri.

1812: Birthday of Charles Dickens, British author of Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, and A Tale of Two Cities

1867: Birthday of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of Little House on the Prairie

1915: German Fieldmarshal Paul von Hindenburg attacked the Russians at the Masurian Lakes during a heavy snowstorm.

1926: First observation of black history week

1931: Amelia Earhart married George Putnam in Connecticut.

1950: The U.S. recognized the Vietnamese government of Emperor Bao Dai. The Soviets recognized the government of Ho Chi Minh.

1962: U.S. announced a full embargo of Cuba.

1963: The Mona Lisa was put on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

1964: British Invasion: The Beatles arrived in New York.

1983: Iran invaded southeastern Iraq.

1984: Navy Captain Bruce McCandless performed the first untethered spacewalk.

1992: Multiple nations from western Europe signed the Maastricht Treaty of European Union.
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February 9:

1567: Lord Darnley, the second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, was murdered in his sick-bed in a house in Edinburgh when the house exploded.

1773: Birthday of William Henry Harrison, future president (although he served only 1 month).

1799: The USS Constellation captured the French frigate Insurgentein the Caribbean during the Quasi War.

1825: The 1824 presidential election was decided by the House of Representatives. The election featured 4 candidates, in order: Andrew Jackson, John Q. Adams, Henry Clay, & William Crawford. In what would be known as the "corrupt bargain", Speaker Clay gave his electoral votes to Adams, although Jackson had won the popular vote, and Adams named Clay his new Secretary of State, in those days a path to the presidency.

1861: Jefferson Davis was elected president of the Confederacy.

1864: Gen. George A. Custer married Elizabeth Bacon in their hometown of Monroe, Michigan.

1922: The U.S. Congress established the World War Foreign Debt Commission.

1942: The largest and most luxurious ocean liner, the Normandie, caught fire while docked in NYC as it was being converted into a troop ship.

1942: Institution of Daylight Savings Time

1943: The Red Army captured Kursk 15 months after taken by the Germans. They would continue their march to Berlin.

1950: Sen. Joseph McCarthy alleged that there were communists in the State Department.

1964: The Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show.

1965: First American combat troops sent to Vietnam.
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February 10:


1620: Supporters of Marie de Medici, the queen mother in exile, were defeated by forces of the king of France.

1763: TheTreaty of Paris ended the French & Indian War (aka the Seven Years War in Europe). France relinquished all territories in the New World except New Orleans and a few islands in the Caribbean. The British were the greatest victors.

1840: Queen Victoriamarried Prince Albert.

1846: Led by Brigham Young, the Mormons began their journey across the continent that would end in Utah.

1863: Marriage of P.T. Barnum's star midgets Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren.

1890: Birthday of Boris Pasternak, Russian novelist and poet, author of Dr. Zhivago

1893: Birthday of Jimmy Durante, American comedian and film actor

1894: Birthday of Harold MacMillan, British prime minister

1898: Birthday of Bertolt Brecht, German poet and playwright, author of The Threepenny Opera

1904: Russia and Japan declared war on each other.

1915: Pres. Wilson criticized the British for deceiving the Germans by flying their merchants ships under the U.S. flag.

1927: Birthday of Mary Violet Leontyne Price, American opera singer

1941: German planes attacked Iceland.

1942: Ford Motor Co. halted production of civilian automobiles due to war production demands.

1945: American B-29s bombed the Tokyo area.

1955: Bell Aircraft displayed a fixed wing vertical takeoff airplane.

1960: Adolph Coors, the beer brewer, was kidnapped n Golden, Colorado.

1962: U.S. exchanged a Soviet spy for Francis Gary Powers, the U-2 pilot shot down over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960.

1986: The largest Mafia trial in history opened in Palermo, Italy with 474 defendants.

1992: Mike Tyson was convicted of rape.

1996: World chess champion lost to a computer.
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February 11:


660: Traditional founding of Japan by Emperor Jimmu Tenno.

1531: Henry VIII was recognized as the head of the Church of England.

1778: Voltaire returned to Paris after his exile.

1805: Sacajawea, the Shoshoni guide to the Corps of Discovery (Lewis & Cark's expedition) gave birth to a son with Meriwether Lewis serving as midwife.

1809: Robert Fulton patented the steamboat.

