Today in History

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Today in History

By Correspondent

 
YEARDAYEVENT
1194Feb 20Tancredo of Lecce, King of Sicily, died.
1494Feb 20Johan Friis, chancellor (Denmark, helped formed Lutheranism), was born.
1513Feb 20Pope Julius II died. He was laid in rest in a huge tomb sculptured by Michelangelo.
1547Feb 20King Edward VI of England was enthroned following the death of Henry VIII
1583Feb 20Joseph Sanalbo, Jewish convert in Rome, was burned at stake on 27 Shebat.
1626Feb 20John Dowland, composer, died
1632Feb 20Thomas Osborne, Duke of Leeds, English PM (1690-94)/founder (Tories), was born.
1656Feb 20James Ussher (76), Irish bible scholar, Anglican archbishop, died.
1665Feb 20Michel Dorigny (b.1617), French painter, died.
   
1667Feb 20David ben Samuel Halevi, rabbi, author (Shulchan Aruch), died.
1673Feb 20The 1st recorded wine auction was held in London.
1683Feb 20Philip V, first Bourbon King of Spain, was born
1725Feb 20New Hampshire militiamen partook in the first recorded scalping of Indians by whites in North America. 10 sleeping Indians were scalped by whites for scalp bounty.
1726Feb 20William Prescott, U.S. Revolutionary War hero, was born.
1737Feb 20French minister of Finance, Chauvelin, resigned.
1745Feb 20Johann Peter Salomon, composer, was born.
1745Feb 20Bonnie Prince Charlie’s troops occupied Fort August, Scotland.
1746Feb 20Bonnie Prince Charlie occupied the Castle of Inverness.
1755Feb 20General Edward Braddock arrived from Great Britain to assume command of British forces in America and to lead the Virginia troops against the French and Indians in the Ohio Valley.
1790Feb 20Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II (48) died.
1791Feb 20Carl Czerny, pianist, composer (Schule der Virtuosen), was born in Vienna, Austria.
1792Feb 20President Washington signed an act creating the U.S. Post Office.
1798Feb 20Pope Pius VI fled Rome to Siena following an invasion of French forces. He was later arrested and deported 1st to Florence and then to France.
1804Feb 20Hobart, Tasmania, was founded as a penal colony. In this year soldiers fired on an aboriginal hunting party on Tasmania and killed some 50 people. Some were salted down and sent to Sydney as anthropological curiosities.
1808Feb 20Honoré Daumier (d.1879), French painter, sculptor, caricaturist and lithographer, was born in Marseilles. He painted Crispin and Scapin.
1809Feb 20The Supreme Court ruled the power of the federal government is greater than that of any individual state.
   
1810Feb 20Andreas Hofer (42), military leader (fought Napoleon’s France), was executed.
1831Feb 20Polish revolutionaries defeated the Russians in the Battle of Growchow.
1832Feb 20Charles Darwin visited Fernando Noronha in Atlantic Ocean.
1835Feb 20Concepcion, Chile, was destroyed by earthquake and some 5,000 died.
1838Feb 20Ludwig Boltzmann, atomic physics engineer, was born.
1839Feb 20Congress prohibited dueling in the District of Columbia.
1856Feb 20Romania abolished the slavery of Gypsies, or Roma, but discrimination persisted against the group.
1861Feb 20The Confederacy Dept. of Navy formed.
1862Feb 20Willie Lincoln (b.1850), son of Pres. Lincoln, died in Washington DC. Typhoid fever was the suspected cause.
1864Feb 20Confederate troops defeated a Union army sent to bring Florida into the union at the Battle of Olustee, Fla.
1865Feb 20MIT was formed as the 1st US collegiate architectural school.
1869Feb 20Tenn. Gov. W.C. Brownlow declared martial law in Ku Klux Klan crisis.
1872Feb 20Silas Noble and JP Cooley patented a toothpick manufacturing machin
1874Feb 20Mary Garden, opera star, was born in Aberdeen, Scotland.
1877Feb 20The 1st cantilever bridge in US was completed at Harrodsburg, Kentucky.
1888Feb 20Marie Rambert, ballet dancer and director, was born.
1893Feb 20Russel Crouse, journalist, novelist, playwright (Life with Father), was born.
1894Feb 20Curt Richter, biologist, was born.
   
