Today in History

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Today in History

By Correspondent

 
YEARDAYEVENT
309Feb 16Pamphilus Caesarea, Palestinian scholar, martyr, was beheaded.
600Feb 16Pope Gregory the Great decreed “God bless You” as the religiously correct response to a sneeze.
923Feb 16Abu Dja’far Mohammed Djarir al-Tabari (83), Islamic historian, died.
1075Feb 16Ordericus Vitalis, French monk, historian, poet, was born.
1270Feb 16In the Karusa Ice war in Estonia, Lithuanian forces defeated the Livonian Knights of the Cross.
1497Feb 16Philipp Melanchthon, German Protestant reformer (Augsburgse Confessie), was born.
1519Feb 16Gaspard de Coligny, Huguenot leader, French admiral, was born.
1559Feb 16Pope Paul IV called for the overthrow of sovereigns supporting heresy.
1568Feb 16A sentence of the Holy Office condemned all the inhabitants of the Netherlands to death as heretics. From this universal doom only a few persons, especially named, were acquitted.
1620Feb 16Frederick William, founder of Brandenburg-Prussia, was born.
1641Feb 16English king Charles I accepted the Triennial Act.
1677Feb 16Earl of Shaftesbury was arrested and confined to the London Tower.
1740Feb 16Giambattista Bodoni, printer, typeface designer (Bodoni), was born in Saluzzo, Italy.
1741Feb 16Benjamin Franklin’s General Magazine (2nd US Mag) began publishing.
1751Feb 16Thomas Gray’s poem “Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard” was 1st published.
1760Feb 16Cherokee Indians held hostage at Fort St. George, SC, were killed in revenge for Indian attacks on frontier settlements.
1779Feb 16William Boyce, English organist, composer (Cathedral Music), died.
1804Feb 16Lt. Stephen Decatur attacked Tripoli, where pirates held the USS Philadelphia. Decatur and 76 volunteers, aboard the captured Intrepid, attempted to recapture the Philadelphia, which caught fire, exploded and sank. Decatur and his crew escaped.
1808Feb 16The Peninsular War began when Napoleon ordered a large French force into Spain under the pretext of sending reinforcements to the French army occupying Portugal.
1812Feb 16Henry Wilson, 18th U.S. Vice President (Grant 1873-1875), was born.
1822Feb 16Francis Galton (d.1911), English scientist, was born. He was one of the first moderns to present a carefully considered eugenics program.
1823Feb 16John Daniel Imboden (d.1895), Brig General (Confederate Army), was born.
1826Feb 16Franz von Holstein, composer, was born.
1829Feb 16Francois-Joseph Gossec (95), Belgian-French composer (Messe de Morts), died.
1838Feb 16Henry Adams, was born. He was the son and grandson of the presidents who became a U.S. historian and wrote “The Education of Henry Adams.”
1845Feb 16Quinton Hogg, English philanthropist, was born.
1847Feb 16Ludwig Philipp Scharwenka, German composer (Album Polonaise), was born.
1852Feb 16Charles Taze Russell (d.1916) was born in Pittsburgh. In 1872 Russell abandoned the Adventist movement and formed the International Bible Students Association, which was later named Jehovah’s Witnesses (1931).
   
