History Thread...

[1776]

https://www.wral.com/video/mystery-of-abraham-lincoln-s-birth-leads-back-to-nc/18188269/
 

Similar video on same topic.

[CMRivdogs]

 

[CMRivdogs]

February 13

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On February 13 1987 –Detroit Tigers pitcher Jack Morris is awarded a $1.85 million salary by arbitrator Richard Bloch, the highest amount awarded to date through the salary arbitration process.

Morris will go 18-11 and finish 9th in Cy Young Award, he will help the Tigers will dramatically win the AL East.

https://thisdayinbaseball.com/detroit-tigers-pitcher-jack-morris-is-awarded-a-1-85-million-salary-by-arbitrator-richard-bloch/

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history

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On the evening of February 13, 1945, a series of Allied firebombing raidsbegins against the German city of Dresden, reducing the “Florence of the Elbe” to rubble and flames, and killing roughly 25,000 people.

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1689 

Following Britain’s bloodless Glorious Revolution, Mary, the daughter of the deposed king, and William of Orange, her husband, are proclaimed joint sovereigns of Great Britain under Britain’s new Bill of Rights.

William, a Dutch prince, married Mary, the daughter of the future King James II, in 1677. After James’ succession to the English throne in 1685, the Protestant William kept in close contact with the opposition to the Catholic king. After the birth of an heir to James in 1688, seven high-ranking members of Parliament invited William and Mary to England. William landed at Torbay in Devonshire with an army of 15,000 men and advanced to London, meeting no opposition from James’ army, which had deserted the king. James himself was allowed to escape to France, and in February 1689 Parliament offered the crown jointly to William and Mary, provided they accept the Bill of Rights.

The Bill of Rights, which greatly limited royal power and broadened constitutional law, granted Parliament control of finances and the army and prescribed the future line of royal succession, declaring that no Roman Catholic would ever be sovereign of England. The document also stated that Englishmen possessed certain inviolable civil and political rights, a political concept that was a major influence in the composition of the U.S. Bill of Rights, composed almost exactly a century later.

1923...Chuck Yeager, the first man to break the sound barrier was born in Myra, West Virginia

Edited February 13 by CMRivdogs

[CMRivdogs]

February 14

https://www.history.com

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On February 14, around the year A.D. 270, Valentine, a holy priest in Rome in the days of Emperor Claudius II, is said to have been executed.

Under the rule of Claudius the Cruel, Rome was involved in many unpopular and bloody campaigns. The emperor had to maintain a strong army, but was having a difficult time getting soldiers to join his military leagues. Claudius believed that Roman men were unwilling to join the army because of their strong attachment to their wives and families.

To get rid of the problem, Claudius banned all marriages and engagements in Rome. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret.

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On Valentine's Day, 1990, 3.7 billion miles away from the sun, the Voyager 1 spacecraft takes a photograph of Earth. The picture, known as Pale Blue Dot, depicts our planet as a nearly indiscernible speck roughly the size of a pixel.

Launched on September 5, 1977, Voyagers 1 and 2 were charged with exploring the outer reaches of our solar system. It passed by Jupiter in March of 1979 and Saturn the following year. The gaps between the outer planets are so vast that it was another decade before it passed by Neptune and arrived at the spot where it was to take a series of images of the planets, known as the "Family Portrait" of our solar system.

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Four men dressed as police officers enter gangster Bugs Moran’s headquarters on North Clark Street in Chicago, line seven of Moran’s henchmen against a wall, and shoot them to death. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, as it is now called, was the culmination of a gang war between arch rivals Al Capone and Bugs Moran.

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On this day in 1779 at Kettle Creek, Georgia, a Patriot militia force of 340 led by Colonel Andrew Pickens of South Carolina, with Colonel John Dooly and Lieutenant Colonel Elijah Clarke of Georgia, defeats a larger force of 700 Loyalist militia commanded by Colonel James Boyd.

The Patriots attempted a two-pronged attack. Pickens’ line engaged the Loyalists, while Dooly and Clarke’s men attempted to cross the creek and surrounding swamp. Dooly and Clarke’s troops were soon bogged down in the difficult crossing and though Boyd had sent 150 of his men out to forage for food that morning, the Loyalists still had the upper hand.