1815: News of the Treaty of Ghent ending the War of 1812 reached the United States. The treaty was signed in December but the Battle of New Orleans, an overwhelming U.S. victory, was fought in early January.

1847: Birthday of Thomas Alva Edison, American inventor and holder of over 1,300 patents including the incandescent lightbulb and the phonograph

1858: A French teenager, Bernadette Soubirous, claimed to have seen an apparition of the Virgin Mary in Lourdes.

1898: Birthday of Leo Szilard, physicist who played a major role in the Manhattan Project

1926: The Mexican government nationalized all church property.

1945: End of the Yalta Conference between FDR Churchill, & Stalin.

1953: Premier of the Disney film Peter Pan.

1975: Margaret Thatcher became the first woman to lead the British Conservative Party.

1990: Nelson Mandela was released from prison after 27 years.

2012: Death of Whitney Houston
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February 12:

1294: Kublai Khan, conqueror of Asia, died at the age of 80.

1554: Lady Jane Grey, queen of England for 9 days after the death of Edward VI, was beheaded.

1709: Alexander Selkirk was rescued from Juan Fernandez Island after being shipwrecked there for over 4 years. His adventures inspired Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.

1768: Birthday of Francis II, the last Holy Roman Emperor

1793: U.S. Congress passed the first fugitive slave law.

1809: Birthday of Abraham Lincoln

1809: Birthday of Charles Darwin

1817: Revolutionary leader Jose de San Martin routed Spanish forces in Chile.

1818: Chile gained their independence from Spain.

1836: Mexican General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna led his army across the Rio Grande on the way to the Alamo.

1893: Birthday of Omar Bradley, U.S. army general during WWII

1909: A small group of black and white progressives including Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Jane Addams, & W.E.B. DuBois established the NAACP to fight for civil rights in the legal and political realms. Their leadership would eventually pay off with major victories in the 1950s-60s.

1912: Abdication of the last emperor of China

1924: Premiere of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.

1931: First Japanese television broadcast, a baseball game.

1940: The Soviet Union signed a trade treaty with Nazi Germany to help them circumvent the British blockade.

1944: Wendell Wilkie announced his candidacy for president, running against Franklin D. Rosevelt who was running for his fourth term.

1949: Muslim Brotherhood leader Hassan el Banna was shot to death in Cairo.

1972: Sen. Edward Kennedy advocated amnesty for Vietnam draft dodgers.

1980: The Winter Olympics opened in Lake Placid, New York.

1990: Birthday of Robert Griffin III

1999: Pres. Bill Clinton was acquitted on two charges of impeachment. (Why did anyone think Trump's trial would end in any other manner?)

2002: Trial began at The Hague of former leader of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic on charges of genocide.
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February 13:

167: Polycarp was martyred in Asia Minor

1542: Catherine Howard, Henry VIII's 5thwife was beheaded for adultery.

1599: Birthday of Pope Alexander VII

1633: Galileoarrived in Rome to face the Inquisition.

1689: William and Mary were proclaimed joint sovereigns of England--the only time in English history the nation was ruled by two monarchs.

1689: Parliament adopted the Bill of Rights.

1692: Massacre at Glencoe: Members of the Campbell clan murdered members of the MacDonald clan for not pledging allegiance William of Orange, the new king of England. They had pledged their allegiance but this information had not been communicated to the clans.

1865: The Confederacy approved the recruitment of slaves into the Confederate Armyso long as their masters approved.

1866: First bank robbery of Jesse James.

1892: Birthday of Grant Wood, painter of American Gothic

1919: Birthday of Tennessee Ernie Ford, singer

1920: Rube Foster founded the Negro National League, the first black baseball league.

1922: Birthday of Harold "Hal" Moore, US Army lieutenant general, commander of American forces in the Battle of Ia Drang, America's first ground combat in Vietnam, co-author of a book about the battle, We Were Soldier Once And Young

1923: Birthday of Chuck Yeager, pilot who first broke the sound barrier

1933: Birthday of Kim Novak, actress

1936: The first Social Security checks were mailed.

1945: Firebombing of Dresden by British & American bombers killing tens of thousands of people.

1949: A mob burned a radio station in Ecuador after a broadcast of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds.

1965: Pres Johnson approved Operation Rolling Thunder, the sustained bombing of North Vietnam.