1895Feb 20Frederick Douglass (77), Abolitionist and escaped slave, died in Washington, D.C. In 1881 Douglass authored “The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass.”
1898Feb 20Jimmy Yancey, American blues pianist, was born.
1899Feb 20Illinois Tel & Tel was granted a franchise for a Chicago freight tunnel system.
1900Feb 20J.F. Pickering patented his airship.
1901Feb 20Louis I. Kahn, architect, was born
1903Feb 20Pope Leo XIII celebrated 25 years as the Pope.
1904Feb 20Alexei Kosygin (Aleksey Nikolayevich Kosygin), Soviet Premier (1964-1980), was born.
1906Feb 20Russian troops seized large portions of Mongolia.
1907Feb 20Pres. Theodore Roosevelt signed an immigration act which excluded “idiots, imbeciles, feebleminded persons, epileptics, insane persons” from being admitted to the US.
1909Feb 20F.T. Marinetti (1876-1944), Italian poet, published the 1st Futurist Manifesto in the Paris newspaper Le Figaro. It included statements such as “We want to glorify war – the only cure for the world”¦” and We intend to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and fearlessness.”
1910Feb 20Julian Trevelyan, English Surrealist painter, collage maker, was born.
1915Feb 20President Wilson opened the Panama-Pacific Expo in San Francisco to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal. A 20-acre salt marsh was paved over at Crissey Field for the Expo. It was held on what later became the Marina District and 300,000 people attended opening day. The fair was crowned by a 43-story Tower of Jewels decorated with cut glass. Herb Caen later claimed to have been conceived during the expo. A 40-ton organ with 7,000 pipes played the “Hallelujah Chorus.” It was made by the Austin Organs Co. of Hartford, Conn. After the fair it was moved to the Civic Auditorium and used for 7 decades until the 1989 earthquake damaged it.
1917Feb 20Kern, Bolton & Wodehouse’s musical “Oh, Boy!,” premiered in NYC
1918Feb 20The Soviet Red Army seized Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine.
1920Feb 20Robert E. Peary (63), US pole explorer (North Pole, 6/4/1909), died.
1921Feb 20Riza Khan Pahlevi seized control of Iran. Pahlevi marched into Tehran with 2,500 soldiers and took over the government. Britain helped topple the Qajar dynasty and replaced it with Reza Shah Pahlavi, a former military officer. Five years later he was crowned Shah and placed the crown upon his head with his own hands, as did Napoleon.
1922Feb 20Vilnius, Lithuania, agreed to separate from Poland.
1924Feb 20Gloria Vanderbilt, fashion designer, was born. In 2004 she published her memoir “It Seemed Important At the Time.”
1925Feb 20Robert Altman, film director (Nashville, The Player, M*A*S*H), was born.
1927Feb 20Sidney Poitier, American actor, was born. He became the first African American to win an Oscar for his role in “Lilies in the Field.”
1931Feb 20Congress allowed California to build the Oakland Bay Bridge.
1932Feb 20Japanese troops occupied Tunhua, China.
1933Feb 20The House of Representatives completed congressional action on an amendment to repeal Prohibition.
1934Feb 20The opera “Four Saints in Three Acts” by Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson premiered and became the longest running opera in Broadway history. It was centered on St. Teresa of Avila and St. Ignatius and ran to 4 acts that included 30 saints. It has been called “a surrealist American folk opera.” In 1997 Anthony Tommasini wrote Virgil’s biography: “Virgil Thompson: Composer on the Aisle.” In 1999 Steven Watson authored “Prepare for Saints: Gertrude Stein, Virgil Thomson, and the Mainstreaming of American Modernism.
1936Feb 20Switzerland bared all Nazis from entering the country.
1938Feb 20Anthony Eden (1897-1977) resigned as British foreign secretary in a dispute with PM Neville Chamberlain. He said Chamberlain was appeasing Germany.
1940Feb 20Christoph Eschenbach, pianist, conductor, was born in Breslau, Germany.
1941Feb 20The U.S. sent war planes to the Pacific. General George C. Kenney pioneered aerial warfare strategy and tactics in the Pacific theater.
1942Feb 20Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the internment of Japanese Americans on the West Coast.
1943Feb 20German troops of the Afrika Korps broke through the Kasserine Pass, defeating U.S. forces.
1944Feb 20The Batman & Robin comic strip premiered in newspapers.
1946Feb 20The US Employment Act of 1946 was signed into law. It laid the responsibility of economic stability of inflation and unemployment onto the federal government.
1947Feb 20A chemical mixing error caused an explosion that destroyed 42 blocks in LA.
1948Feb 20Czechoslovakia’s non-communist minister resigned.
1950Feb 20Welsh author-poet Dylan Thomas arrived in NYC for his 1st US poetry reading tour.
1952Feb 20“African Queen” opened at Capitol Theater in NYC.
1953Feb 20Riccardo Chailly, conductor (West Berlin Symph Orch), was born in Milan, Italy.
1954Feb 20Patty Hearst, famous kidnap hostage (Tanya), was born in SF.
1955Feb 20Kelsey Grammer, actor (Fraiser), was born in the Virgin Islands.
1958Feb 20The Broadway play “The Day the Money Stopped” opened at the Belasco Theater. It featured the debut of actress Collin Wilcox-Paxton (d.2009 at 74).
1959Feb 20Joel Rifkind, NY serial killer, was born.
1960Feb 20English archeologist Charles Leonard Woolley (b.1880), best known for his excavations at Ur in Mesopotamia, died. He was knighted by King George V in 1935.
1961Feb 20Percy Aldridge Grainger (78), Australian-US composer, pianist, died.
1962Feb 20U.S. Marine Lieutenant Colonel John H. Glenn, Jr., became the first American to orbit the earth.
1963Feb 20Moscow offered to allow on-site inspection of nuclear testing.
1965Feb 20The Ranger 8 spacecraft crashed on the moon after sending back 7,000 photos of the lunar surface.
   
