Today in History

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Today in History

By Correspondent

 
270Feb 14The early Christian martyr, St. Valentine, was beheaded by Emperor Claudius II, who executed another St. Valentine around the same time. The Catholic Bishop Valentine was clubbed, stoned and beheaded by Emperor Claudius II for refusing to acknowledge the monarch’s outlawing of marriage. The Catholics then made Valentine a symbol to oppose the Roman mid-February custom in honor of the God Lupercus, where Roman teenage girls’ names were put in a box and selected by young Roman men for “sex toy” use until the next lottery. The two Valentines merged into a single legendary patron of young lovers. St. Valentine’s Day evolved from Lupercalia, a Roman festival of fertility.
869Feb 14Cyrillus, Greek apostle of Slavs, died.
1009Feb 14Lithuania was 1st mentioned in relation to an announcement of the death of St. Bruno.
1014Feb 14Pope Benedict VIII crowned Henry II, German King (1002), as Roman German emperor (1014-1024).
1076Feb 14Pope Gregory VII excommunicated Henry IV.
1130Feb 14Jewish Cardinal Pietro Pierleone was elected as anti-pope Anacletus II.
1349Feb 142,000 Jews were burned at the stake in Strasbourg, Germany.
1400Feb 14Richard II (33), deposed king of England (1377-99), was murdered in Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire.
1405Feb 14Timur, aka Tamerlane (b.1336), crippled Mongol monarch, died in Kazakhstan. In 2004 Justin Marozzi authored “Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World.”
1408Feb 14Vytautas gave self-rule status to Kaunas, which was 1st mentioned in the summer of 1361.
1483Feb 14(OS) Zahir al-Din Mohammed Babur Shah (d.1531), prince, founder Mughal dynasty in India (1526-30), was born.
1489Feb 14Henry VII and Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I ally to assist the Bretons in the Treaty of Dordrecht.
1540Feb 14Emperor Charles V entered Ghent without resistance and executed the rebels. He brutally beat down an uprising against taxes for an expansionist war. Nine leaders were beheaded and another hanged. City burgers were forced to walk the streets barefoot with rope hanging round their necks. The “Gentse Feesten” annual festival re-enacts this event every mid-July.
1549Feb 14Maximilian II, brother of the Emperor Charles V, was recognized as the future king of Bohemia.
1556Feb 14Archbishop Thomas Cranmer was declared a heretic.
1571Feb 14Benvenuto Cellini (b.1500), Italian goldsmith and sculptor, writer (Perseus), died. His 1545 autobiography greatly influenced the Renaissance.
1572Feb 14Hans Christoph Haiden, composer, was born.
1602Feb 14Pier Francesco Cavalli, Italian opera composer, was born.
1610Feb 14Polish king Sigismund III forced Dimitri #2 and the Romanov family to sign covenant against Czar Vasili Shuishki (sequel to story of “Boris Godunov”).
1645Feb 14Robert Ingle, commissioned by the English Parliament and captain of the tobacco ship Reformation, sailed to St. Mary’s (Maryland) and seized a Dutch trading ship. This marked the beginning of what came to known as “The Plundering Time.
1670Feb 14Roman Catholic emperor Leopold I chased the Jews out of Vienna.
1689Feb 14English parliament placed Mary Stuart and Prince William III on the throne.
1711Feb 14Handel’s opera Rinaldo premiered. He composed his opera “Rinaldo,” with the Italian librettist Giacomo Rossi. It was his 1st opera for London.
1760Feb 14Richard Allen (d.1831), 1st black ordained by a Methodist-Episcopal church, was born in Philadelphia.
1778Feb 14The American ship Ranger carried the recently adopted Star and Stripes to a foreign port for the first time as it arrived in France.
1779Feb 14American Loyalists were defeated by Patriots at Kettle Creek, Ga.
1779Feb 14Captain James Cook (b.1728), English explorer, was killed on the Big Island in Hawaii. In 2002 Tony Horwitz authored “Blue Latitudes,” and Vanessa Collingridge authored “Captain Cook: A Legacy Under Fire.”
   