1984: Konstantin Chernenko became the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and therefore the new dictator of the Soviet Union. His accession followed upon the death of Yuri Andropov a few days earlier but he would live only another year and be replaced by Mikhail Gorbachev.
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February 14:

270: Valentine was executed in Rome.

1349: 2,000 Jews were burned at the stake in Strasbourg, Germany.

1400: The deposed Richard II was murdered at Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire.

1549: Maximilian II, brother of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, was recognized as the future king of Bohemia.

1779: Capt. James Cook was murdered in Hawaii.

1817: Birthday of Frederick Douglass, runaway slave, abolitionist, civil rights activist, author

1848: Pres. James K. Polk was the first president to be photographed, by famed photographer Matthew Brady.

1859: Oregon was admitted as the 33rdstate.

1859: Birthday of George Washington Gale Ferris, inventor of the Ferris Wheel

1876: Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell both applied for patents for the telephone.

1884: Theodore Roosevelt's mother and wife died in the same house.

1894: Birthday of Jack Benny, comedian, radio & television personality, violinist

1912: Arizona became the 48thstate.

1920: The League of Women Voters was established in Chicago in anticipation of the ratification of the 19th amendment.

1924: Thomas Watson established International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).

1929: St. Valentine's Day Massacre: 4 gangsters dressed as policemen entered rival gangster Bugs Moran's HQ in Chicago and murdered 7 of his henchmen.

1943: Battle of Kasserine Pass: America's first major battle in WWII ended in defeat at the hands of Gen. Erwin Rommel, the "Desert Fox."

1945: The siege of Budapestended with a Soviet victory and only 785 German & Hungarian soldiers escaping.

1989: Iran'sAyatollah Khomeini called on Muslims to kill Salmon Rushdie for his book Satanic Verses.

1989: TheSandinistas in Nicaragua agreed to allow free elections. They would lose those elections.

2018: Crazed teenager murdered 17 people at Parkland High School in Florida.
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February 15:


1564: Birthday of Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer and mathematician

1710: Birthday of Louis XV, King of France

1797: Birthday of Henry Steinway, piano maker

1804: New Jersey was the last northern state to abolish slavery.

1820: Birthday of Susan B. Anthony, suffragette, political activist

1862: Gen. Ulysses S. Grant launched a major assault on Confederate forces at Fort Donelson, Tennessee.

1869: Charges of treason against Confederate president Jefferson Davis were dropped.

1898: USS Maine exploded in Havana Harbor. This would lead to a US declaration of war, an overwhelming victory in the Spanish-American War, and the US annexing several Spanish colonies (Puerto Rico, Guam, Wake Island, the Philippines, etc).

1900: During the Boer War, the British threatened to use native soldiers.

1903: Sale of first Teddy Bear.

1905: Birthday of Harold Arlen, composer of "Stormy Weather" & "It's Only a Paper Moon"

1933: Attempted assassination of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt.

1942: Japanese captured Singapore.

1944: American bombers attacked the Abbey of Monte Cassino because the Germans were using it as an observation post in Central Italy.

1950: Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung signed a mutual defense treaty in Moscow.

1965: China adopted the maple leaf flag.
whitetrash
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historian said:

February 15:



1933: Attempted assassination of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt.
.


The former days of swift justice in America. Assassin Giuseppe Zangara missed and struck Chicago mayor Anton Cermak instead. Cermak died March 6; Zangara was tried, convicted, and executed on March 20.
historian
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Unfortunately, that swift justice was likely the result of his being an Italian immigrant and a radical. Still, it was justice.
historian
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February 16:


1620: Birthday of Frederick William, founder of Brandenburg-Prussia

1804: During the First Barbary War, Lt. Stephen Decatur led a daring mission in Tripoli to destroy the Philadelphia, captured in October 1803.

1838: Birthday of Henry Adams, American historian descended from two presidents

1862: Ulysses S. Grant's forces captured Fort Donelson in Tennessee but Nathan Bedford Forrest escaped.

1865: Columbia, S.C. surrendered to federal troops.

1894: John Wesley Hardin was pardoned after 15 years in prison for murder.

1904: Birthday of George F. Kennan, American diplomat & historian, creator of the Cold War policy of containment

1923: Archaeologist Howard Carter opened the tomb ofTutankhamento reveal the treasures therein.