1966Feb 20Chester W. Nimitz (80), US admiral (WW II), died at home on Yerba Buena Island (Treasure Island) in SF Bay.
1967Feb 20Kurt Cobain, Nirvana grunge band musician, was born in Aberdeen, Washington. He was found dead at his Lake Washington home on April 8, 1994, of suicide committed about April 5.
1968Feb 20A North Vietnamese army chief in Hue ordered all looters to be shot on sight.
1969Feb 20Ernest Ansermet (b.1883), Swiss conductor and composer, died.
1970Feb 20Cheyenne Brando (d.1995), daughter of Marlon, was born in Papeete, Tahiti.
1971Feb 20The National Emergency Warning Center in Colorado erroneously ordered radio and TV stations across the US to go off the air; some stations heeded the alert, which was not lifted for about 40 minutes.
1972Feb 20Walter Winchell (b.1897),newspaper and radio commentator, died.
1976Feb 20Kathryn Kuhlman (b.1907), American religious leader and faith healer, died in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
1978Feb 20The cover of Time magazine was titled “The Computer Society” and featured a graphic of human bodies with heads of electronic gizmos.
1980Feb 20Alice Longworth Roosevelt (b.1884), youngest daughter of Pres. Theodore Roosevelt, died.
1981Feb 20Space shuttle Columbia cleared the final major hurdle to its maiden launch by firing fired its three engines in a 20-second test.
1982Feb 20Carnegie Hall in New York began $20 million renovations.
1985Feb 20Clarence Nash (80), voice of Donald Duck, died of leukemia, in Calif.
1987Feb 20The Unabomber placed a bomb in a parking lot behind CAAMS computer store in Salt Lake City. CAAMS vice president, Gary Wright was seriously injured.
1988Feb 20U.S. figure skater Brian Boitano won the gold medal in the men’s competition at the Winter Olympic Games in Calgary, Canada, with Brian Orser of Canada placing second.
1989Feb 20US agents and NYC police arrested 12 people and confiscated 100 lbs heroin at 3 homes in Queens.
1990Feb 20President Bush welcomed Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel to the White House, promising trade rewards for Prague’s moves toward democracy.
1991Feb 20Quincy Jones’ “Back on the Block” was named album of the year at the 33rd Annual Grammy Awards.
   
