TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – FEB 20
1513 Pope Julius II dies. He will lay in rest in a huge tomb sculptured by Michelangelo.
1725 New Hampshire militiamen partake in the first recorded scalping of Indians by whites in North America.
1792 The U.S. Postal Service is created.
1809 The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the power of the federal government is greater than any individual state in the Union.
An American appeals court has upheld an anti-terrorism provision that states that the Guantanamo Bay inmates will not be able to challenge their detention in the U.S. courts. The provision is a key element in a law for prosecuting the terror suspects that President Bush passed through Congress in 2006. The appeal court has said that civilian courts cannot determine whether detainees are being held illegally. The ruling is likely to go to the Supreme Court, which had thrown out the government’s original plans for trying detainees before military commissions.
1839 The U.S. Congress prohibited dueling in the District of Columbia.
1872 Silas Noble and J.P. Cooley patented the toothpick manufacturing machine.
1872 Luther Crowell received a patent for a machine that manufactured paper bags.
1877 Tchaikovsky’s ballet “Swan Lake” is premiered
1933 The U.S. House of Representatives completed congressional action on the amendment to repeal Prohibition.
1938 Hitler demands self-determination for Germans in Austria and Czechoslovakia.
1942 Lt. Edward O’Hare downed five Japanese bombers that were attacking the carrier Lexington, in April he was presented the Congressional Medal of Honor by President Roosevelt. He was shot down and killed on November 26th 1943 while leading the a night time fighter attack on a Japanese aircraft carrier. In 1949 the Chicago, Illinois Orchard Depot Airport was renamed O’Hare International Airport in his honor.
1959 The FCC applies the equal time rule to TV newscasts of political candidates.
1962 Mercury astronaut John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth.
1963 Moscow offers to allow on-site inspection of nuclear testing.
1985 Ireland a predominantly Catholic country after much debate allows contraceptives to be sold.
1987 A bomb exploded in a computer store in Salt Lake City, UT. The blast was blamed on the Unabomber.
1993 Two 10 year old boys have been charged with the abduction and murder of two-year-old James Bulger in Liverpool. The toddler went missing from the Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle last Friday and his body was found on a railway embankment on 14 February.
2003 In West Warwick, RI, 100 people were killed and more than 230 were injured when fire destroyed the nightclub The Station. The fire started with sparks from a pyrotechnic display being used by Jack Russel’s Great White. Ty Longley, guitarist for the band, was one of the victims in the fire.
2007 An American appeals court has upheld an anti-terrorism provision that states that the Guantanamo Bay inmates will not be able to challenge their detention in the U.S. courts. The provision is a key element in a law for prosecuting the terror suspects that President Bush passed through Congress in 2006. The appeal court has said that civilian courts cannot determine whether detainees are being held illegally. The ruling is likely to go to the Supreme Court, which had thrown out the government’s original plans for trying detainees before military commissions.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
