0270 – Saint Valentine was a clergyman – either a priest or a bishop – in the Roman Empire who ministered to persecuted Christians. He was martyred and his body buried on the Via Flaminia on February 14, which has been observed as the Feast of Saint Valentine (Saint Valentine’s Day) since at least the eighth century. https://www.history.com/news/real-st-valentine-medieval
0842 – Charles II & Louis the German sign The Oaths of Strasbourg, a pact uniting their armies in fights against their older brother Lothar
1014 – The German king Henry of Bavaria recognizes Benedict VIII as the rightful pope and is crowned at Rome February 14
1349 – Approximately 2,000 Jews were burned to death by mobs or forcibly removed from the city of Strasbourg
1540 – Emperor Charles V enters Ghent without resistance, executes rebels
1556 – Archbishop Thomas Cranmer declared a heretic
1610 – Polish king Sigismund III, Forges Dimitri #2 & Romanov family sign covenant against czar Vasili Shushki
1670 – Roman Catholic emperor Leopold I chases Jews out of Vienna
1747 – Astronomer James Bradley presents his discovery of the wobbling motion of the Earth on its axis to the Royal Society, London
1761 – British troops occupy Fort Michilimackinac in Michigan
1778 – The United States Flag was formally recognized by a foreign naval vessel for the first time, when French Admiral Toussaint-Guillaume Picquet de la Motte rendered a nine gun salute to USS Ranger, commanded by John Paul Jones
1779 – James Cook was killed by Native Hawaiians near Kealakekua on the Island of Hawaii.
1803 – Chief Justice John Marshall declares that any act of U.S. Congress which conflicts with the Constitution is void.
1835 – The original Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is formed in Kirtland, Ohio
1849 – The first photograph of a U.S. President, while in office, was taken by Matthew Brady in New York City. President James Polk was the subject of the picture.
1859 – Oregon became the 33rd member of the Union.
1870 – Esther Morris appointed US’ first female in Justice of the Peace in South Pass City, Wyoming, after previous justice, R.S. Barr, resigned to protest passage of Wyoming Territory’s women’s suffrage amendment in 1869
1876 – A G Bell & Elisha Gray apply separately for telephone patents; Supreme Court eventually rules Bell rightful inventor
1895 – Oscar Wilde’s final play, “The Importance of Being Earnest,” opened at the St. James’ Theatre in London.
1896 – Austro-Hungarian Zionist Theodor Herzl publishes “Der Judenstaat” (The Jewish State), encouraging Jews to purchase land in Palestine
1899 – The U.S. Congress approved voting machines for use in federal elections.
1900 – Russia imposed tighter imperial control over Finland in response to an international petition for Finland’s freedom.
1903 – President Theodore Roosevelt signs bill into law establishing US Department of Commerce & Labor
1912 – Arizona was admitted as the 48th U.S. state.
1920 – The League of Women Voters was founded in Chicago. The first president of the organization was Maude Wood Park.
1924 – Thomas J. Watson Sr. renames the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) as International Business Machines (IBM)
1929 – The “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” took place in Chicago, IL. Seven gangsters who were rivals of Al Capone were killed.
1942 – The Polish resistance movement, the Home Army, is formed and will eventually become the largest resistance movement in occupied Europe
1945 – Peru, Paraguay, Chile and Ecuador joined the United Nations.
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 – The term “Knesset” is derived from the Hebrew name of an ancient Great Assembly: Anshei Knesset HaGedolah.
1956 – The XX Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union starts in Moscow. On the last night of the meeting, Premier Nikita Khruschev condemns Josef Stalin’s crimes in a secret speech
1957 – Georgia Senate unanimously approves Senator Leon Butts’ bill barring blacks from playing baseball with whites
1959 – $3.6 million heroin seizure in New York NY
1961 – Lawrencium, element 103, was first produced in Berkely, CA.
1962 – U.S. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy gave a tour of the White House on television.
1968 – The fourth Madison Square Gardens opened.
1971 – Richard Nixon installs secret taping system in White House
1978 – 1st “micro on a chip” patented by Texas Instruments
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.
1980 – Walter Cronkite announced his retirement from the “CBS Evening News.”
1983 – A 6-year-old boy became the first person to receive a heart and liver transplants in the same operation.
1985 – Cable News Network (CNN) reporter Jeremy Levin was freed. He had been being held in Lebanon by extremists.
1989 – Union Carbide agreed to pay $470 million to the government of India. The court-ordered settlement was a result of the 1984 Bhopal gas leak disaster.
1990 – Space probe Voyager 1 takes photograph of entire solar system
1994 – Andrei Chikatilo, a Russian serial killer was executed by shooting
1998 – U.S. authorities officially announced that Eric Rudolph was a suspect in a bombing of an abortion clinic in Alabama.
2000 – The spacecraft NEAR Shoemaker enters orbit around asteroid 433 Eros, the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid.
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 – Seven people were 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
2018 – Ex-student Nikolas Cruz shoots and kills 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Florida, before being captured
2019 – Colombian Juan Carlos Sánchez Latorre jailed for sexual abuse of 276 children in Barranquilla
2020 – More than 800,000 people displaced from their homes in north-western Syria amid assault by Syrian pro-government forces on last rebel stronghold
2021 – Guinea declares an Ebola epidemic after three deaths, its first deaths since 2016
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