1854Feb 16Franz Liszt’s symphony “Orpheus,” premiered.
1857Feb 16Elisha Kent Kane (b.1820), US Navy surgeon and Arctic explorer, died of a stroke in Cuba.
1862Feb 16During the Civil War, some 14,000 Confederate soldiers  surrendered at Fort Donelson, Tenn. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s victory earned him the nickname “Unconditional Surrender Grant.” Nathan Bedford Forrest escaped.
1864Feb 16Battle of Mobile, Al., operations by Union Army.
1865Feb 16Columbia, S.C., surrendered to Federal troops.
1868Feb 16San Francisco police have recently been investigating the proceedings of a gang of thieving boys who denominate themselves and are known to the world as the Hoodlum Gang.
1868Feb 16The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks (B.P.O.E.) was organized in New York City by members of the theatrical profession. Later, men in other professions were permitted to join the social organization. The letters E.L.K. are repeated in the titles of some of its officers, such as Esteemed Leading Knight and Esteemed Loyal Knight..
1870Feb 16The clipper ship Cutty Sark left London on its first voyage, proceeding around Cape Hope to Shanghai 3 1/2 months later. The ship made only eight voyages to China in the tea trade, as steam ships replaced sail on the high seas.
1876Feb 16George Macauley Trevelyan (d.1962), English historian (Giuseppi Garibaldi), was born: “’History repeats itself’ and ”˜History never repeats itself’ are about equally true … We never know enough about the infinitely complex circumstances of any past event to prophesy the future by analogy.”
1878Feb 16The silver dollar became US legal tender.
1883Feb 16“Ladies Home Journal” began publishing.
1886Feb 16Van Wyck Brooks (d.1963), American biographer, critic and literary historian, was born. “Nothing is so soothing to our self-esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us.”
1892Feb 16The opera “Werther” premiered at the Imperial Theatre Hofoper in Vienna. It was composed in 1887 by French composer Jules Massenet based on Goethe’s 1774 novel “The Sorrows of Young Werther.”
1903Feb 16Edgar Bergen, radio ventriloquist and comedian, was born in Chicago.
1903Feb 16At Pokegama, Minnesota, temperatures fell to a record state low of 59 degrees below zero.
1904Feb 16George Keenan, U.S. diplomat, was born. He became a historian and proposed the policy of “containment” for dealing with the Soviet Union.
1905Feb 161st US Esperanto club was organized in Boston. Dr. Lazarus Ludwig Zamenhof (1859-1917), a Polish ophthalmologist, invented the artificial language in 1885.
1907Feb 16Fernando Previtali, composer, was born.
1909Feb 16The SF Citizens Health Committee declared SF free of bubonic plague.
1909Feb 161st subway car with side doors went into service in NYC.
1909Feb 16Serbia mobilized against Austria and Hungary.
1915Feb 16Emil Waldteufel, [Charles Levy], French composer (Estudiantina), died.
1916Feb 16Russian troops conquered Erzurum, Armenia.
1917Feb 16The 1st Madrid synagogue in 425 years opened.
1918Feb 16The Council of Lithuania declared the independence of the State of Lithuania. The council also declared that the foundations of the state would be determined by a Constituent Assembly to be elected by the inhabitants on the basis of universal, equal and secret suffrage. Independence lasted until World War II. It again declared independence in 1990.
1919Feb 16Sir Mark Sykes (b.1879), best known for the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement dividing up the Middle East in anticipation of the fall of the Ottoman Empire, died of Spanish flu in Paris. In 2008 an Oxford team took tissue samples before reburying his body in its grave in East Yorkshire. They hoped to find clues that might help fight a future global influenza outbreak.
1920Feb 16Patty Andrews, vocalist (Andrews Sisters), was born in Minneapolis.
1922Feb 16Geraint Evans, Welsh opera baritone (Knaben Wunderhorn, Falstaff), was born.
1932Feb 16The 1st patent for a tree was issued to James Markham for a peach tree.
1934Feb 16Thousands of Socialists battled Communists at a rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden.
1935Feb 16Brian Bedford, actor (Anthony-Coronet Blue), was born in England.
1935Feb 16Salvatore Bono (d.1998), vocalist (Sonny & Cher), (Rep-R-Ca, 1995-98), was born in Detroit.
1936Feb 16Spanish Frente Popular (People’s Front) won elections.
1937Feb 16Wallace H. Carothers, a research chemist for Du Pont who invented nylon, received a patent for the synthetic fiber. It would replace silk in a number of products and reduce costs.  In 2000 Susannah Handley authored “Nylon: The Story of a Fashion Revolution.”
1938Feb 16The US Federal Crop Insurance program was authorized.
1940Feb 16The British destroyer HMS Cossack rescue British seamen from a German prison ship, the Altmark, in a Norwegian fjord.
1941Feb 16The Italians lost their last position in the Sudan.
1941Feb 16Kim Jong Il, son of Kim Il Sung, was born in the far East of the Soviet Union. He took over leadership of North Korea from his father in 1994.
1942Feb 16German submarines attacked an Aruba oil refinery and sank the tanker Pedernales.
1943Feb 16Withdrawing Africa Corps reached the Mareth-line in North Africa.
   
