Sunday, February 14, 2016

What Happened This Day In History - February 14

February 14
Happy Valentine’s Day! Today is St. Valentine’s Day, the feast day of two Christian martyrs named Valentine: one a priest and physician, the other the Bishop of Terni. Both are purported to have been beheaded on this day. The custom of sending handmade ‘valentines’ to one’s beloved became popular during the 17th century and was first commercialized in the United States in the 1840s.

13492,000 Jews are burned at the stake in Strasbourg, Germany.
1400The deposed Richard II is murdered in Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire.
1549Maximilian II, brother of the Emperor Charles V, is recognized as the future king of Bohemia.
1779American Loyalists are defeated by Patriots at Kettle Creek, Ga.
1797The Spanish fleet is destroyed by the British under Admiral Jervis (withNelson in support) at the battle of Cape St. Vincent, off Portugal.
1848James Polk becomes the first U.S. President to be photographed in office by Matthew Brady.
1859Oregon is admitted as the thirty-third state.
1870Esther Morris becomes the world’s first female justice of the peace.
1876Rival inventors Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell both apply for patents for the telephone.
1900General Roberts invades South Africa’s Orange Free State with 20,000 British troops.
1904The “Missouri Kid” is captured in Kansas.
1912Arizona becomes the 48th state in the Union.
1915Kaiser Wilhelm II invites the U.S. Ambassador to Berlin in order to confer on the war.
1918Warsaw demonstrators protest the transfer of Polish territory to the Ukraine.
1920The League of Women Voters is formed in Chicago in celebration of the imminent ratification of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote.
1924Thomas Watson founds International Business Machines Corp.
1929Chicago gang war between Al Capone and George “Bugs” Moran culminates with several Moran confederates being gunned down in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
1939Germany launches the battleship Bismark.
1940Britain announces that all merchant ships will be armed.
1942Japanese paratroopers attack Sumatra. Aidan MacCarthy‘s RAF unit flew to Palembang, in eastern Sumatra, where 30 Royal Australian Air Force Lockheed A-28 Hudson bombers were waiting.
1945800 Allied aircraft firebomb the German city of Dresden. Smaller followup bombing raids last until April with a total death toll of between 35,000 to 130,000 civilians.
1945The siege of Budapest ends as the Soviets take the city. Only 785 German and Hungarian soldiers managed to escape.
1949The United States charges the Soviet Union with interning up to 14 million in labor camps.
1955A Jewish couple loses their fight to adopt Catholic twins as the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to rule on state law.
1957The Georgia state senate outlaws interracial athletics.
1965Malcolm X’s home is firebombed. No injuries are reported.
1971Moscow publicizes a new five-year plan geared to expanding consumer production.
1973The United States and Hanoi set up a group to channel reconstruction aid directly to Hanoi.
1979Armed guerrillas attack the U.S. embassy in Tehran.
1985Vietnamese troops surround the main Khmer Rouge base at Phnom Malai.
1989Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini charges that Salman Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses, is blasphemous and issues an edict (fatwa) calling on Muslims to kill Rushdie.

Born on February 14
1760Richard Allen, first black ordained by a Methodist-Episcopal church.
1817Frederick Douglass, slave, and later, activist and author.
1819Christopher Latham Sholes, inventor of the first practical typewriter.
1845Quinton Hogg, English philanthropist.
1859George Washington Gale Ferris, inventor of the Ferris Wheel.
1894Jack Benny, comedian, radio and television performer, and violinist.
1894Mary Lucinda Cardwell Dawson, founded the National Negro Opera Company (NNOC) and was appointed to President John F. Kennedy‘s National Committee on Music.

Saturday, February 13, 2016

What Happened This Day In History - February 13

February 13
167Polycarp, a disciple of St. John and bishop of Smyrna, is martyred on the west coast of Asia Minor.
1542Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII, is beheaded for adultery.
1689British Parliament adopts the Bill of Rights.
1692In the Glen Coe highlands of Scotland, thirty-eight members of the MacDonald clan are murdered by soldiers of the neighboring Campbell clan for not pledging allegiance to William of Orange. Ironically the pledge had been made but not communicated to the clans. The event is remembered as the Massacre of Glencoe.
1862The four day Battle of Fort Donelson, Tennessee, begins.
1865The Confederacy approves the recruitment of slaves as soldiers, as long as the approval of their owners is gained.
1866Jesse James holds up his first bank.
1914The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) is founded.
1936First social security checks are put in the mail.
1945The Royal Air Force Bomber Command devastates the German city of Dresden with night raids by 873 heavy bombers. The attacks are joined by 521 American heavy bombers flying daylight raids.
1949A mob burns a radio station in Ecuador after the broadcast of H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds.
1951At the Battle of Chipyong-ni, in Korea, U.N. troops contain the Chinese forces’ offensive in a two-day battle.
1953The Pope asks the United States to grant clemency to convicted spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.
1968The United States sends 10,500 more combat troops to Vietnam.
1970General Motors is reportedly redesigning automobiles to run on unleaded fuel.
1972Enemy attacks in Vietnam decline for the third day as the United States continues its intensive bombing strategy.
1984Konstantin Chernenko is selected to succeed Yuri Andropov as Party General Secretary in the Soviet Union.