1780Feb 14William Blackstone (56), English lawyer, died.
1794Feb 141st US textile machinery patent was granted, to James Davenport in Phila.
1797Feb 14The Spanish fleet was destroyed by the British under Admiral Jervis (with Nelson in support) at the battle of Cape St. Vincent, off Portugal.
1803Feb 14An apple parer was patented by Moses Coats in Downington, Penn.
1817Feb 14Frederick Douglass (d.1895), “The Great Emancipator,” was born in Maryland as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. He was the son of a slave and a white father who bought his own freedom and published “The Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass” (1845) a memoir of his life as a slave. “The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.”
1819Feb 14Christopher Latham Sholes, inventor of the first practical typewriter, was born.
1824Feb 14Winfield Scott Hancock (d.1886), Major General (Union volunteers), was born.
1845Feb 14Quinton Hogg, English philanthropist, was born. [see Feb 16]
1847Feb 14Anna Howard Shaw, U.S. suffragette, was born.
1848Feb 14James Polk became the first U.S. President to be photographed in office by Matthew Brady.
1856Feb 14Frank Harris, journalist, writer (My Life & Loves), was born in England.
1859Feb 14George Washington Gale Ferris, inventor of the Ferris Wheel, was born.
1859Feb 14Oregon was admitted to the Union as the 33rd state.
1862Feb 14Galena, the 1st US iron-clad warship for service at sea, was launched in Conn.
1867Feb 14Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection & Insurance Co. issued its 1st policy.
1870Feb 14Esther Morris became the world’s first female justice of the peace.
1876Feb 14Rival inventors Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell both applied for patents for the telephone.
1879Feb 14Chile invaded the Bolivian port of Antofagasta after Bolivian authorities attempted to auction the confiscated property of CSFA, a Chilean mining company.
1881Feb 14Otto Selz, German psychologist, was born.
1882Feb 14George Jean Nathan (d.1958), US editor, author, critic (Smart Set, American Mercury), was born: “Love demands infinitely less than friendship.”
1886Feb 14California orange growers ship their first trainload of fruit from Los Angeles.
1891Feb 14William Tecumseh Sherman (b.1820), Union Civil War general, died. His famous “March to the Sea” changed the face of modern warfare. “Vox populi, vox humbug.”
1894Feb 14Jack Benny (d.1974), comedian, radio and television performer… and violinist, was born as Benjamin Kubelsky in Waukegan, Ill: “Age is strictly a case of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”
1894Feb 14Mary Lucinda Cardwell Dawson, was born. She founded the National Negro Opera Company (NNOC) and was appointed to President John F. Kennedy’s National Committee on Music.
1895Feb 14Nigel Bruce, actor (Dr Watson in Sherlock Holmes movies), was born in Baja, Mexico.
1895Feb 14Oscar Wilde’s final play, “The Importance of Being Earnest,” opened at the St. James’ Theatre in London.
1896Feb 14Theodor Herzl published “Der Judenstaat,” in which he called for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
1898Feb 14Fritz Zwicky, Swiss astronomer (super nova), was born.
1899Feb 14Congress approved, and President McKinley signed, legislation authorizing states to use voting machines for federal elections.
1900Feb 14General Roberts invaded South Africa’s Orange Free State with 20,000 British troops.
1903Feb 14US Congress created the Department of Commerce and Labor to help stabilize the economy. It was divided into separate departments of Commerce and Labor in 1913.
1904Feb 14The “Missouri Kid” was captured in Kansas.
1908Feb 14Russia and Britain threatened action in Macedonia if peace was not reached soon.
1912Feb 14Arizona became the 48th state of the Union, the final area of the continental United States to attain statehood.
1912Feb 14The 1st US submarines with diesel engines were commissioned at Groton, Ct.