1934: Thousands of socialists battled communists at Madison Square Garden.

1945: American paratroopers landed on Corregidor as part of a campaign to liberate the Philippines.

1962: Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique was published.

1978: China & Japan signed a trade agreement, a major move since the two countries normalized relations in 1972.

1984: Bill Johnson was the first American to win Olympic gold in downhill skiing.
LIB,MR BEARS
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1934: seems an odd time of year for the DNC to meet.
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historian
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February 17:


1598: Boris Godunov was elected czar to succeed his brother-in-law, Fydor.

1801: Thomas Jefferson was elected the third president of the U.S. This was the first peaceful transfer of power from one party to the opposition. Because Jefferson and his running mate, Aaron Burr, were tied with the same number of electoral votes, the election was decided by the House of Representatives.

1864: The Confederate submarine Hunleysank the USS Housatonicin Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.

1865: Gen. William T. Sherman's army sacked Columbia, S.C.

1902: Birthday of Marian Anderson, American opera singer

1904: Premiere of Madame Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini.


1908: Birthday of Walter Lanier "Red" Barber, baseball announcer for the Cincinnati Reds, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees

1909: Chief Geronimo of the Apache died of pneumonia at the age of 80 while in captivity at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

1938: The first color television was demonstrated in London.

1945: Gen. MacArthur's forces landed on Corregidor at the entrance to Manilla Bay in the Philippines

1947: Voice of America began first radio broadcasts to the Soviet Union.

1955: Britain announced that it had the technology to construct hydrogen bombs.

1963: Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev visited the Berlin Wall.

1963: Birthday of Michael Jordan, basketball player for the Chicago Bulls

1972: The Volkswagen Beetle became the world's best-selling car.

1979: China invaded Vietnam
Fat Daddy
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Geronimo's Cadillac

historian
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February 18:


1478: George, the Duke of Clarence, who had opposed his brother Edward IV, was murdered in the Tower of London

1516: Birthday of Queen Mary I, aka "Bloody Mary"

1688: Quakers in Germantown, Pennsylvania adopted the first formal antislavery measure in America.

1813: Czar Alexander I led his army into Warsaw.

1861: Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as the president of the Confederacy.

1861: Victor Emmanuel II became the first King of Italy.

1885: Publication of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

1907: 600,000 tons of grain were sent to Russia for famine relief.

1929: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences announced the first winners of their awards.

1930: Discovery of Pluto, 9th planet although it's status has been demoted.

1943: The Gestapo arrested members of the White Rose resistance group in Munich Hans School and his sister Sophie. They would later be executed for speaking out against the Nazis.

1945: U.S. Marines stormed the beaches of Iwo Jima.

1954: East and West Berlin dropped propaganda leaflets on each other.

1962: Robert F. Kennedy said that U.S. troops would remain in Vietnam until communism was defeated.

1982: Mexico devalued the peso by 30% to prevent a collapse.

2001: Dale Earnhardt was called in a crash during the Daytona 500.

2003: Arsonist started a fire in a subway in South Korea.

2010: Wikileaks published the first documents obtained from Bradley Manning.
historian
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February 19:

1473: Birthday of Nicolaus Copernicus

1683: Birthday of Philip V, King of Spain

1807: Aaron Burr was arrested for treason.

1817: Birthday of William III, King of the Netherlands

1847: TheDonner party survivors were rescued.

1878: Thomas Edison patented the phonograph.

1915: British and French warships began their attacks and Turkish forts at the mouth of the Dardanelles in an effort to seize the straights. The campaign would end in failure at Gallipoli.

1925: Pres. Calvin Coolidge proposed phasing out the inheritance tax (aka the death tax).

1942: Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Executive Order authorizing the forceful removal of Japanese-Americans from their homes into internment camps.

1945: U.S. Marines invaded the Japanese island of Iwo Jima.
historian
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February 20:


1513: Death of Pope Julius II, known as the "warrior pope". His tomb was sculpted by Michelangelo.

1726: Birthday of William Prescott, hero of the Battle of Bunker Hill during the War for Independence

1792: Pres. George Washington signed legislation organizing the U.S. Postal Service as a Cabinet department led by the Postmaster General and guaranteeing that newspapers could be delivered inexpensively.

1831: Polish revolutionaries defeated the Russians in the Battle of Grochow.