The tide turned when the Loyalists saw their commander, Boyd, collapse from a musket wound. Panicked, they disintegrated into a disorderly retreat towards the creek as Pickens’ Patriots fired down upon their camp from above. Shortly thereafter, the two South Carolina commanders, Dooly and Clarke, emerged with their men from the swamp and surrounded the shocked Loyalists, who were attempting to retreat across the creek.

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1950 

The Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, the two largest communist nations in the world, announce the signing of a mutual defense and assistance treaty. 

The negotiations for the treaty were conducted in Moscow between PRC leaders Mao Zedong and Zhou En-lai, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky. The treaty’s terms called for the Soviets to provide a $300 million credit to the PRC. It also mandated that the Soviet Union return to the Chinese the control of a major railroad and the cities of Port Arthur and Dairen in Manchuria, all of which had been seized by Russian forces near the end of World War II. The mutual defense section of the agreement primarily concerned any future aggression by Japan and “any other state directly or indirectly associated” with Japan. Zhou En-lai proudly declared that the linking of the two communist nations created a force that was “impossible to defeat.”

 

[oblong]

The pale blue dot photo. 

[CMRivdogs]

 

[Netnerd]

1 hour ago, oblong said:

The pale blue dot photo. 

Shoot. My eyes were closed.

[CMRivdogs]

February 15, 

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history

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A massive explosion of unknown origin sinks the battleship USS Maine in Cuba’s Havana harbor on February 15, 1898, killing more than 260 of the 350-plus American crew members aboard.

One of the first American battleships, the Maine weighed more than 6,000 tons and was built at a cost of more than $2 million. Ostensibly on a friendly visit, the Maine had been sent to Cuba to protect the interests of Americans there after a rebellion against Spanish rule broke out in Havana in January.

An official U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry ruled in March that the ship was blown up by a mine, without directly placing the blame on Spain. Much of Congress and a majority of the American public expressed little doubt that Spain was responsible and called for a declaration of war.

Subsequent diplomatic failures to resolve the Maine matter, coupled with United States indignation over Spain’s brutal suppression of the Cuban rebellion and continued losses to American investment, led to the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in April 1898.

In 1976, a team of American naval investigators concluded that the Maine explosion was likely caused by a fire that ignited its ammunition stocks, not by a Spanish mine or act of sabotage.

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On February 15, 1837, Congress ratifies treaties number 211 and 217, designed to remove Indigenous people from their ancestral homelands in the Midwest to make way for white settlement. One agreement had been negotiated with the Iowa, Sauk and Fox nations; the second, with the Oto, Omaha, Missouri and Santee Sioux and Yankton Sioux tribal people. The agreements represented just two of nearly 400 treaties—nearly always unequal—concluded between various Indigenous nations and the U.S. government between 1788 and 1883.

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1965...

In accordance with a formal proclamation by Queen Elizabeth II of England, a new Canadian national flag is raised above Parliament Hill in Ottawa, the capital of Canada.

Beginning in 1610, Lower Canada, a new British colony, flew Great Britain’s Union Jack, or Royal Union Flag. In 1763, as a result of the French and Indian Wars, France lost its sizable colonial possessions in Canada, and the Union Jack flew all across the wide territory of Canada. In 1867, the Dominion of Canada was established as a self-governing federation within the British Empire, and three years later a new flag, the Canadian Red Ensign, was adopted. The Red Ensign was a solid red flag with the Union Jack occupying the upper-left corner and a crest situated in the right portion of the flag.

 

[CMRivdogs]

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history

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On February 16, 1923, in Thebes, Egypt, English archaeologist Howard Carterenters the sealed burial chamber of the ancient Egyptian ruler King Tutankhamen.

Because the ancient Egyptians saw their pharaohs as gods, they carefully preserved their bodies after death, burying them in elaborate tombs containing rich treasures to accompany the rulers into the afterlife. In the 19th century, archeologists from all over the world flocked to Egypt, where they uncovered a number of these tombs. Many had long ago been broken into by robbers and stripped of their riches.