1913Feb 14Jimmy Hoffa (d.1975), Teamsters leader who disappeared, was born.
1913Feb 14Mel Allen, sportscaster (voice of NY Yankees), was born in Birmingham, Alabama.
1915Feb 14The Kaiser invited the U.S. Ambassador Gerard to Berlin in order to confer on the war.
1918Feb 14Sigmund Romberg’s musical “Sinbad,” premiered in NYC.
1918Feb 14Warsaw demonstrators protested the transfer of Polish territory to the Ukraine.
1919Feb 14The United Parcel Service was incorporated in Oakland, CA.
1920Feb 14The League of Women Voters was founded in Chicago; its first president was Maude Wood Park.
1921Feb 14The Literary Review faced obscenity charges in NY for publishing “Ulysses” by James Joyce.
1924Feb 14Patricia Edwina Victoria Mountbatten, the 2nd Countess Mountbatten of Burma, was born in London.
1924Feb 14Thomas J. Watson, general manager of Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR), renamed the firm International Business Machines (IBM).
1929Feb 14In Chicago the “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” took place in a garage of the Moran gang as seven rivals of Al Capone’s gang were gunned down.
1930Feb 14“The Maltese Falcon,” by SF based writer Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961), was published.
1931Feb 14Vic Morrow, actor (Combat, Roots, Twilight Zone the Movie), was born in Bronx, NY.
1936Feb 14Fanne Foxe, [Annabella Battistella], (Wilbur Mills companion during Congressman’s drunken romp in the fountain), was born in Argentina.
1937Feb 14Austrian leader Schuschnigg threatened to restore the Hapsburg monarchy.
1939Feb 14The Reich launched the battleship Bismarck.
1940Feb 14Britain announced that all merchant ships would be armed.
1941Feb 14“Reflections in a Golden Eye” by Carson McCullers was first published.
1941Feb 14German Afrika Korps landed in Tripoli, Libya.
1942Feb 14The Japanese attacked 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. The elation was short-lived as Japanese soldiers were parachuting into the jungle that surrounded the airfield.
1943Feb 14A German offensive was made through the de Faid pass in Tunisia.
1944Feb 14Carl Bernstein, Washington Post investigative reporter (Watergate), was born.
1944Feb 14An anti-Japanese revolt took place on Java.
 1945Feb 14Gregory Hines, actor, dancer (White Nights, Taps), was born in NYC.
1945Feb 14Peru, Paraguay, Chile and Ecuador joined the United Nations.
1947Feb 14Donna Halper, Boston-based historian, author, educator and radio consultant, was born. Since 1984, Halper has been the advocate for an adult with autism. She continues to do presentations on such topics as media history, women’s history, and popular culture at museums, schools, and historical societies.
1949Feb 14The United States charged the USSR with interning up to 14 million in labor camps.
1949Feb 141st session of Knesset (Jerusalem Israel).
1954Feb 14Sen. John Kennedy appeared on “Meet the Press.”
1955Feb 14A Jewish couple lost their fight to adopt Catholic twins as the U.S. Supreme Court refused to rule on state law.
1955Feb 14James Stephen George Boggs, American artist, was born in New Jersey. He is best known for his hand-drawn, one-sided depictions of US banknotes (known as “Boggs notes”) and his various “Boggs bills.”
1956Feb 14The B.F. Huntley furniture plant in Winston-Salem, NC, was destroyed by fire. The factory was rebuilt and the Huntley name continued until it was sold to Thomasville Furniture Industries in 1961.
1956Feb 14-25Khrushchev denounced Stalin at the 20th Communist Party Congress at Moscow.
1957Feb 14The Georgia Senate approved Sen Leon Butts’ bill barring blacks from playing baseball with whites.
1958Feb 14The Arab Federation of Iraq and Jordan formed under Iraq’s Faisal II. King Hussein forged a federation with Iraq, which was led by his cousin, Faisal II. The federation failed when Faisal was killed during a revolution in Iraq.
1959Feb 14A $3.6 million heroin seizure was made in NYC.
1962Feb 14First lady Jacqueline Kennedy conducted a televised tour of the White House.
   