Born on February 13
1599Alexander VII, Roman Catholic Pope.
1682Giovanni Piazzetta, painter (Fortune Teller).
1764Charles de Talleyrand, Napoleon‘s foreign minister.
1849Lord Randolph Churchill, English politician, Winston Churchill‘s father and member of Parliament.
1873Feodor Chaliapin, opera singer.
1892Grant Wood, painter (American Gothic).
1902Georges Simenon, novelist.
1910William B. Shockley, physicist, co-inventor of the transistor.
1919Tennessee Ernie Ford, country and gospel singer.
1922Harold “Hal” Moore Jr., US Army lieutenant general, author; led 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment at 1965 Battle of Ia Drang Valley; his best-known book, co-authored with combat journalist Joe Galloway, is “We Were Soldiers Once . . . And Young,” an account of that battle.
1923Charles “Chuck” Yeager, American test pilot, the first man to break the sound barrier.
1933Kim Novak, actress.

Friday, February 12, 2016

What Happened This Day In History - February 12


February 12
1294Kublai Khan, the conqueror of Asia, dies at the age of 80.
1554Lady Jane Grey, the Queen of England for thirteen days, is beheaded on Tower Hill. She was barely 17 years old.
1709Alexander Selkirk, the Scottish seaman whose adventures inspired the creation of Daniel Dafoe’s Robinson Crusoe, is taken off Juan Fernandez Island after more than four years of living there alone.
1793The first fugitive slave law, requiring the return of escaped slaves, is passed.
1818Chile gains independence from Spain.
1836Mexican February 12
1294Kublai Khan, the conqueror of Asia, dies at the age of 80.
1554Lady Jane Grey, the Queen of England for thirteen days, is beheaded on Tower Hill. She was barely 17 years old.
1709Alexander Selkirk, the Scottish seaman whose adventures inspired the creation of Daniel Dafoe’s Robinson Crusoe, is taken off Juan Fernandez Island after more than four years of living there alone.
1793The first fugitive slave law, requiring the return of escaped slaves, is passed.
1818Chile gains independence from Spain.
1836Mexican General Santa Anna crosses the Rio Grande en route to the Alamo.
1909The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is formed.
1912China becomes a republic following the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty.
1921Winston Churchill of London is appointed colonial secretary.
1924George Gershwin’s groundbreaking symphonic jazz composition Rhapsody in Blue premieres with Gershwin himself playing the piano with Paul Whiteman’s orchestra.
1929Charles Lindbergh announces his engagement to Anne Morrow.
1931Japan makes its first television broadcast–a baseball game.
1935The Macon, the last U.S. Navy dirigible, crashes off the coast of California, killing two people.
1938Japan refuses to reveal naval data requested by the U.S. and Britain.
1940The Soviet Union signs a trade treaty with Germany to aid against the British blockade.
1944Wendell Wilkie enters the American presidential race against Franklin D. Roosevelt.
1949Moslem Brotherhood chief Hassan el Banna is shot to death in Cairo.
1953The Soviets break off diplomatic relations with Israel after the bombing of Soviet legation.
1966The South Vietnamese win two big battles in the Mekong Delta.
1972Senator Edward Kennedy advocates amnesty for Vietnam draft resisters.
1974The Symbionese Liberation Army asks the Hearst family for $230 million in food for the poor.
1980The Lake Placid Winter Olympics open in New York.
1987A Court in Texas upholds $8.5 billion of a fine imposed on Texaco for the illegal takeover of Getty Oil.
1999The U.S. Senate fails to pass two articles of impeachment against PresidentBill Clinton. He had been accused of perjury and obstruction of justice by the House of Representatives.
Born on February 12
1768Francis II, the last Holy Roman Emperor
1775Louisa Adams, wife of John Quincy Adams
1809Charles Darwin, naturalist and influential theorist of evolution (On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection).
1809Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President of the United State (1861-1865).
1828George Meredith, English poet and novelist.
1857Eugene Atget, French photographer, took over 10,000 photographs documenting Paris.
1874Auguste Perret, French architect, pioneer in designs of reinforced concrete buildings.
1880John L. Lewis, American labor leader.
1893Omar Bradley, U.S. army general during World War II.
crosses the Rio Grande en route to the Alamo.
1909The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is formed.
1912China becomes a republic following the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty.
1921Winston Churchill of London is appointed colonial secretary.
1924George Gershwin’s groundbreaking symphonic jazz composition Rhapsody in Blue premieres with Gershwin himself playing the piano with Paul Whiteman’s orchestra.
1929Charles Lindbergh announces his engagement to Anne Morrow.
1931Japan makes its first television broadcast–a baseball game.
1935The Macon, the last U.S. Navy dirigible, crashes off the coast of California, killing two people.
1938Japan refuses to reveal naval data requested by the U.S. and Britain.
1940The Soviet Union signs a trade treaty with Germany to aid against the British blockade.
1944Wendell Wilkie enters the American presidential race against Franklin D. Roosevelt.
1949Moslem Brotherhood chief Hassan el Banna is shot to death in Cairo.
1953The Soviets break off diplomatic relations with Israel after the bombing of Soviet legation.
1966The South Vietnamese win two big battles in the Mekong Delta.
1972Senator Edward Kennedy advocates amnesty for Vietnam draft resisters.
1974The Symbionese Liberation Army asks the Hearst family for $230 million in food for the poor.
1980The Lake Placid Winter Olympics open in New York.
1987A Court in Texas upholds $8.5 billion of a fine imposed on Texaco for the illegal takeover of Getty Oil.
1999The U.S. Senate fails to pass two articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton. He had been accused of perjury and obstruction of justice by the House of Representatives.
Born on February 12 
1768Francis II, the last Holy Roman Emperor
1775Louisa Adams, wife of John Quincy Adams
1809Charles Darwin, naturalist and influential theorist of evolution (On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection).
1809Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President of the United State (1861-1865).
1828George Meredith, English poet and novelist.
1857Eugene Atget, French photographer, took over 10,000 photographs documenting Paris.
1874Auguste Perret, French architect, pioneer in designs of reinforced concrete buildings.
1880John L. Lewis, American labor leader.
1893Omar Bradley, U.S. army general during World War II.

