Today in History

News Breakers is filing in some of the major occurrences as they were today in history. So feel free to have a retrospect of some of those events right at your fingertip.

YEAR	DAY	EVENT
1208	Feb 24	Francis of Assisi (26) decided to become a priest in Portiuncula, Italy.
1538	Feb 24	Ferdinand of Hapsburg and John Zapolyai, the two kings of Hungary, concluded the peace of Grosswardein.
1607	Feb 24	Claudio Monteverdi’s opera “Orfeo,” premiered at the Court Theater in Mantua.
1704	Feb 24	Marc-Antoine Charpentier, French composer (church music), died.
1813	Feb 24	Off Guiana, the American sloop Hornet sank the British sloop Peacock.
1839	Feb 24	A steam shovel was patented by William Otis, Philadelphia.
1848	Feb 24	King Louis-Philippe abdicated and the 2nd French republic was declared.
1855	Feb 24	US Court of Claims was formed for cases against the government.
1863	Feb 24	Arizona was organized as a territory.
1864	Feb 24	Battle of Tunnel Hill, GA (Buzzard’s Roost).
1876	Feb 24	Henrik Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt,” premiered in Oslo.
1885	Feb 24	Chester Nimitz, was born. He was the U.S. admiral who commanded naval forces in the Pacific during WWII.
1895	Feb 24	The Cuban War of Independence began.
1905	Feb 24	Russian Minister of Agriculture, Alexi Yermolov offered the Czar a new constitution.
1908	Feb 24	Japan officially agreed to restrict immigration to the U.S.
1912	Feb 24	The Jewish organization Hadassah was founded in New York City.
1916	Feb 24	Jules Verne’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” opened in New York.
1924	Feb 24	Mahatma Gandhi was released from jail.
1939	Feb 24	Hungary signed an anti-Communist pact with Italy, Germany and Japan.
1944	Feb 24	Col. Juan Peron, Argentine minister of war, staged a coup.
1945	Feb 24	American soldiers liberated the Philippine capital of Manila from Japanese control during World War II.
1946	Feb 24	Argentinians went to the polls to elect Juan D. Peron (50) their president. He held the office until 1955.
1955	Feb 24	The Cole Porter musical “Silk Stockings” opened at the Imperial Theater on Broadway for 461 performances.
1962	Feb 24	New York police seized $20 million worth of heroin.
1965	Feb 24	Beatles began filming “Help” in Bahamas.
1966	Feb 24	A military coup overthrew Ghana’s Pres. Kwame Nkrumah. He fled to Guinea.
1970	Feb 24	29 Swiss Army officers died in avalanche at Reckingen, Switzerland.
1971	Feb 24	Algeria nationalized French oil companies.
1976	Feb 24	H. Allen Smith (b.1907), author, TV host (Armchair Detective), died.
1980	Feb 24	The U.S. hockey team defeated Finland, 4-2, to clinch the gold medal at the Winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid, N.Y.
1981	Feb 24	Buckingham Palace announced the engagement of Britain’s Prince Charles to Lady Diana Spencer.
1988	Feb 24	In a 8-0 ruling that expanded legal protections for parody and satire, the US Supreme Court overturned a $200,000 award that the Rev. Jerry Falwell had won against “Hustler” magazine and publisher Larry Flynt.
1989	Feb 24	A cargo door blew off a United Air Lines Boeing 747-100 flying near Hawaii; the explosive release of pressure pulled nine passengers to their deaths.
1990	Feb 24	Johnnie Ray (63), fifties balladeer (Cry), died in Los Angeles of liver failure.
1992	Feb 24	Secretary of State James A. Baker III told a House subcommittee that Israel should stop building settlements in the occupied territories, or forfeit $10 billion in U.S. loan guarantees. A fourth round of Mideast peace talks began in Washington, D.C.
1993	Feb 24	At the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, Eric Clapton won six trophies, including album of the year for “Unplugged” and record and song of the year for “Tears in Heaven.”
1997	Feb 24	Secretary of State Madeleine Albright met in Beijing with Chinese officials, telling them to improve their country’s record on human rights or face condemnation by the United States and its allies.
1998	Feb 24	It was reported that German researchers used human fibroblast growth factor, FGF-1, to grow new blood vessels around clogged coronary arteries.
1999	Feb 24	The Senate voted overwhelmingly to give the nation’s military the biggest benefits increase since the early 1980s.
2000	Feb 24	In Arizona Salvatore Gravano, “Sammy the Bull,” was arrested for financing a drug ring led by Michael Papa, the founding member of a white supremacist gang.
2001	Feb 24	US Sec. of State Colin Powell met [in Jerusalem, in Cairo] with Igor Ivanor, the Russian foreign minister, and pledged a constructive approach to dealing with Iraq, missile defenses and other points of policy discord.
2002	Feb 24	The XIX Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City came to a close. In one of the last events Canada beat the US hockey team 5-2 for the gold. Cross-country skiers from Spain and Russia were stripped of gold medals for failing drug tests.
2003	Feb 24	Seeking U.N. approval for war against Iraq, the United States, Britain and Spain submitted a resolution to the Security Council declaring that Saddam Hussein had missed “the final opportunity” to disarm peacefully and indicating that he had to face the consequences.
2004	Feb 24	Pres. Bush called for a constitutional amendment to ban marriage between members of the same sex.
2005	Feb 24	In southeastern Afghanistan Taliban insurgents launched 3 separate attacks, killing 9 Afghan troops and wounding an American soldier while sustaining heavy casualties themselves.
2006	Feb 24	Mitchell Wade, a US defense contractor, pleaded guilty to conspiring with former Rep. Randy Cunningham of San Diego County with bribes and help in evading taxes in exchange for over $150 million in government contracts since 2002.
2006	Feb 24	Rodney MacDonald (34), Canada’s youngest premier, was sworn into office in Nova Scotia.
2007	Feb 24	In the 27th annual Razzie Awards the film “Basic Instinct 2″ was named worst picture of the year.
2008	Feb 24	Pearl Cornioley, British spy (nom de guerre was Genevieve Touzalin), died. She parachuted into France during WWII posing as a cosmetics saleswoman to deliver coded messages to Resistance members.
2009	Feb 24	Pres. Obama addressed the US Congress and the American people to tap the deep well of American optimism. Themes of responsibility, accountability and, above all, national community rang throughout an address carefully balanced by the gravity of its times. Republican leaders calling his plan irresponsible and certain to increase taxes and federal debt.
2010	Feb 24	The US got help from Europe in its troubled drive to shut down Guantanamo Bay, as Spain accepted a former inmate from the prison for terror suspects and the tiny Balkan nation of Albania took in three more.
2011	Feb 24	A US federal jury convicted Mohammad Reza Vaghari (43), of Broomall Pa., of sending the products to Iran by way of the United Arab Emirates.
2012	Feb 24	In West Virginia a judge approved a settlement in a class-action suit by residents of Nitro who said Monsanto had polluted their area by burning dioxin wastes left over from the production of Agent Orange.
2013	Feb 24	Cuba’s parliament reconvened with new membership. Raul Castro announced that he will step down in 2018 following a final five-year term, for the first time putting a date on the end of the Castro era. He tapped rising star Miguel Diaz-Canel (52) as his top lieutenant and first in the line of succession.
2014	Feb 24	Harold Ramis (b.1944), American writer, director and actor, died at his Chicago-area home. His film work included Meatballs” (1979), “Caddyshack” (1980), “Ghostbusters”  (1984), “Groundhog Day” (1993), and “Analyze This” (1999).

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