1943Feb 16Sign on Munich facade: “Out with Hitler! Long live freedom!” was posted by the “White Rose” student group. They were caught on 2/18 and beheaded on 2/22.
1943Feb 16The Red army conquered Kharkov.
1944Feb 16Richard Ford, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, was born. His work included “The Sportswriter” and “Independence Day.”
1945Feb 16American paratroopers landed on Corregidor during World War II, in a campaign to liberate the Philippines.
1946Feb 16The 1st commercially designed helicopter was tested at Bridgeport, Ct.
1948Feb 16NBC-TV began airing its first nightly newscast, “The Camel Newsreel Theatre,” which consisted of “20th Century Fox- Movietone News” newsreels.
1949Feb 16Chaim Weitzman was elected the 1st president of Israel. The title was invented by PM David Ben-Gurion to honor and to sideline veteran Zionist leader Chaim Weitzman.
1951Feb 16Stalin contended that the U.N. was becoming the weapon of aggressive war.
1952Feb 16The FBI arrested 10 members of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina.
1952Feb 16Jan Kerouac (d.1996), novelist daughter of Jack Kerouac, was born. Her books included “Baby Driver” (1981) and “Trainsong” (1988).
1956Feb 16Britain abolished the death penalty.
1957Feb 16LeVar Burton, (Roots, Star Trek Next Generation), was born in Landstuhl, Germany.
1957Feb 16A U.S. flag flew over an outpost in Wilkes Land, Antarctica.
1959Feb 16Leonard Spigelgass’ “Majority of One,” premiered in NYC.
1959Feb 16The US House Committee on Un-American Activities has charged that an “elite corps” of Communist lawyers is promoting the party’s cause in the courts, Congress and government agencies. A committee report dealt with the activities of 39 lawyers, who were among more than 100 lawyers identified as Communists in sworn testimony before the committee in the past decade.
1959Feb 16Fidel Castro took the oath as Cuban premier in Havana after the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista.
1960Feb 16US nuclear submarine USS Triton set off on underwater round-world trip.
1961Feb 16The United States launched the “Explorer Nine” satellite.
1962Feb 16Todd Gitlin (b.1943), Harvard activist, helped organize a national anti-war rally in Washington, DC. Some 8,000 students turned up. Boston SANE & the fledgling SDS organized the first anti-nuclear march.
1963Feb 161st round-trip swim of Straits of Messina, Italy, was made by Mary Revell of US.
1964Feb 16 The Beatles made their 2nd appearance on the “Ed Sullivan Show” from the Deauville Hotel in Miami.
1965Feb 16Four persons were held in a plot to blow up the Statue of Liberty, Liberty Bell and the Washington Monument.
1966Feb 16The World Council of Churches being held in Geneva, urged immediate peace in Vietnam.
1968Feb 16America’s first 911 emergency telephone system was inaugurated in Haleyville, Ala.
1970Feb 16In SF a homemade bomb exploded outside the police Park Station on Waller St. Sgt. Brian McDonnell (44) died 2 days later and 8 other officers were injured. Black Panthers were suspected, but a later investigation suggested it was the work of the Weather Underground.
1972Feb 16Wilt Chamberlain became the 1st NBA player to score 30,000 points.
1977Feb 16Janani Luwum, the Anglican archbishop of Uganda, and two other men were killed in what Ugandan authorities said was an automobile accident.
1978Feb 16The 1st Computer Bulletin Board System was Ward & Randy’s CBBS in Chicago.
1978Feb 16China and Japan signed a $20 billion trade pact, which was the most important move since the 1972 resumption of diplomatic ties.
1979Feb 16Nematollah Nassiri (b.1911), Iranian general and head of the Savak intelligence agency during the rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was executed.
1980Feb 16Eric Heiden skated 5k in 7:02.29, an Olympic Record.
1982Feb 16In France Magdalena Kopp, lover of Carlos the Jackal, aka Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, was captured by French officials.
1983Feb 16In India a bomb wounded 13 people in the latest election violence in the northeastern state of Assam. The assassination pushed the death toll from 15 days of violence to at least 217 people.
1986Feb 16Mario Soares (b.1924), Socialist, was elected Portugal’s 1st civilian president in the 2nd round of elections.
1987Feb 16John Demjanjuk (66), a retired auto worker from Ohio, went on trial in Jerusalem, accused of being “Ivan the Terrible,” a guard at the Treblinka concentration camp. He was convicted, but the Israeli Supreme Court overturned the ruling.
1988Feb 16Richard Wade Farley gunned down 7 people at ESL Corp. during an office rampage in Sunnyvale, Calif. Farley was later convicted of murder and sentenced to death.
1989Feb 16Investigators in Lockerbie, Scotland, said a bomb hidden inside a radio-cassette player was what brought down Pan Am Flight 103 the previous December, killing all 259 people aboard and 11 on the ground.
1990Feb 16Former President Reagan began two days of giving a videotaped deposition in Los Angeles for the Iran-Contra trial of former national security adviser John Poindexter.
1991Feb 16Tonya Harding won the US female Figure Skating championship.
1992Feb 16Two days before the New Hampshire primary, five Democratic presidential candidates debated on CNN, directing most of their criticism at President George H.W. Bush.
1993Feb 16Prices fell as Wall Street reacted unfavorably to President Clinton’s economic austerity plan outlined in a White House address the night before.
1994Feb 16Figure skaters Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan encountered each other at the Winter Olympic Games in Norway before posing for the U.S. team photograph.
1995Feb 16Four people were killed when tornadoes tore through rural north Alabama.
1996Feb 16World chess champion Garry Kasparov won for the second time against IBM supercomputer “Deep Blue” in the fifth game of their match in Philadelphia (Kasparov had drawn twice and lost once.
1997Feb 16U.S. Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., the chairman of a House committee investigating campaign fund-raising activities, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that his probe would be far broader than originally anticipated.
1998Feb 16Mr. Jefferson, the 1st cloned calf, was born in Virginia.
1999Feb 16In LA a number of possessions of O.J. Simpson were auctioned off to cover his 1997 legal suit. A conservative Christian group purchased his Hall of Fame plaque and other memorabilia and burned it the following day
2000Feb 16In NYC Lucy Edwards (41), a former bank of New York executive, and her husband, Peter Berlin (46), pleaded guilty to laundering over $7 billion from Russian bankers in exchange for $1.8 million.
   