1965Feb 14Malcolm X’s home was firebombed. No injuries were reported.
1967Feb 14Ramparts Magazine published an ad in the NY Times and Washington Post saying: “In its March issue, Ramparts magazine will document how the CIA has infiltrated and subverted the world of American student leaders over the past fifteen years.”
1967Feb 14The first nuclear weapons free zone was established in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Treaty of Tiatelolco was signed in Mexico City. It banned the manufacture, storage or testing of nuclear weapons and the devices for launching them.
 1969Feb 14The new red, plastic Olivetti typewriter, designed by Ettore Sottsass (1917-2007, was released.
1971Feb 14Moscow publicized a new five-year plan geared to expanding consumer production.
1972Feb 14The musical “Grease” opened at the Eden Theatre off Broadway. The show turned out to be a surprise hit and soon moved to the Broadhurst Theatre and then to the Royale where it remained until April 13, 1980. The show had a record run until it was taken over by A Chorus Line.
1973Feb 14The US and Hanoi set up a group to channel reconstruction aid directly to Hanoi. In 1972 the US had begun to “de-Americanize” the Vietnam war. It was a policy of gradual withdrawal.
1972Feb 14 Bill Torrey (38), an executive vice president with the Oakland Seals, was named the 1st General Manager of the Islanders, a Long Island hockey team. 
1975Feb 14Julian S. Huxley (b.1887), English biologist, died. He served as the first Director-General of UNESCO (1946-1948).
1975Feb 14Pelham Graham (PG) Wodehouse (b.1881), English, US writer (Piccadilly Jim), died at age 93. 58 Penguin editions of his books were done by artist Jos Armitage (d.1998 at 84), who also contributed to “Punch.” In 2004 Robert McCrum authored “Wodehouse.”
1978Feb 14G. W. Boone and M.J. Cochran of Texas Instruments received a patent for their Variable Function Programmed Calculator.
1979Feb 14Adolph Dubs, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, was kidnapped in Kabul by Muslim extremists and killed in a shootout between his abductors and police.
1979Feb 14Armed guerrillas attacked the U.S. embassy in Tehran.
1980Feb 14Victor Gruen (b.1903), Austrian-born Jewish architect, died in Vienna. He was later considered the father of the modern shopping mall.
1981Feb 14Subhash Chandra traveled to Zurich to land a $10 million deal to build a factory for toothpaste tubes. He went on to become a leading Indian producer of laminated packaging and then expanded to a private TV network followed by mobile communications.
1984Feb 14Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean of Britain won the gold medal in ice dancing at the Sarajevo Olympics.
1984Feb 14In South Africa under Apartheid rule the Black community at Mogopa was displaced in a “force removal” action. Some 300 homes and a cluster of community buildings were bulldozed over.
1985Feb 14Hanoi troops surrounded the main Khmer Rouge base at Phnom Malai.
1987Feb 14Dmitry Borisovich Kabalevsky (b.1904), Russian composer, died.
1988Feb 14Alfredo Stroessner was re-elected president of Paraguay.
1989Feb 14Union Carbide agreed to pay $470 million to the government of India in a court-ordered settlement of the 1984 Bhopal gas leak disaster.
1989Feb 14Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini called on Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie, author of “The Satanic Verses,” a novel condemned as blasphemous. Several translators of the book were later killed or wounded.
1990Feb 14Space probe Voyager 1 took photographs of entire solar system.
1990Feb 14Ninety-four people were killed when an Indian Airlines passenger jet crashed while landing at a southern Indian airport.
1991Feb 14Two San Francisco men became the first couple to register as “domestic partners” under a new city ordinance.
1991Feb 14Iraq charged the bombing of an underground facility the day before, which killed hundreds of civilians, was a deliberate attack on an air raid shelter, a charge denied by the US.
1991Feb 14The Iraqi weapons depot at Ukhaydir was bombed. Iraqi authorities revealed to US authorities in 1996 that the site stored hundreds of rockets filled with mustard gas and nerve gas.
1992Feb 14American speed skater Bonnie Blair won her second gold medal of the Albertville Olympics, in the 1,000 meters event.
1993Feb 14The body of James Bulger, a 2-year-old boy who had been lured away from his mother in a Liverpool, England, shopping mall two days earlier, was found along a stretch of railroad track. Two boys (10), Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, were later convicted of murdering James; they spent eight years in detention before being paroled.
1994Feb 14President Clinton used his first annual economic report to proclaim his policies had put the country on track for rising prosperity for years to come.
1995Feb 14The House passed the centerpiece of the Republican anti-crime package, voting to create block grants for local governments while eliminating President Clinton’s program to hire more police. The president later vetoed a spending authorization bill containing this provision.
1996Feb 14In Sri Lanka a Tiger arms ship was sunk of the northeastern coast.
1997Feb 14In Cambodia Khmer Rouge guerrillas killed all but three government officials sent to make peace.
1998Feb 14In Cameroon a train hauling oil tanker cars derailed and collided with an oncoming train outside Yaounde. It exploded and killed up to 100 people.
   