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On February 16, 1959, Fidel Castro is sworn in as prime minister of Cuba after leading a guerrilla campaign that forced right-wing dictator Fulgencio Batista into exile. Castro, who became commander in chief of Cuba’s armed forces after Batista was ousted on January 1, replaced the more moderate Miro Cardona as head of the country’s new provisional government.

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In a statement focusing on the situation in Korea, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalincharges that the United Nations has become “a weapon of aggressive war.” He also suggested that although a world war was not inevitable “at the present time,” “warmongers” in the West might trigger such a conflict.

Stalin’s comments in response to queries from the Soviet newspaper Pravdawere his first public statements about the nearly year-old conflict in Korea, in which the United States, South Korea, and other member nations of the United Nations were arrayed against forces of North Korea and communist China. Coming just over two weeks after the U.N. General Assembly’s resolution condemning China as an aggressor, Stalin’s statement turned the tables by declaring that the United Nations was “burying its moral prestige and dooming itself to disintegration.” He warned that Western “warmongers,” through their aggressive posture in Korea, would “manage to entangle the popular masses in lies, deceive them, and drag them into a new world war.” In any event, he confidently predicted that Chinese forces in Korea would be victorious because the armies opposing them lacked morale and dedication to the war.

 

Edited February 16 by CMRivdogs

[romad1]

1 hour ago, CMRivdogs said:

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history

 

Castro would be loving what is happening in the United States this month.

[romad1]

Was thinking on a possible post-retirement project.  These thoughts are of a time when I have leisure time to pursue, not fighting and clawing to pay a mortgage and put my kids through college.   Having read a bit on the segregation problem/challenges of the US Military in WWII that I would do a long form on the attitudes of WWII US Generals and Admirals about racial issues with a couple of threads:

• What part of the Mason-Dixon they were born/grew up on
• Family that had fought in the Civil War for either side.  E.g., reading about Terry Allen's ancestor who fought for the North at Gettysburg ...fascinating character.   Patton's family were definitely Confederates.
• Religious background and how that had influenced these views
• College of primary military training and how that influenced these views (West Point, Annapolis, VMI, Norwich, others schools).
• If the views manifested themselves in peacetime/wartime events.
• How these views compared to allies they came into contact with...e.g., the UK was shocked at how poorly we treated our African-American troops. 

Anyway, I keep a journal where I stuff ideas like this in for future projects.   This one was coming to mind as I was reading about the battles on Bouganville where the Segregated 93rd Infantry Division fought under a Broadway sized spotlight because they were unable to go into the line for their first action without having to be 1. put out as a shining example by Black press and 2. seen as an embodiment of all possible failures of the African American race by the racists both in the Army and at home.

Not sure that is anything a lot of people will want to read but that wouldn't be who I would be writing it for.

[CMRivdogs]

February 17

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On February 17, 1801, Thomas Jefferson is elected the third president of the United States. The election constitutes the first peaceful transfer of powerfrom one political party to another in the United States.

Vicious partisan warfare characterized the campaign of 1800 between Democratic-Republicans Jefferson and Aaron Burr and Federalists John Adams, Charles C. Pinckney and John Jay. The election highlighted the ongoing battle between Democratic-Republican supporters of the French, who were embroiled in their own bloody revolution, and the pro-British Federalists who wanted to implement English-style policies in American government.

 

[CMRivdogs]

Interesting. When the Virginia House of Burgess proposed something similar (a day of fasting, humiliation and prayer in May of 1774 in support of Boston residents who were being punished because a band of ruffians dumped tea into the Boston Harbor. Members were to "devoutly implore the divine interposition for averting the heavy calamity that threatens the destruction of our Civil Rights and the evils of Civil War

The Royal Governor disbanded the elected House because only the King (also head of the church) could declare a day of prayer.

The act lead up to a meeting at nearby Raleigh Tavern where many members gathered and proposed a creation of a committee to communicate with other colonies...

 

[CMRivdogs]

February 18

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history

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On February 18, 1885, Mark Twain publishes his famous—and famously controversial—novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the U.S.

Twain (the pen name of Samuel Clemens) first introduced Huck Finn as the best friend of Tom Sawyer, hero of his tremendously successful novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). Though Twain saw Huck’s story as a kind of sequel to his earlier book, the new novel was far more serious, focusing on the institution of slavery and other aspects of life in the antebellum South.