2001Feb 16In Serbia Kosovo militants killed 9 Serbs and injured 43 with a roadside bomb that blew up a bus in northeastern Kosovo.
2002Feb 16In Noble, Ga., officials found 334 decomposing bodies at the Tri-State Crematory, where the furnace had not worked for years. Ray Brent Marsh (28), manager of the family operation, was arrested and charged with 5 counts of theft by deception. In 2004 families of the dead settled a class-action suit for $80 million. Marsh pleaded guilty and was sentenced to twelve years in prison, with credit for the time he had served before making bond, plus seventy-five years of probation.
2003Feb 16In Belgium thieves over the weekend emptied more than 100 vaults at a diamond trading center in what officials said might be the largest theft ever in Antwerp.
2004Feb 16In Australia rioters set fire to a train station and pelted police with gasoline bombs in an Aboriginal ghetto in Sydney during a nine-hour street battle that began after a teenager died, allegedly while being chased by officer.
2005Feb 16Syria and Iran announced a united front amid perceived US threats.
2006Feb 16A human rights group said that homophobic rhetoric has escalated in Poland since a socially conservative party came to power, threatening the rights of gays and lesbians.
2007Feb 16The US House of Representatives voted 246-182 for a non-binding resolution opposing Pres. Bush’s plan to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq. 17 Republicans voted in favor.
2008Feb 16US President George W. Bush in Benin, opening a five-country Africa tour,  stepped up pressure on Kenyan leaders to accept a power-sharing deal to end their country’s deadly political crisis.
2009Feb 16Secretary of State Hillary Clinton launched her Asia tour in Japan calling US-Pacific ties “indispensable” for curbing problems like climate change, the global financial crisis and nuclear weapons.
2010Feb 16In New Jersey Shamsid-Din Abdul-Raheem (21) threw his 3-month-old daughter off the Garden State Parkway Driscoll Bridge after the mother filed a restraining order against him. The body of the infant was found on April 24.
2011Feb 16Florida Gov. Rick Scott rejected plans for a high-speed rail link between Tampa and Orlando, turning down over $2 billion in federal money.
2012Feb 16In Long Beach, Ca., an immigration agent shot and injured another agent and was then killed by a third colleague in a federal building.
   
2013Feb 16Italian sailor Giovanni Soldini led an 8-member team of the Maserati to a record 47-day trip from NYC around Cape Horn to San Francisco, beating a 1998 monohull record.
2014Feb 16A winter storm hit New England overnight with more than a foot of snow in parts of Massachusetts. Thousands on Cape cod were left without power.
Credit: Timelines of History 

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