TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – FEB 15
399 BC Philosopher Socrates is sentenced to death by the city of Athens for corrupting the minds of the youth of the city and for impiety
1764 St. Louis, Mo., was founded as a French fur-trading post.
1768 1st mustard manufactured in America advertised, Philadelphia
1804 New Jersey becomes the last northern state to abolish slavery.
1869 Charges of treason against Jefferson Davis are dropped.
1879 President Rutherford Hayes signed a bill allowing female attorneys to argue cases before the Supreme Court.
1898 The U.S. battleship Maine blows up in Havana Harbor, killing 268 sailors and bringing hordes of Western cowboys and gunfighters rushing to enlist in the Spanish-American War.
1903 1st Teddy Bear introduced in America, made by Morris & Rose Michtom
1925 The London Zoo announces it will install lights to cheer up fogged-in animals.
1933 Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak was killed in an assassination attempt on president-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in Miami.
1934 U.S. Congress passes the Civil Works Emergency Relief Act, allotting new funds for Federal Emergency Relief Administration.
1946 Royal Canadian mounted police arrest 22 as Soviet spies.
1950 Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung sign a mutual defense treaty in Moscow.
1956 Pirates & Kansas City A’s cancel an exhibition game in Birmingham AL, because of local ordinance barring black from playing against white
1961 Eighteen members of the U.S. figure skating team are lost in an airplane crash in Belgium.
1965 Canada’s maple leaf flag is raised for the first time.
1974 U.S. gas stations threaten to close because of federal fuel policies.
1978 Escaped mass murderer Ted Bundy recaptured, Pensacola FL
1989 Israel attacks border strip Taba near Egypt
1989 More than 100,000 Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan almost 10 years after the USSR invaded the country.
1990 Baseball owners lock out players
2001 First draft of the complete human genome is published in the journal “Nature”
2003 The largest peace demonstration in history takes place Up to 30 million people in 600 cities around the world protested against the Iraq War.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
