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Today in History ~ February 20
Events1547 - King Edward VI of England is enthroned following death of Henry VIII
1673 - 1st recorded wine auction held (London)
1725 - 10 sleeping Indians scalped by whites in New Hampshire for scalp bounty [H]
1737 - French minister of Finance, Chauvelin, resigns
1745 - Bonnie Prince Charlie's troops occupy Fort August, Scotland
1746 - Bonnie Prince Charlie occupies Castle of Inverness
1792 - President Washington signed an act creating the U.S. Post Office.
1809 - Supreme Court ruled the power of the federal government is greater than that of any individual state.
1831 - Polish revolutionaries defeat Russians in battle of Growchow
1832 - Charles Darwin visits Fernando Noronha in Atlantic Ocean
1835 - Concepcion, Chile destroyed by earthquake; 5,000 die
1839 - Congress prohibits dueling in District of Columbia
1861 - Dept of Navy of Confederacy forms
1861 - Steeple of Chichester Cathedral blown down during a storm
1864 - Civil War battle of Olustee, Florida
1865 - M I T forms 1st US collegiate architectural school
1869 - Tenn Gov W C Brownlow declares martial law in Ku Klux Klan crisis
1872 - Hydraulic electric elevator patented by Cyrus Baldwin
1872 - Luther Crowell patents a machine that manufactures paper bags
1872 - Metropolitan Museum of Art opens (NYC)
1872 - Silas Noble & JP Cooley patent toothpick manufacturing machine
1877 - 1st cantilever bridge in US completed, Harrodsburg, Kentucky
1899 - Ill Tel & Tel granted franchise for Chicago freight tunnel system
1917 - Ammunitions ship explodes in Archangel harbor, about 1,500 die
1917 - Kern, Bolton & Wodehouse's musical "Oh, Boy!," premieres in NYC
1921 - Riza Khan Pahlevi seizes control of Iran
1922 - Vilinus, Lithuania, agrees to separate from Poland
1927 - Golfers in SC arrested for violating Sabbath
1931 - Congress allows California to build Oakland Bay Bridge
1932 - Japanese troops occupy Tunhua, China
1933 - House of Representatives completed congressional action on an amendment to repeal Prohibition.
1934 - Virgil Thomson's opera "4 Saints in 3 Acts" opens in NYC
1938 - Anthony Eden resigned as Britain's foreign secretary to protest the "appeasement" policy of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain toward Nazi Germany.
1941 - 1st transport of Jews to concentration camps leave Plotsk, Poland
1941 - Nazis order Polish Jews barred from using public transportation
1942 - Lt E H O'Hare single-handedly shoots down 5 Japanese heavy bombers [H]
1943 - Allied troops occupy Kasserine pass in Tunisia
1944 - During World War II, U.S. bombers began raiding German aircraft manufacturing centers in a series of attacks that became known as "Big Week."
1944 - Batman & Robin comic strip premieres in newspapers
1944 - US takes Eniwetok Island
1947 - Chemical mixing error causes explosion that destroys 42 blocks in LA
1947 - Lord Louis Mountbatten appointed last viceroy of India
1948 - Czechoslovakia's non-communist minister resigns
1950 - Dylan Thomas arrives in NYC for his 1st US poetry reading tour
1952 - "African Queen" opens at Capitol Theater in NYC
1953 - US Court of Appeals rules that Organized Baseball is a sport & not a business, affirming the 25-year-old Supreme Court ruling
1958 - Jockey Eddie Arcaro rides his 4,000th winner
1962 - John Glenn is 1st American to orbit Earth. He landed safely after three orbits in the spacecraft called Friendship 7 [H]
1965 - The "Ranger Eight" spacecraft crashed on the moon after sending back thousands of pictures of the lunar surface.
1968 - State troopers use tear gas to stop demonstration at Alcorn A & M
1971 - Maj General Idi Amin Dada appoints himself president of Uganda
1971 - National Emergency Warning Center in Colorado erroneously ordered U.S. radio and TV stations off the air; some stations heeded the alert, which was not lifted for about 40 minutes.