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Pluto, once believed to be the ninth planet, is discovered at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, by astronomer Clyde W. Tombaugh.

The existence of an unknown ninth planet was first proposed by Percival Lowell, who theorized that wobbles in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune were caused by the gravitational pull of an unknown planetary body. Lowell calculated the approximate location of the hypothesized ninth planet and searched for more than a decade without success. 

However, in 1929, using the calculations of Lowell and W.H. Pickering as a guide, the search for Pluto was resumed at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona. On February 18, 1930, Tombaugh discovered the tiny, distant planet by use of a new astronomic technique of photographic plates combined with a blink microscope. His finding was confirmed by several other astronomers, and on March 13, 1930—the anniversary of Lowell’s birth and of William Herschel’s discovery of Uranus—the discovery of Pluto was publicly announced.

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On February 18, 2010, a relatively obscure website called WikiLeaks publishes a leaked diplomatic cable detailing discussions between American diplomats and Icelandic government officials. The leak of "Reikjavik13" barely registered with the public, but it was the first of what turned out to be nearly 750,000 sensitive documents sent to WikiLeaks by Chelsea Manning. Manning is now considered one of the most prolific and significant whistleblowers in American history, as her leaks shed light on atrocities committed by American armed forces, painted a far grimmer picture of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and greatly embarrassed the United States’ diplomatic establishment.

 

On February 18, 2001, Dale Earnhardt Sr., considered one of the greatest drivers in National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) history, dies at the age of 49 in a last-lap crash at the 43rd Daytona 500 in Daytona Beach, Florida. Earnhardt was driving his famous black No. 3 Chevrolet and vying for third place when he collided with another car, then crashed into a wall. After being cut from his car, Earnhardt, whose tough, aggressive driving style earned him the nickname “The Intimidator,” was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead of head injuries.

[CMRivdogs]

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history

February 19

 

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1945  Operation Detachment, the U.S. Marines’ invasion of Iwo Jima, is launched. Iwo Jima was a barren Pacific island guarded by Japanese artillery, but to American military minds, it was prime real estate on which to build airfields to launch bombing raids against Japan, only 660 miles away.

 

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On February 19, 1847, the first rescuers reach surviving members of the Donner Party, a group of California-bound emigrants stranded by snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

 

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1807 

Aaron Burr, a former U.S. vice president, is arrested in Alabama on charges of plotting to annex Spanish territory in Louisiana and Mexico to be used toward the establishment of an independent republic.

In November 1800, in an election conducted before presidential and vice-presidential candidates shared a single ticket, Thomas Jefferson and his running mate, Aaron Burr, defeated Federalist incumbent John Adams with 73 electoral votes each. The tie vote then went to the House to be decided, and Federalist Alexander Hamilton was instrumental in breaking the deadlock in Jefferson’s favor. Burr, because he finished second, became vice president.

In the fall of 1806, Burr led a group of well-armed colonists toward New Orleans, prompting an immediate investigation by U.S. authorities. General Wilkinson, in an effort to save himself, turned against Burr and sent dispatches to Washington accusing Burr of treason. On February 19, 1807, Burr was arrested in Alabama for alleged treason and sent to Richmond, Virginia, to be tried in a U.S. circuit court.

On September 1, 1807, he was acquitted on the grounds that, although he had conspired against the United States, he was not guilty of treason because he had not engaged in an “overt act,” a requirement of treason as specified by the U.S. Constitution. Nevertheless, public opinion condemned him as a traitor, and he spent several years in Europe before returning to New York and resuming his law practice.

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On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order9066, initiating a controversial World War II policy with lasting consequences for Japanese Americans. The document ordered the forced removal of resident "enemy aliens" from parts of the West vaguely identified as military areas.

Japanese immigrants and their descendants, regardless of American citizenship status or length of residence, were systematically rounded up and placed in prison camps. Evacuees, as they were sometimes called, could take only as many possessions as they could carry and were forcibly placed in crude, cramped quarters. In the western states, camps on remote and barren sites such as Manzanar and Tule Lake housed thousands of families whose lives were interrupted and in some cases destroyed by Executive Order 9066. Many lost businesses, farms and loved ones as a result.

