TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – FEB 15
399 BC Philosopher Socrates is sentenced to death by the city of Athens for corrupting the minds of the youth of the city and for impiety
1758 Mustard was advertised for the first time in America.
1764 St. Louis, Mo., was founded as a French fur-trading post.
1798 The first serious fist fight occurs in Congress.
1804 New Jersey becomes the last northern state to abolish slavery.
1869 Charges of treason against Jefferson Davis are dropped.
1879 President Rutherford Hayes signed a bill allowing female attorneys to argue cases before the Supreme Court.
1898 The U.S. battleship Maine blows up in Havana Harbor, killing 268 sailors and bringing hordes of Western cowboys and gunfighters rushing to enlist in the Spanish-American War.
1903 Morris and Rose Michtom, Russian immigrants, introduced the first teddy bear in America.
1933 U.S. President-elect Franklin Roosevelt escaped an assination attempt in Miami. Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak was killed in the attack.
1934 U.S. Congress passes the Civil Works Emergency Relief Act, allotting new funds for Federal Emergency Relief Administration.
1946 Royal Canadian mounted police arrest 22 as Soviet spies.
1950 Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung sign a mutual defense treaty in Moscow.
1961 Eighteen members of the U.S. figure skating team are lost in an airplane crash in Belgium.
1965 Canada’s maple leaf flag is raised for the first time.
1967 Thirteen U.S. helicopters are shot down in one day in Vietnam
1974 U.S. gas stations threaten to close because of federal fuel policies.
1989 The Soviet Union pulls out of Afghanistan Despite their military superiority, the Soviet and Afghan armies did not succeed in breaking the Mujahideen insurgents’ resistance.
1995 The FBI arrested Kevin Mitnick and charged him with cracking security in some of the nation’s most protected computers. He served five years in jail.
2002 U.S. President George W. Bush approved Nevada’s Yucca Mountain as a site for long-term disposal of radioactive nuclear waste.
2003 An estimated 6-11 million people around the world take to the streets to protest against war with Iraq
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
