This Day in History

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February 26

The 59th running of The Daytona 500 will held today. The Daytona 500 has been NASCAR's season-opening race since 1982.


Events

1616 – Galileo Galilei is formally banned by the Roman Catholic Church from teaching or defending the view that the earth orbits the sun.

1815 – Napoleon Bonaparte escapes from Elba.

1909 – Kinemacolor, the first successful color motion picture process, is first shown to the general public at the Palace Theatre in London.

1914 – HMHS (His Majesty's Hospital Ship) Britannic, sister to the RMS Titanic, is launched at Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast.

1919 – President Woodrow Wilson signs an act of Congress establishing the Grand Canyon National Park.

1929 – President Calvin Coolidge signs an executive order establishing the 96,000 acre Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.

1966 – Apollo program: Launch of AS-201, the first flight of the Saturn IB rocket.

1979 – The Superliner railcar enters revenue service with Amtrak.

1987 – Iran–Contra affair: The Tower Commission rebukes President Ronald Reagan for not controlling his national security staff.

1993 – World Trade Center bombing: In New York City, a truck bomb parked below the North Tower of the World Trade Center explodes, killing six and injuring over a thousand.

1995 – The UK's oldest investment banking institute, Barings Bank, collapses after a rogue securities broker Nick Leeson loses $1.4 billion by speculating on the Singapore International Monetary Exchange using futures contracts.

2008 – The New York Philharmonic performs in Pyongyang, North Korea in the first event of its kind to take place in North Korea.

2013 – A hot air balloon crashed near Luxor, Egypt, killing 19 people in history's deadliest ballooning disaster.

Births

1564 – Christopher Marlowe, 1802 – Victor Hugo, 1829 – Levi Strauss, 1846 – Buffalo Bill Cody, 1852 – John Harvey Kellogg, 1866 – Herbert Henry Dow, 1882 – Husband E. Kimmel, 1887 – William Frawley, 1908 – Tex Avery, 1914 – Robert Alda, 1916 – Jackie Gleason, 1920 – Tony Randall, 1928 – Fats Domino, 1928 – Ariel Sharon, 1931 – Robert Novak, 1932 – Johnny Cash, 1945 – Mitch Ryder, 1950 – Jonathan Cain, 1953 – Michael Bolton, 1954 – Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, 1958 – Tim Kaine, 1971 – Erykah Badu, 1979 – Corinne Bailey Rae

Deaths

1903 – Richard Jordan Gatling, 1997 – David Doyle

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February 27

1560 – The Treaty of Berwick, which would expel the French from Scotland, is signed by England and the Lords of the Congregation of Scotland.

1782 – American Revolutionary War: The House of Commons of Great Britain votes against further war in America.

1801 – Pursuant to the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801, Washington, D.C. is placed under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Congress.

1812 – Poet Lord Byron gives his first address as a member of the House of Lords, in defense of Luddite violence against Industrialism in his home county of Nottinghamshire.

1860 – Abraham Lincoln makes a speech at Cooper Union in the city of New York that is largely responsible for his election to the Presidency.

1864 – American Civil War: The first Northern prisoners arrive at the Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia.

1870 – The current flag of Japan, , is first adopted as the national flag for Japanese merchant ships.

1900 – Second Boer War: In South Africa, British military leaders receive an unconditional notice of surrender from Boer General Piet Cronjé at the Battle of Paardeberg.

1900 – The British Labour Party is founded.

1902 – Second Boer War: Australian soldiers Harry "Breaker" Morant and Peter Handcock are executed in Pretoria after being convicted of war crimes.

1922 – A challenge to the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, allowing women the right to vote, is rebuffed by the Supreme Court of the United States in Leser v. Garnett.

1933 – Reichstag fire: Germany's parliament building in Berlin, the Reichstag, is set on fire; Marinus van der Lubbe, a young Dutch Communist claims responsibility. The Nazis used the fire to solidify their power and eliminate the communists as political rivals.