 

 

[CMRivdogs]

February 21

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February 21, 1965: In New York City, Malcolm X, an African American nationalist and religious leader, is assassinated while addressing his Organization of Afro-American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights. He was 39. 

 

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On February 21, 1848, The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx with the assistance of Friedrich Engels, is published in London by a group of German-born revolutionary socialists known as the Communist League. The political pamphlet—arguably the most influential in history—proclaimed that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” and that the inevitable victory of the proletariat, or working class, would put an end to class society forever. 

Originally published in German as Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei(“Manifesto of the Communist Party”), the work had little immediate impact. Its ideas, however, reverberated with increasing force into the 20th century, and by 1950 nearly half the world’s population lived under Marxist governments. 

The Washington Monument, built in honor of America’s revolutionary hero and first president, is dedicated in Washington, D.C.

The 555-foot-high marble obelisk was first proposed in 1783, and Pierre L’Enfant left room for it in his designs for the new U.S. capital. After George Washington’s death in 1799, plans for a memorial for the “father of the country” were discussed, but none were adopted until 1832—the centennial of Washington’s birth.

[CMRivdogs]

 

[CMRivdogs]

February 22

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Spanish minister Do Luis de Onis and U.S. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams sign the Florida Purchase Treaty, in which Spain agrees to cede the remainder of its province of Florida to the United States.

Spanish colonization of the Florida peninsula began at St. Augustine in 1565. By the 17th century, the Spanish began coming under attack from Native Americans defending their ancestral homelands and English colonists encroaching from the north. Spain’s last-minute entry into the French and Indian War on the side of France cost it Florida, which the British acquired through the first Treaty of Paris in 1763. After 20 years of British rule, however, Florida was returned to Spain as part of the second Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolution in 1783.

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In one of the most dramatic upsets in Olympic history, on February 22, 1980, the underdog U.S. hockey team, made up of college players, defeats the four-time defending gold-medal winning Soviet team at the XIII Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid, New York. The Soviet squad, previously regarded as the finest in the world, fell to the youthful American team 4-3 before a frenzied crowd of 10,000 spectators. Two days later, the Americans defeated Finland 4-2 to clinch the hockey gold.

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On February 22, 1777, Revolutionary War leader and Georgia’s first Provisional Governor Archibald Bulloch dies under mysterious circumstances just hours after Georgia’s Council of Safety grants him the powers of a dictator in expectation of a British invasion.

Bulloch was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1730 to a Scottish father, James, and his Puritan wife, Jean. He was educated and practiced law in South Carolina, and received a commission in the colony’s militia. Bulloch moved to Savannah, Georgia, in 1764 and married Mary de Veaux, the daughter of a prominent Savannah judge and landholder. He quickly became a leader in the state’s Liberty Party and was elected to the Commons House of Assembly in 1768, to the post of speaker of the Georgia Royal Assembly in 1772 and finally to the Continental Congress in 1775.

On June 20, 1776, Bulloch was elected the first president and commander in chief of Georgia’s temporary government, posts he held until February 5, 1777, when Georgia adopted its state constitution. Just over three weeks later, on February 22, 1777, Georgia faced a British invasion, and the state’s new government granted Bulloch executive power to head off the British forces. A few hours later, Bulloch was dead. The cause of his death remains unknown but unsubstantiated rumors of his poisoning persist.

 

 

 

Edited February 22 by CMRivdogs

[LaceyLou]

I copied this from the Auschwitz Memorial Facebook page: 

22 February 1943 | Sophie and Hans Scholl & Christoph Probs were executed by guillotine in Germany for their public resistance against the Nazi regime. They were members of White Rose movement called for active opposition to the Nazi party.

Hans, a medical student at the University of Munich, was 24. Sophie, a student of biology and philosophy, was 21. Christoph, a medical student, was 22.

Their activities started in Munich on 27 June 1942, and ended with the arrest of the core group by the Gestapo on 18 February 1943.

At great risk, the White Rose group conducted an anonymous leaflet and graffiti campaign that called for active opposition to the Nazi regime.

In total, the they authored six leaflets, which were multiplied and spread, in a total of about 15,000 copies. They denounced the Nazi regime's crimes and oppression, and called for resistance. In their second leaflet, they openly denounced the persecution and mass murder of the Jews.