Thursday, February 11, 2016

What Happened This Day In History - February 11

February 11
660 BCTraditional founding of Japan by Emperor Jimmu Tenno.
1531Henry VIII is recognized as the supreme head of the Church of England.
1805Sixteen-year-old Sacajawea, the Shoshoni guide for Lewis & Clark, gives birth to a son, with Meriwether Lewis serving as midwife.
1809Robert Fulton patents the steamboat.
1815News of the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812, finally reaches the United States.
185814-year-old Bernadette Soubirous, a French miller’s daughter, claims to have seen an apparition of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes.
1903Congress passes the Expedition Act, giving antitrust cases priority in the courts.
1904President Theodore Roosevelt proclaims strict neutrality for the United States in the Russo-Japanese War.
1910Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and Eleanor Alexander announce their wedding date–June 20, 1910.
1926The Mexican government nationalizes all church property.
1936The Reich arrests 150 Catholic youth leaders in Berlin.
1939The Negrin government returns to Madrid, Spain.
1942The German battleships GneisenauScharnhorst and Prinz Eugen begin their famed channel dash from the French port of Brest. Their journey takes them through the English Channel on their way back to Germany.
1945The meeting of the President Franklin Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Marshal Joseph Stalin in Yalta, adjourns.
1951U.N. forces push north across the 38th parallel for the second time in theKorean War.
1953Walt Disney’s film Peter Pan premieres.
1954A 75,000-watt light bulb is lit at the Rockefeller Center in New York, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Thomas Edison’s first light bulb.
1955Nationalist Chinese complete the evacuation of the Tachen Islands.
1959Iran turns down Soviet aid in favor of a U.S. proposal for aid.
1962Poet and novelist Sylvia Plath commits suicide in London at age 30.
1964Cambodian Prince Sihanouk blames the United States for a South Vietnamese air raid on a village in his country.
1965President Lyndon Johnson orders air strikes against targets in North Vietnam, in retaliation for guerrilla attacks on the American military in South Vietnam.
1966Vice President Hubert Humphrey begins a tour of Vietnam.
1974Communist-led rebels shower artillery fire into a crowded area of Phnom Pehn, killing 139 and injuring 46 others.
1975Mrs. Margaret Thatcher becomes the first woman to lead the British Conservative Party.
1990South African political leader Nelson Mandela is released from prison in Paarl, South Africa, after serving more than 27 years of a life sentence.

Born on February 11
1535Gregory XIV, Roman Catholic Pope.
1800William Henry Fox Talbot, photography pioneer, produced the first book with photographic illustrations (The Pencil of Nature).
1833Melville Weston Fuller, eighth U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice.
1847Thomas Alva Edison, prolific American inventor who jointly or singly held over 1,300 patents.
1855Josephine Marshall Jewell Dodge, American educator, pioneer in the concept of day nurseries for children.
1898Leo Szilard, physicist, instrumental in the Manhattan Project.
1907William J. Levitt, U.S. businessman and community builder who led the postwar housing revolutions with his Levittowns.
1908Phillipe Dunne, screenwriter and director (How Green Was My Valley).
1912Roy Fuller, poet and novelist.