1940 – American biochemists Martin Kamen and Sam Ruben discovered carbon-14, which today is used extensively as the basis of the radiocarbon dating method to date archaeological and geological samples.

1943 – The Smith Mine #3 in Bearcreek, Montana, explodes, killing 74 men.

1951 – The Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution, limiting Presidents to two terms, is ratified.

1964 – The Government of Italy asks for help to keep the Leaning Tower of Pisa from toppling over.

1991 – Gulf War: U.S. President George H. W. Bush announces that "Kuwait is liberated".

1991 - James Brown was paroled after spending two years of a six-year prison sentence, imposed for resisting arrest after a car chase across two States.

2010 – An earthquake measuring 8.8 on the moment magnitude scale strikes central parts of Chile leaving over 500 victims, and thousands injured. The quake triggered a tsunami which struck Hawaii shortly after.

Births

272 – Constantine the Great, 1622 – Carel Fabritius, 1807 – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1891 – David Sarnoff (founded RCA), 1892 – William Demarest, 1902 – John Steinbeck, 1905 – Franchot Tone♪ ♫, 1910 – Kelly Johnson (co-founded Lockheed's Skunk Works), 1930 – Joanne Woodward, 1932 – Elizabeth Taylor, 1934 – Ralph Nader, 1938 – Jake Thackray♪ ♫, 1940 – Howard Hesseman, 1943 – Mary Frann, 1951 – Lee Atwater, 1954 – Neal Schon♪ ♫(Journey), 1957 – Timothy Spall, 1959 – Johnny Van Zant♪ ♫(Lynyrd Skynyrd), 1962 – Adam Baldwin, 1966 – Donal Logue, 1971 – Sara Blakely (founded Spanx), 1971 – Rozonda 'Chilli' Thomas♪ ♫(TLC), 1980 – Chelsea Clinton, 1981 – Josh Groban♪ ♫, 1992 – Ty Dillon

Deaths

1892 – Louis Vuitton, 1902 – Harry 'Breaker' Morant, 1936 – Ivan Pavlov, 1968 – Frankie Lymon♪ ♫(The Teenagers), 1977 – John Dickson Carr, 1980 – George Tobias (neighbor 'Abner Kravitz' on Bewitched), 1985 – Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., 1993 – Lillian Gish, 2002 – Spike Milligan, 2003 – Fred Rogers (Mister Rogers' Neighborhood), 2008 – William F. Buckley, Jr. (founded the National Review), 2011 – Frank Buckles (was the last surviving American WWI veteran), 2013 – Van Cliburn, 2013 – Dale Robertson, 2014 – Aaron Allston (game designer), 2015 – Leonard Nimoy

[xoxoxoBruce]

1782 – American Revolutionary War: The House of Commons of Great Britain votes against further war in America.

The lying bastards were just waiting for us to relax, until 1812.

[Carruthers]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

The lying bastards were just waiting for us to relax, until 1812.

I don't like it, sir. It's too quiet.

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February 28

Today is the last day of February.

Today is marked as Rare Disease Day, raising awareness of rare diseases on an international level.

Today is Shrove Tuesday.

Mardi Gras!!!


Events

202 BC – Coronation ceremony of Liu Bang as Emperor Gaozu of Han takes place thus initiating four centuries of Han dynasty rule over China.

1525 – Aztec king Cuauhtémoc is executed on the order of conquistador Hernán Cortés.

1784 – John Wesley charters the Methodist Church.

1827 – The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) is incorporated, becoming the first railroad in America offering commercial transportation of both people and freight.

1849 – Regular steamboat service from the west to the east coast of the United States begins with the arrival of the SS California in San Francisco Bay, four months 22 days after leaving New York Harbor.

1867 – Seventy years of Holy See–United States relations are ended by a Congressional ban on federal funding of diplomatic envoys to the Vatican and are not restored until January 10, 1984.