1902: Birthday of Ansel Adams, American photographer

1906: Russian forces seized large portions of Manchuria.

1915: Pres. Woodrow Wilson opened the Panama-Pacific Expo in San Francisco to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal.

1918: The Red Army seized Kiev, the capital of Ukraine.

1919: Habibullah Khan, the leader of Afghanistan who had kept his country neutral during WWI despite pressure from Turkey and anti-British citizens, was assassinated.

1924: Birthday of Gloria Vanderbilt, fashion designer (descended from railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt and mother of Anderson Cooper, television journalist)

1925: Birthday of Robert Altman, film director

1927: Birthday of Sidney Pointier, American actor, first black male to win an Oscar

1938: Hitler demanded that Germans living in Austria and Czechoslovakia be granted self-determination.

1942: Lt Edward O'Hare shot down 5 of 9 Japanese bombers attacking the aircraft carrier Lexington.

1943: German forces of Rommel's Afrika Korps broke through the Kasserine Pass, defeating Americans in their first major battle of WWII in the European theater.

1959: The FCC applied the equal time rule to television newscasts of political candidates.

1962: John Glenn was the first American to orbit the earth.

1998: Tara Lipinski became the youngest Olympic figure skating gold medalist.
LIB,MR BEARS
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1927: To Sir With Love, Guess Whose Coming to Dinner, In The Heat Of The Night. All great movies and all about race relations.

Poitier was an accidental American when he was born unexpectedly in Miami while his family was visiting.

Although a lot of his work was before my time and while I was still a little kid, I'm not aware of anything he did the was not stellar work.
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He definitely was one of the greats.
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February 21:


1595: Jesuit poet Robert Southwell was hanged for treason because he was Catholic.

1794: Birthday of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, Mexican general & dictator

1801: Birthday of John Henry Newman, English theologian

1821: Birthday of Charles Scribner, founder of family publishing business

1848: Publication of the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

1862: The Texas Rangers won a Confederate victory at Val Verde, New Mexico.

1878: The world's first telephone book was issued in New Haven, Connecticut with the names of 50 subscribers.

1885: Dedication of the Washington Monument.

1893: Birthday of Andrews Segovia, Spanish classical guitarist

1916: Beginning of the Battle of Verdun, an 11-month long bloodbath during WWI in which both sides together suffered close to a million casualties with nothing of consequence gained.

1918: Allied troops captured Jericho.

1920: Birthday of Robert S. Johnson, American WWII fighter ace who shot down 27 German planes

1927: Birthday of Erma Bombeck, author & humorist

1940: The Germans began construction of a new concentration camp near Krakow, at Auschwitz.

1944: Hideki Tojo became chief of staff of the Japanese army.

1948: Founding of NASCAR.

1956: A grand jury in Montgomery, Alabama indicted 115 blacks for their role in the bus boycott that had begun in December.

1965: Malcolm Little (aka Malcolm X) was assassinated.

1970: National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger began secret negotiations with the North Vietnamese.

1972: Pres. Richard Nixon arrived in China.
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February 22:

1349: Jews were expelled from Zurich, Switzerland

1403: Birthday of Charles VII, King of France

1613: Michael Romanov, son of the patriarch of Moscow, was elected Tsar. This was the beginning of a dynasty that rule Russia until 1917.

1732: Birthday of George Washington, Commander of the Continental Army, president of the Constitutional Convention, and first President of the United States

1778: Birthday of Rembrandt Peale, American painter known for his portraits of founding fathers

1819: The Florida Purchase Treaty (aka Adams-Onis Treaty) was signed by Spanish minister de Onis & U.S. Secretary of State John Q. Adams--the greatest Secretary of State in U.S. history. Besides purchasing Florida, the U.S. also clearly established the southern border of the Louisiana Territory.

1825: Russian and Britain agreed on the border between Alaska and Canada.

1847: Beginning of the Battle of Buena Vista during the Mexican-American War.

1857: Birthday of Heinrich Hertz, German physicist, the first person to broadcast and receive radio waves

1857: Birthday of Lord Robert Baden-Powel, founder of the Boy Scout Movement

1862: Inauguration of Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederacy.

1879: Frank Winfield Woolworth opened his shop in Utica, New York, the first chain store.