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

What Happened This Day In History - February 10

February 10
1258Huegu, a Mongol leader, seizes Baghdad, bringing and end to the Abbasid caliphate.
1620Supporters of Marie de Medici, the queen mother, who has been exiled to Blois, are defeated by the king’s troops at Ponts de Ce, France.
1763The Treaty of Paris ends the French-Indian War. France gives up all her territories in the New World except New Orleans and a few scattered islands.
1799Napoleon Bonaparte leaves Cairo, Egypt, for Syria, at the head of 13,000 men.
1814Napoleon personally directs lightning strikes against enemy columns advancing toward Paris, beginning with a victory over the Russians at Champaubert.
1840Queen Victoria marries Prince Albert.
1846Led by religious leader Brigham Young, the first Mormons begin a longwestward exodus from Nauvoo, Il., to Utah.
1863P.T. Barnum’s star midgets, Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren, are married.
1904Russia and Japan declare war on each other.
1915President Wilson blasts the British for using the U.S. flag on merchant ships to deceive the Germans.
1939Japanese occupy island of Hainan in French Indochina.
1941London severs diplomatic relations with Romania.
1941Iceland is attacked by German planes.
1942The war halts civilian car production at Ford.
1945B-29s hit the Tokyo area.
1955Bell Aircraft displays a fixed-wing vertical takeoff plane.
1960Adolph Coors, the beer brewer, is kidnapped in Golden, Colo.
1966Protester David Miller is convicted of burning his draft card.
1979The Metropolitan Museum announces the first major theft in 110-year history, $150,000 Greek marble head.
1986The largest Mafia trial in history, with 474 defendants, opens in Palermo, Italy.

Born on February 10
1890Boris Pasternak, Russian novelist and poet (Dr. Zhivago).
1893Jimmy Durante, American comedian and film actor.
1894Harold MacMillan, British prime minister (1957-1963).
1897John F. Enders, virologist.
1898Bertolt Brecht, German poet and dramatist (The Threepenny Opera).
1901Stella Adler, actress and teacher.
1902Walter Brattain, physicist, one of the inventors of the transistor.
1910Dominique Georges Pire, Belgian cleric and educator.
1914Larry Adler, harmonica virtuoso.
1920Alex Comfort, English physician and author (Joy of Sex).
1927(Mary Violet) Leontyne Price, opera singer.

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

What Happened This Day In History - February 9

February 9
1567Lord Darnley, the second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, is murdered in his sick-bed in a house in Edinburgh when the house blows up.
1799The USS Constellation captures the French frigate Insurgente off the West Indies.
1825The House of Representatives elects John Quincy Adams, sixth U.S. President.
1861Jefferson F. Davis is elected president of the Confederate States of America.
1864Union General George Armstrong Custer marries Elizabeth Bacon in their hometown of Monroe, Mich.
1904Japanese troops land near Seoul, Korea, after disabling two Russian cruisers.
1909France agrees to recognize German economic interests in Morocco in exchange for political supremacy.
1916Conscription begins in Great Britain as the Military Service Act becomes effective.
1922The U.S. Congress establishes the World War Foreign Debt Commission.
1942Chiang Kai-shek meets with Sir Stafford Cripps, the British viceroy in India.
1943The Red Army takes back Kursk 15 months after it fell to the Germans.
1946Stalin announces the new five-year plan for the Soviet Union, calling for production boosts of 50 percent.
1951Actress Greta Garbo gets U.S. citizenship.
1953The French destroy six Viet Minh war factories hidden in the jungles of Vietnam.
1964The U.S. embassy in Moscow is stoned by Chinese and Vietnamese students.
1978Canada expels 11 Soviets in spying case.
1994Nelson Mandela becomes the first black president of South Africa.
Born on February 9
1773William Henry Harrison, ninth U.S. President and the first to die in office.
1814Samuel Tilden, philanthropist.
1819Lydia E. Pinkham, patent-medicine maker and entrepeneur.
1846William Maybach, German engineer, designed the first Mercedes automobile.
1871Howard T. Ricketts, pathologist.
1874Amy Lowell, poet.
1880James Stephens, Irish writer (The Charwoman’s DaughterThe Crock of Gold).
1909Dean Rusk, Secretary of State under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
1923Brendan Behan, Irish playwright and poet (The HostageThe Quare Fellow).
1944Alice Walker, Pulitzer prize winning author (The Color Purple).