TODAY HISTORY LESSON: FEBRUARY 18
1478 George, the Duke of Clarence, who had opposed his brother Edward IV, is murdered in the Tower of London.
1519 Hernán Cortés leaves Cuba for the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico with 11 ships and 500 men
1685 Robert Cavelier, Sieur de LaSalle established Fort St. Louis at Matagorda Bay, and thus formed the basis for France’s claim to Texas.
1688 Quakers in Germantown, Pa. adopt the first formal antislavery resolution in America.
1787 Austrian emperor Jozef II bans children under 8 from labor
1841 1st continuous filibuster in US Senate began, lasting until March 11
1878 The bitter and bloody Lincoln County War begins with the murder of Billy the Kid’s mentor, Englishman rancher John Tunstall.
1885 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, is published in New York.
1907 600,000 tons of grain are sent to Russia to relieve the famine there.
1917 1st major strike of the Russian “February Revolution” starts at the giant Putilov factory in Petrograd
1927 US & Canada begin diplomatic relations
1930 Pluto is discovered Clyde W. Tombaugh discovered the dwarf planet when sifting through photographs taken a month earlier.
1943 The Gestapo arrests German resistance fighter Sophie Scholl and other White Rose activists
1945 U.S. Marines storm ashore at Iwo Jima.
1953 The first 3-D movie, Bwana Devil, opened in New York.
1954 East and West Berlin drop thousands of propaganda leaflets on each other after the end of a month long truce.
1954 The first Church of Scientology is established
1962 Robert F. Kennedy says that U.S. troops will stay in Vietnam until Communism is defeated.
1970 The Chicago Seven defendants were found innocent of conspiring to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic national convention.
1972 The California Supreme Court voids the death penalty.
1974 Randolph Hearst is to give $2 million in free food for the poor in order to open talks for his daughter Patty.
1977 The Space Shuttle takes off on its maiden flight. The “Enterprise” was mounted on a Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft; the first free flight took place on August 12, 1977
1998 In Russia, money shortages resulted in the shutting down of three plants that produced nuclear weapons.
1998 In Nevada, two white separatists were arrested and accused of plotting a bacterial attack on subways in New York City.
2001 FBI agent Robert Philip Hanssen was arrested and accused of spying for Russia for more than 15 years. He later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
2014 Ukrainian Revolution of 2014 begins as protesters, riot police and unknown shooters take part in violent events in the capital, Kiev, culminating after five days in the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