1975 - Margaret Thatcher elected leader of British Conservative Party
1981 - The space shuttle Columbia cleared the final major hurdle to its maiden launch as the spacecraft fired its three engines in a 20-second test.
1987 - Bomb blamed on Unabomber explodes by computer store in Salt Lake City
1988 - 500 die in heavy rains in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
1988 - Peter Kalikow purchases NY Post from Rupert Murdoch for $37.6 million
1991 - In the Persian Gulf War, Baghdad radio said President Saddam Hussein would be sending Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz back to Moscow with a reply to a Soviet peace plan.
1991 - The United States approved a $400 million loan guarantee to Israel for housing Soviet Jewish immigrants, but banned use of the money in the occupied territories.
1991 - Quincy Jones' "Back on the Block" was named album of the year at the 33rd Annual Grammy Awards.
1992 - Texas billionaire Ross Perot told CNN's "Larry King Live" he would run for president if his name were placed on the ballot in all 50 states.
1992 - Israeli armored ground forces withdrew from Lebanese villages following a one-day strike. Israel defended the incursion as necessary, but the U.N. secretary general protested the assault.
1994 - 3 Afghans take 70 Pakistani children hostage
1994 - Pope John Paul II demands juristic discrimination of homosexuals
1996 - Patrick Buchanan won the New Hampshire Republican primary by a slim margin over Bob Dole.
1996 - Rap singer Snoop Doggy Dogg and his former bodyguard were acquitted of murder in the 1993 shooting death of an alleged gang member.
1997 - The National Transportation Safety Board called for a speedup in the redesign of the rudder controls on Boeing 737's, citing potential problems suspected in a pair of deadly crashes.
1998 - Tara Lipinski, 15, of the United States became the youngest person ever to win an Olympic gold medal in figure skating.
2000 - The Fox TV network canceled the scheduled rebroadcast of its highly rated special "Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire?" after learning that the groom, Rick Rockwell, was once accused of hitting and threatening to kill an ex-girlfriend, accusations Rockwell denied.
2001 - The government announced the arrest two days earlier of veteran FBI agent Robert Philip Hanssen, accused of spying for Russia for more than 15 years.
2001 - Space shuttle Atlantis landed in the Mojave Desert after three straight days of bad weather prevented the ship from returning to its Florida home port.
Birthdays Today
1494 - Johan Friis, chancellor (Denmark, helped formed Lutheranism)
1507 - Gentile Bellini, Italian artist (Sultan Mohammed II)
1632 - Thomas Osborne, Duke of Leeds, English PM (1690-94)/founder (Tories)
1745 - Johann Peter Salomon, composer
1791 - Carl Czerny, Vienna Austria, pianist/composer (Schule der Virtuosen)
1808 - Daumier - Marseilles, France, artist
1874 - Mary Garden, Aberdeen, Scotland, opera star
1893 - Russel Crouse, journalist/novelist/playwright (Life with Father)
1898 - Enzo Ferrari, Italy, sportscar manufacturer (Ferrari)
1901 - Rene Jules Dubos, France, US microbiologist/author (Health & Disease)
1902 - Ansel Adams, photographer (1966 ASMP Award)
1903 - Karel Janacek, composer
1904 - Aleksei Kosygin (Soviet premier [1964])
1910 - Julian Trevelyan, English Surrealist painter/collage maker
1914 - John Daly (Emmy Award-winning reporter [1955]; TV host: What's My Line)
1915 - Chick (Melvin) Harbert (golfer: PGA Champion [1954])
1925 - Robert Altman (director: M*A*S*H, Nashville, Brewster McCloud)
1926 - Bob Richards (Olympic pole vaulter: only man to win 2 golds [1952, 1956] and a total of 3 medals [bronze, 1948] in this event)
1927 - Roy Cohn, lawyer, "grand inquisitor" (for Sen Joseph McCarthy)
1927 - Sidney Poitier (Academy Award-winning actor: Lilies of the Field [1963]; Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, To Sir With Love, Sneakers)
1928 - Elroy Face (baseball: Pittsburgh Pirates)
1929 - Amanda Blake (Beverly Neill) (actress: Gunsmoke: Miss Kitty; Betrayal, The Glass Slipper, Sabre Jet, Stars in My Crown)
1930 - Patricia Smith (actress: Spirit of St. Louis, Save the Tiger)
1934 - Bobby Unser (racing driver: Indianapolis 500 winner [1968, 1975, 1981])
1937 - Nancy Wilson (singer: (You Don't Know) How Glad I Am, Face It Girl, It's Over, What Are You Doing New Years?)