1909: The Great White Fleet returned to Norfolk, Virginia completing a showcase of American naval power by sailing around the world.

1932: Adolf Hitler became the Nazi Party candidate in the German presidential election.

1932: Birthday of Edward Kennedy, Senator from Massachusetts

1942: Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered Gen. Douglas MacArthur to leave the Philippines as the Japanese were on the verge of conquest. MacArthur vowed to return.

1946: American diplomat George F. Kennan sent the Long Telegram to the State Dept. It analyzed what the Soviets were doing in Europe and laid out the framework for the policy of Containment soon to be implemented by Pres. Truman.

1962: The U.S. rejected a new Soviet bid for arms talks in Geneva.

1968: End of the failed Tet Offensive during which the Viet Minh attacked numerous South Vietnamese positions simultaneously but failed to hold onto any of them. It became a propaganda victory for the communists when Walter Cronkite reported it a victory for them.

1980: U.S. hockey team defeated the Soviet team in the Olympics held at Lake Placid, NY.

2014: El Chapo, the world's most wanted drug lord, was captured in Mexico.
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February 23:


303: Emperor Diocletian ordered the general persecution of Christians.

1516: The Hapsburg Charles I succeeded Ferdinand as King of Spain.

1540: Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado began his search for the fabled Seven Cities of Gold in the American Southwest.

1685: Birthday of Georg F. Handel, German composer of theMessiah

1743: Birthday of Meyer Amschel Rothschild, banker and founder of the Rothschild dynasty in Europe

1778: Prussian military expert Friedrich von Steuben arrived at Valley Forge. The Patriot soldiers had a rough winter but with von Steuben's help, they used their time wisely with training that produced a professional army capable of defeating the British in open battle.

1821: Poet John Keatsdied of tuberculosis. He was 25 years old.

1836: A Mexican army of over 5,000 under General Santa Anna began the siege of the Alamo in San Antonio, defended by apx. 200 Texas patriots.

1846: The Liberty Bell tolled for the last time, to mark George Washington's birthday.

1847: American forces under Gen. Zachary Taylor defeated the Mexican army in the Battle of Buena Vista.

1861: President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrived in Washington, D.C. amid high security in preparation for his inauguration after several southern states (including Texas) had already seceded from the Union.

1868: Birthday of W.E.B. DuBois, civil rights activist and founder of the NAACP

1898: Writer Emile Zola was imprisoned in France for his letter J'accusepublicly criticizing the French government of anti-semitism and injustice for the wrongful imprisonment of Capt. Alfred Dreyfusby the army.

1904: Birthday of William Shirer, American journalist and author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

1924: Birthday of Allan MacLeod Cormack, physicist who developed the CAT scan

1936: An unmanned balloon in Russia rose to a record height of 25 miles.

1944: American bombers struck Japanese bases in the Marianas only 1,300 miles from Tokyo.

1945: During the Battle of Iwo Jima, the American flag was raised on Mt. Suribachi. This is the first time a foreign flag had ever been raised on Japanese soil and resulted in the most famous war photograph in history.

1946: Japanese General Tomoyuki Yama****a was hanged in Manila, the Philippines for war crimes.

1954: First polio vaccine was administered.

1960: Whites joined black students in a sit-in at a Woolworth store in Winston-Salem, N.C.

1980: Eric Heiden won the 10,000 meter speed skating race in the Olympics at Lake Placid, NY while also setting a world record.

1991: French forces unofficially began the Persian Gulf ground campaign by crossing the Saudi-Iraqi border.
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February 24:


786: Death of Pepin the Short of Gaul. His lands were divided between his sons Charles (Charlemagne) and Carolman.

1500: Birthday of Charles V, King of Spain and the last Holy Roman Emperor to be crowned by the pope

1525: Holy Roman Emperor Charles V captured French King Francis I at the Battle of Pavia during the first Franco-Hapsburg Wars.

1786: Birthday of Wilhelm Carl Grimm, compiler, with his brother, of fairy tales

1803: The Supreme Court under new Chief Justice John Marshall, decided the landmark case of Marbury v. Madison, establishing judicial review.

1813: The American sloop Hornetsank the British sloop Peacockoff the coast of Guiana during the War of 1812. The Royal Navy was not used to losing engagements with their opponents!

1821: Mexico gained independence from Spain.

