TODAY HISTORY LESSON: FEBRUARY 14
Happy Valentine’s Day! Today is St. Valentine’s Day, the feast day of two Christian martyrs named Valentine: one a priest and physician, the other the Bishop of Terni. Both are purported to have been beheaded on this day. The custom of sending handmade ‘valentines’ to one’s beloved became popular during the 17th century and was first commercialized in the United States in the 1840s.
1014 Pope Benedict VIII crowns Henry II Holy Roman Emperor
1076 Pope Gregory VII excommunicates Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV (for the 1st time)
1349 2,000 Jews are burned at the stake in Strasbourg, Germany.
1400 The deposed Richard II is murdered in Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire.
1778 The Stars and Stripes was carried to a foreign port, in France, for the first time. It was aboard the American ship Ranger.
1803 Moses Coates received a patent for the apple parer.
1848 James Polk becomes the first U.S. President to be photographed in office by Matthew Brady.
1859 Oregon is admitted as the thirty-third state.
1876 Alexander G. Bell & Elisha Gray apply separately for telephone patents Supreme Court eventually rules Bell rightful inventor
1899 The U.S. Congress approved voting machines for use in federal elections.
1903 The U.S. Department of Commerce and Labor was established.
1904 The “Missouri Kid” is captured in Kansas.
1912 Arizona becomes the 48th state in the Union.
1920 The League of Women Voters is formed in Chicago in celebration of the imminent ratification of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote.
1929 Chicago gang war between Al Capone and George “Bugs” Moran culminates with several Moran confederates being gunned down in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
1946 ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was unveiled. The device, built at the University of Pennsylvania, was the world’s first general purpose electronic computer.
1949 The Knesset, the parliament of Israel, convenes for the first time
1949 The United States charges the Soviet Union with interning up to 14 million in labor camps.
1955 A Jewish couple loses their fight to adopt Catholic twins as the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to rule on state law.
1957 Georgia Senate unanimously approves Senator Leon Butts’ bill barring blacks from playing baseball with whites
1965 Malcolm X’s home is firebombed. No injuries are reported.
1971 Richard Nixon installs secret taping system in the White House
1979 Armed guerrillas attack the U.S. embassy in Tehran.
1979 Adolph Dubs, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, was kidnapped in Kabul by Muslim extremists. He was killed in a shootout between his abductors and police.
1985 Hostage CNN reporter Jeremy Levin is released in Beirut
1989 Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini charges that Salman Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses, is blasphemous and issues an edict (fatwa) calling on Muslims to kill Rushdie
1998 U.S. authorities officially announced that Eric Rudolph was a suspect in a bombing of an abortion clinic in Alabama.
2001 The Kansas Board of Education reversed its 1999 ruling and restored evolution to the state’s science curriculum.
2002 The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Shays-Meehan bill. The bill, if passed by the U.S. Senate, would ban millions of unregulated money that goes to the national political parties.
2003 Dolly the sheep is put to death. Dolly, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult, had shown signs of premature aging and contracted various diseases.
2005 Former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri is assassinated
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