1937 - Roger Penske (race car driver, team owner: CART; speedway owner, operator of Cleaveland Grand Prix for Indy cars)
1940 - Christoph Eschenbach, Breslau, Germany, pianist/conductor
1941 - Buffy Sainte-Marie (singer:Now That the Buffalo Are Gone, I'm Gonna Be a Country Girl Again, Mister Can't You See, Up Where We Belong; songwriter: Universal Soldier, Until It's Time for You to Go; Married to Jack Nitzsche)
1942 - Phil Esposito (hockey: NHL MVP: Boston Bruins [1969, 1974])
1943 - Clyde Wright (baseball)
1946 - J. (Jerome) Geils (guitarist: group: The J. Geils Band: Looking for a Love, Give It to Me, Freeze-Frame, Centerfold)
1946 - Sandy Duncan (dancer, actress: Peter Pan, Pinnochio, Roots)
1947 - Peter Strauss (actor: Peter Gunn, Rich Man Poor Man, The Yearling)
1948 - Pierre Bouchard (hockey)
1949 - Jennifer O'Neill (actress: The Summer of '42, Cover-Up, Rio Lobo)
1951 - Edward Albert (actor: Mind Games, Butterflies Are Free, The Heist)
1953 - Riccardo Chailly, Milan Italy, conductor (West Berlin Symph Orch)
1954 - Patty Hearst(Shaw)(publishing heiress; kidnapee (Tanya); actress: Cry-Baby)
1955 - Kelsey Grammer, Virgin Islands, actor (Fraiser)
1959 - Joel Rifkind, NY serial killer
1970 - Cheyenne Brando, Papeete Tahiti, daughter of Marlon
1971 - Shalanda Burt, US murderess
Famous deaths
1194 - Tancredo of Lecce, King of Sicily
1626 - John Dowland, composer
1656 - James Ussher, Irish bible scholar/anglican archbishop, dies at 76
1667 - David ben Samuel Halevi, rabbi/author (Shulchan Aruch
1790 - Joseph II, Emperor of Holy Roman empire (patron of Mozart), dies at 48
1810 - Andreas Hofer, milt leader (fought Napoleon's France), executed at 42
1895 - Frederick Douglass, escaped slave, anti-slavery leader, dies at 77 in Washington D.C.
1920 - Robert E Peary, US pole explorer (North Pole, 6/4/1909), dies at 63
1961 - Percy Aldridge Grainger, Australian/US composer/pianist, dies at 78
1966 - Chester W Nimitz, US admiral (WW II), dies at 80
1969 - Ernest Ansermet, Swiss conductor/composer, dies at 85
1973 - Joseph Szigeti, Hungarian/US violinist, dies at 80
1976 - Kathryn Kuhlman, religious leader/faith healer
1980 - Alice Longworth Roosevelt, youngest daughter of Theodore, dies at 96
1985 - Clarence Nash, voice (Donald Duck), dies at 80 of leukemia, in Calif
1992 - Dick York, actor (Bewitched), dies of emphysema at 63
1993 - Ferruccio Lamborghini, Italian auto-designer (Miura)
If you have other Birthdays or events to add for this day please E-mail me
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