1999Feb 14Pres. Clinton, accompanied by his wife, Hillary,  traveled to Merida, Mexico, for talks with Pres. Ernesto Zedillo to encourage the struggle against narcotics and government corruption, and to grow markets for U.S. products.
2000Feb 14The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft began its orbit around the asteroid Eros.
2001Feb 14The Kansas Board of Education approved new science standards restoring evolution to the state’s curriculum.
2002Feb 14Pres. Bush proposed an environmental plan that would encourage businesses to cut pollution and develop more energy-efficient technology.
2003Feb 14Dolly (b.1996), the world’s 1st clone sheep and mother of 6 lambs, was put to sleep by veterinarians in Scotland after they failed to cure her of a severe lung infection
2004Feb 14It was reported that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had donated $82.9 million to the Areas Global TB Vaccine Foundation for the development of a tuberculosis vaccine.
2005Feb 14In Iran a mosque fire killed 59 people and injured another 350. it was blamed on a kerosene heater that was placed too close to a thick curtain that separated male and female worshippers.
   
2006Feb 14The UN asked Lebanon to explain reports of arms shipments crossing the Syrian border destined for the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah.
2007Feb 14A car loaded with explosives blew up near a bus carrying members of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards in southeastern Iran, killing 11 of them and wounding 31. An al-Qaida-linked Sunni militant group reportedly claimed responsibility. Within a week Nasrollah Shanbe Zehi was convicted and executed for the bombing.
 2008Feb 14Zimbabwe’s inflation rate, already the highest in the world, soared to a new high of 66,212.3%.
2009Feb 14In Alabama suspicious fires destroyed 2 churches and damaged a third near the Georgia border.
2010Feb 14This day marked a new year according to the Chinese calendar, as it moved from the reign of the Ox to the year of the Tiger. The Chinese calendar is thought to have been formulated around 500 BC, though elements of it date back at least to the Shang Dynasty at around 1,000 BC.
2011Feb 14Palestinian PM Salam Fayyad dissolved his Cabinet in an emergency meeting in what appeared to be a gesture inspired by unrest rocking the Arab world. This gave him six weeks to name a new Cabinet.
2012Feb 14Zimbabwean police disrupted a Valentine’s Day march, by about 200 members of the militant Women of Zimbabwe Arise organization, aimed at promoting peace and love between foes.
2013Feb 14The US Treasury Department said that Switzerland and the United States have signed a pact to make Swiss banks disclose information about US account-holders.
2014Feb 14President Obama visited the San Joaquin Valley to focus on California’s severe drought, and announce new measures in the ongoing federal effort to address it. Obama toured parts of California’s drought zone and pledged to speed help to the No. 1 farm state.
   
Source: Timelines in History 

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