TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – FEB 14
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 “Stars & Stripes” arrives in foreign port for 1st time (France)
1779 American Loyalists are defeated by Patriots at Kettle Creek, Ga.
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 US Congress begins using voting machines
1903 US Dept of Commerce & Labor established
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 St Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago, 7 gangsters killed, allegedly on Al Capone’s orders
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.
1955 A Jewish couple loses their fight to adopt Catholic twins as the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to rule on state law.
1957 The Georgia state senate outlaws interracial athletics.
1971 Richard Nixon installs secret taping system in the White House
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 Authorities in the United States announce that Eric Robert Rudolph is a suspect in an Alabama abortion clinic bombing.
2001 The Kansas Board of Education reversed its 1999 ruling and restored evolution to the state’s science curriculum.
2005 Seven people are killed and 151 wounded in a series of bombings by suspected Al-Qaeda-linked militants that hit the Philippines’ Makati financial district in Metro Manila, Davao City, and General Santos City.
2008 Northern Illinois University shooting: a gunman opened fire in a lecture hall of the DeKalb County, Illinois university resulting in 24 casualties; 6 fatalities (including gunman) and 18 injured.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