1885 – The American Telephone and Telegraph Company is incorporated in New York as the subsidiary of American Bell Telephone. (American Bell would later merge with its subsidiary.)

1900 – The Second Boer War: The 118-day "Siege of Ladysmith" is lifted.

1935 – DuPont scientist Wallace Carothers invents nylon.

1939 – The erroneous word "dord" is discovered in the Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition, prompting an investigation.

1940 – Basketball is televised for the first time.

1947 – February 28 Incident: In Taiwan, civil disorder is put down with the loss of an estimated 30,000 civilians.

1953 – James Watson and Francis Crick announce to friends that they have determined the chemical structure of DNA; the formal announcement takes place on April 25 following publication in April's Nature (pub. April 2).

1954 – The first color television sets using the NTSC standard are offered for sale to the general public.

1958 – A school bus in Floyd County, Kentucky hits a wrecker truck and plunges down an embankment into the rain-swollen Levisa Fork river. The driver and 26 children die in what remains one of the worst school bus accidents in U.S. history.

1968 - 25 year old Frankie Lymon, lead singer of The Teenagers, died of a heroin overdose in his grandmother's New York home. Lymon was on leave from a Georgia Army post at the time and was scheduled to record for Roulette Records the next day. He first hit the national charts in 1956 when he was just 13 with 'Why Do Fools Fall in Love'.

1975 – In London, an underground train fails to stop at Moorgate terminus station and crashes into the end of the tunnel, killing 43 people.

1977 - Ray Charles was attacked onstage by a man who tried to strangle him with a microphone cord. The man was a member of a group called Project Heavy, a community program for disadvantaged youths. They promised that the matter would be handled within the organization and no charges were filed.

1983 – The final episode of M*A*S*H airs, with almost 106 million viewers. It still holds the record for the highest viewership of a season finale.

1985 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army carries out a mortar attack on the Royal Ulster Constabulary police station at Newry, killing nine officers in the highest loss of life for the RUC on a single day.

1985 - David Byron, singer with Uriah Heep, died from an epileptic fit and liver disease, aged 38. Uriah Heep had a hit with 'Easy Livin' from the 1972 album Demons and Wizards.

1986 – Olof Palme, 26th Prime Minister of Sweden, is assassinated in Stockholm.

1991 – The first Gulf War ends.

1993 – The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents raid the Branch Davidian church in Waco, Texas with a warrant to arrest the group's leader David Koresh. Four ATF agents and five Davidians die in the initial raid, starting a 51-day standoff.

1997 – GRB 970228, a highly luminous flash of gamma rays, strikes the Earth for 80 seconds, providing early evidence that gamma-ray bursts occur well beyond the Milky Way.

1998 – First flight of the RQ-4 Global Hawk, the first unmanned aerial vehicle certified to file its own flight plans and fly regularly in U.S. civilian airspace.

2013 – Pope Benedict XVI resigns as the pope of the Catholic Church, becoming the first pope to do so since 1415.

Births

1882 – Geraldine Farrar♪ ♫, 1901 – Linus Pauling, 1906 – Bugsy Siegel, 1915 – Zero Mostel, 1919 – Alfred Marshall (founded Marshall's dept stores), 1923 – Charles Durning, 1929 – Frank Gehry, 1931 – Gavin MacLeod, 1939 – John Fahey, 1939 – Tommy Tune♪ ♫, 1940 – Aldo & Mario Andretti, 1940 – Joe South♪ ♫, 1942 – Brian Jones♪ ♫(The Rolling Stones), 1945 – Bubba Smith, 1948 – Mike Figgis, 1948 – Bernadette Peters, 1948 – Mercedes Ruehl, 1955 – Gilbert Gottfried, 1957 – John Turturro, 1957 – Cindy Wilson♪ ♫(The B-52s), 1958 – Jack Abramoff, 1961 – Rae Dawn Chong, 1969 – Robert Sean Leonard ('Dr. James Wilson' on House), 1969 – Patrick Monahan♪ ♫(Train), 1976 – Ali Larter (Final Destination and Final Destination 2), 1977 – Jason Aldean♪ ♫, 1994 – Jake Bugg♪ ♫