1992Feb 20Texas billionaire Ross Perot told CNN’s “Larry King Live” he would run for president if his name were placed on the ballot in all 50 states.
1993Feb 20Police in Liverpool, England, charged two 10-year-old boys with the abduction and slaying of toddler James Bulger, a crime that shocked the country and terrified parents. Jon Venables and Robert Thompson were later convicted.
1994Feb 20Pope John Paul II demanded juristic discrimination of homosexuals
1995Feb 20An American Marine, Sgt. Justin A. Harris, died in a helicopter crash during the evacuation of United Nations forces from Somalia.
1996Feb 20Republican Pat Buchanon won the New Hampshire primary over Bob Dole, Lamar Alexander and Steve Forbes 30.8 to 29.7 to 25.6 to 13.8%.
1997Feb 20The National Transportation Safety Board called for a speedup in the redesign of the rudder controls on Boeing 737s, citing potential problems in a pair of deadly crashes.
1998Feb 20The book “The Dream Palace of the Arabs” by Fouad Ajami (b.1945 in Lebanon) describes the emergence and collapse of the Arab enlightenment following WW I.
1999Feb 20The United States and five other nations agreed to extend by three days the deadline for a Kosovo peace agreement. NATO had threatened airstrikes against the Serbs if they did not reach an agreement with Albanian insurgents.
2000Feb 20The Fox TV network canceled the scheduled rebroadcast of its highly rated special “Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire?” after learning that the groom, Rick Rockwell, once was accused of hitting and threatening to kill an ex-girlfriend, accusations Rockwell denied.
2001Feb 20The government announced the arrest two days earlier of veteran FBI agent Robert Philip Hanssen, accused of spying for Russia for more than 15 years.
2002Feb 20President Bush, on the final leg of his Asian trip, arrived in China, where he urged President Jiang Zemin to respect religious freedoms.
2003Feb 20Pentagon officials said they will send over 1,700 US troops to the Philippines over the next few weeks to fight Muslim extremists.
2004Feb 20Pres. Bush bypassed the Senate and seated William H. Pryor Jr., Alabama attorney and abortion opponent, as an appeals court judge through 2005.
2005Feb 20In Florida Jeff Gordon won his third Daytona 500. Gordon was born in Vallejo, California, and raised in Pittsboro, Indiana.
2006Feb 20President George Bush, visiting Milwaukee, outlined his energy proposals to help wean the country off foreign oil.
2007Feb 20In a victory for President Bush, a divided federal appeals court ruled that Guantanamo Bay detainees could not use the U.S. court system to challenge their indefinite imprisonment.
2008Feb 20A US Navy SM-3 missile knocked out a dying US spy satellite. Officials said the intent was to destroy an onboard tank of toxic fuel.
2009Feb 20US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said up to 20 nations have offered to boost their civilian or military commitments to Afghanistan.
2010Feb 20It was reported that confidential US FDA reports have recommended the removal of Avandia, a drug used to treat Type 2 diabetes, off the market. Also know as rosiglitazone, it was linked to 304 deaths due to heart attacks and heart failures during the 3rd quarter of 2009. GlaxoSmithKline held that Avandia should continue to be an option.
2011Feb 20In Massachusetts a car driven by Aaron Deveau (17) slipped across the center line of a Haverhill street and crashed into a truck driven by Donald Bowley (55), who died 18 days later. Bowley’s girlfriend survived the crash. Car driver Aaron Deveau was convicted in 2012 for texting while driving and sentenced to a year in jail.
2012Feb 20The US and Mexico agreed to work together when drilling for oil and gas below their maritime border in the Gulf of Mexico.
   
2013Feb 20The US announced a strengthening of its efforts to prevent the theft of trade secrets. China was mentioned prominently.
2014Feb 20In Venezuela security forces faced off with demonstrators in streets blocked by burning barricades in several cities in an escalation of protests against President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government.
2014Feb 20Yemen police opened fire on a protest march on Khor Maksar late today, killing one demonstrator and wounding 12 others
Credit: Timelines of History  

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