1836: Col. William Barrett Travis sent out a call for help from the Alamo, under siege by Santa Anna's army.

1836: Birthday of Winslow Homer, American painter

1840: Former president John Q. Adams began arguing the Amistad case before the Supreme Court.

1841: Birthday of John Phillip Holland, inventor of the modern submarine

1868: Pres. Andrew Johnson was impeached. He deliberately violated a very questionable law so that it could be tested in the courts.

1885: Birthday of Chester Nimitz, U.S. admiral and commander of naval forces in the Pacific during WWII

1895: Beginning of the Cuban War for Independence.

1914: Death of Joshua Chamberlain, Civil War veteran and hero of the Battles of Gettysburg and Fredericksburg.

1917: The British government presented to America's ambassador to the UK the Zimmerman Telegram, which they had intercepted and deciphered. In it, the German government proposed an alliance with Mexico: if the Mexicans would attack the U.S., the Germans would help them recover territories lost in the Mexican-American War. The U.S. would declare war on Germany in April.

1921: Herbert Hoover became the Secretary of Commerce.

1945: American forces liberated prisoners of war in the Los Banos Prison in the Philippines.

1946: Juan Peron was elected president of Argentina.

1947: Germany's Franz von Papen was sentenced to eight years in a labor camp for war crimes.

1991: U.S.-led coalition forces launched the ground offensive against the Iraq Army in occupation of Kuwait during the Gulf War.
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February 25:


1570: Pope Pius V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I.

1601: Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex and former favorite of Elizabeth I, was beheaded at the Tower of London.

1642: Dutch settlers slaughtered Native Americans in the lower Hudson Valley who were seeking refuge from Mohawk attackers.

1779: The British surrendered the Illinois country to George Rogers Clark at Vincennes.

1791: Pres. George Washington signed a bill that created the Bank of the United States, the brainchild of his Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton.

1836: Samuel Colt patented the first revolving cylinder multi-shot firearm.

1841: Birthday of Pierre Auguste Renoir, French painter and founder of the French Impressionist movement

1862: Confederate forces abandoned Nashville as Gen. Grant's forces advanced.

1862: The ironclad Monitor was commissioned at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

1870: America's first black congressman was sworn in.

1873: Birthday of Enrico Caruso, Italian opera singer

1888: Birthday of John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State to Pres. Eisenhower

1913: The 16th amendment to the constitution was adopted allowing for the collection of income taxes.

1943: American forces retook the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia after their defeat there five days earlier.

1944: American forces destroyed 135 Japanese planes n the Marianas and Guam.

1948: Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia. Edvard Benes, the elected president, was forced out in a bloodless coup.

1956: Nikita Khrushchev disavowed Joseph Stalin at the secret Soviet Party Congress beginning the process of destalinization.

1964: Cassius Clay (aka Muhammad Ali) won his first heavy weight title.
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February 26:


364: After the death of Jovian, a council at Nicaea chose Valentinian, an army officer, to succeed him in Asia Minor.

1564: Baptism of Christopher Marlowe, prominent English playwright.

1802: Birthday of Victor Hugo, French novelist and poet

1815: Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from exile on the island of Elba returning to France to begin his famous 100 days campaign.

1829: Birthday of Levi Strauss, creator of blue jeans

1846: Birthday of William Frederick Cody, aka "Buffalo Bill"

1871: France and Prussia signed a preliminary peace treaty at Versailles, ending the Franco-Prussian War.

1901: Public execution of Boxer Rebellion leaders.

1914: Russian aviator Igor Sikorsky carried 17 passengers in a twin engine plane in St. Petersburg.

1916: Gen. Henri Philippe Petain took command of the French forces at Verdun.

1919: Grand Canyon National Park was established.

1928: Birthday of Antoine "Fats" Domino, American singer

1929: Grand Tetons National Park was established.

1933: Groundbreaking in San Francisco for construction of the Golden Gate Bridge.

1945: American forces recaptured the island of Corregidorat the entrance to Manilla Bay from Japanese control.

1964: Pres. Lyndon Johnsonsigned a bill with billions in tax cuts.

1965: Norman Butler was arrested for the murder of Malcolm X.

1990: The communist Sandinistas were defeated in Nicaraguan elections.

1993: First bombing of the World Trade Center by Islamofascist terrorists.
 
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