Deaths

468 – Pope Hilarius, 1916 – Henry James, 1967 – Henry Luce (co-founded Time Magazine), 1977 – Eddie "Rochester" Anderson (The Jack Benny Program), 1993 – Ruby Keeler, 2005 – Chris Curtis(The Searchers), 2007 – Billy Thorpe♪ ♫, 2009 – Paul Harvey, 2011 – Jane Russell, 2016 – George Kennedy (The Blue Knight, The Sons Of Katie Elder, Cool Hand Luke)

[xoxoxoBruce]

Today is the last day of February.

And the day we celebrated Brianna's birthday, which was actually the 29th. Miss you babe.

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March 1

1565 – The city of Rio de Janeiro is founded.

1642 – Georgeana, Massachusetts (now known as York, Maine), becomes the first incorporated city in the United States.

1692 – Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne and Tituba are brought before local magistrates in Salem Village, Massachusetts, beginning what would become known as the Salem witch trials.

1713 – The siege and destruction of Fort Neoheroka begins during the Tuscarora War in North Carolina, effectively opening up the colony's interior to European colonization.

1781 – The Continental Congress adopts the Articles of Confederation.

1815 – Napoleon returns to France from his banishment on Elba, start of the Hundred Days.

1845 – United States President John Tyler signs a bill authorizing the United States to annex the Republic of Texas.

1867 – Nebraska becomes the 37th U.S. state; Lancaster, Nebraska is renamed Lincoln and becomes the state capital.

1872 – Yellowstone National Park is established as the world's first national park.

1893 – Electrical engineer Nikola Tesla gives the first public demonstration of radio in St. Louis, Missouri.

1896 – Henri Becquerel discovers radioactive decay.

1901 – The Australian Army is formed.

1910 – The worst avalanche in United States history buries a Great Northern Railway train in northeastern King County, Washington, killing 96 people.

1932 – Charles Lindbergh's son is reportedly kidnapped.

1936 – The Hoover Dam is completed.

1946 – The Bank of England is nationalised.

1953 – Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin suffers a stroke and collapses; he dies four days later.

1954 – Nuclear weapons testing: The Castle Bravo, a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb, is detonated on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, resulting in the worst radioactive contamination ever caused by the United States.

1954 – Armed Puerto Rican nationalists attack the United States Capitol building, injuring five Representatives.

1961 – United States President John F. Kennedy establishes the Peace Corps.

1995 – Yahoo! is incorporated.

1998 – Titanic became the first film to gross over $1 billion worldwide.

2002 – U.S. invasion of Afghanistan: Operation Anaconda begins in eastern Afghanistan.

2006 – English-language Wikipedia reaches its one millionth article, Jordanhill railway station.

Births

1810 – Frédéric Chopin, 1904 – Glenn Miller, 1910 – David Niven, 1914 – Harry Caray, 1914 – Ralph Ellison, 1924 – Deke Slayton, 1926 – Pete Rozelle, 1927 – Harry Belafonte, 1935 – Robert Conrad, 1942 – Jerry Fisher, 1944 – Roger Daltrey, 1944 – Mike d'Abo, 1945 – Dirk Benedict, 1947 – Alan Thicke, 1952 – Nevada Barr, 1954 – Ron Howard, 1956 – Tim Daly, 1967 – George Eads, 1969 – Javier Bardem, 1983 – Lupita Nyong'o

Deaths

1620 – Thomas Campion, 1984 – Jackie Coogan, 1988 – Joe Besser, 1991 – Edwin H. Land, 2013 – Bonnie Franklin