In their attempt to stop the war effort, they advocated the sabotage of the armaments industry. “We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace!"

"For Hitler and his followers there is no punishment on this Earth commensurate with their crimes. But out of love for coming generations we must make an example after the conclusion of the war, so that no one will ever again have the slightest urge to try a similar action" - a fragment of the fourth leaflet.

 

[CMRivdogs]

February 23

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-flag-raised-on-iwo-jima?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2025-0223-02232025&om_rid=

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February 23, 1945: During the bloody Battle for Iwo Jima, U.S. Marines from the 3rd Platoon, E Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Regiment of the 5th Division take the crest of Mount Suribachi—the island’s highest peak and most strategic position—and raise the U.S. flag. Marine photographer Louis Lowery, who was with them, recorded the event. Americans fighting for control of Suribachi’s slopes cheered the raising of the flag. 

Several hours later, more Marines headed up to the crest with a larger flag. Joe Rosenthal, a photographer with the Associated Press, met them along the way and recorded the raising of the second flag along with a Marine still photographer and a motion-picture cameraman.

 

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On February 23, 1954, a group of children from Arsenal Elementary School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, receive the first injections of the new polio vaccinedeveloped by Dr. Jonas Salk. Thanks to the vaccine, by the 21st century polio cases were reduced by 99 percent worldwide.

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Friedrich Wilhelm Rudolf Gerhard August, Freiherr von Steuben, a Prussian military officer, arrives at General George Washington’s encampment at Valley Forge on February 23, 1778 and commences training soldiers in close-order drill, instilling new confidence and discipline in the demoralized Continental Army.

Baron von Steuben, as he is better known, was the son of a military engineer and became a Prussian officer himself at the age of 17. He served with distinction and was quickly promoted from infantry to Frederick the Great’s General Staff. In 1763, at age 33 and with the rank of captain, he was discharged for unknown reasons. His title of freiherr, or baron, came with his subsequent post as chamberlain (or palace manager) to the petty court of Hohenzollern-Hechingen in Swabia, or the southwestern Holy Roman Empire, in what is now Baden-Wuerrtemberg. Employed by an indebted prince, von Steuben searched for more lucrative employment in foreign armies. The French minister of war recommended von Steuben to Benjamin Franklin as a resource to the Continental Army in 1777. Franklin in turn passed on word of Steuben’s availability to Washington, and by February 23, 1778, he was among the desperate Continentals camped at Valley Forge.

 

[CMRivdogs]

February 24

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/marbury-v-madison-establishes-judicial-review

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On February 24, 1836, in San Antonio, Texas, Colonel William Travis issues a call for help on behalf of the Texan troops defending the Alamo, an old Spanish mission and fortress under siege by the Mexican army

Only 32 men from the nearby town of Gonzales responded to Travis’ call for help, and beginning at 5:30 a.m. on March 6, Mexican forces stormed the Alamo through a gap in the fort’s outer wall, killing Travis, Bowie, Davy Crockett and 190 of their men. Despite the loss of the fort, the Texan troops managed to inflict huge losses on their enemy, killing at least 600 of Santa Anna’s men.

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The U.S. House of Representatives votes 11 articles of impeachment against President Andrew Johnson, nine of which cite Johnson’s removal of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, a violation of the Tenure of Office Act. The House vote made President Johnson the first president to be impeached in U.S. history.

On February 21, 1868, Johnson decided to rid himself of Stanton once and for all and appointed General Lorenzo Thomas, an individual far less favorable to the Congress than Grant, as secretary of war. Stanton refused to yield, barricading himself in his office, and the House of Representatives, which had already discussed impeachment after Johnson’s first dismissal of Stanton, initiated formal impeachment proceedings against the president. On February 24, Johnson was impeached, and on March 13 his impeachment trial began in the Senate under the direction of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase. The trial ended on May 26 with Johnson’s opponents narrowly failing to achieve the two-thirds majority necessary to convict him.

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On February 24, 1803, the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Marshall, decides the landmark case of William Marbury v. James Madison, Secretary of State of the United States and confirms the legal principle of judicial review—the ability of the Supreme Court to limit Congressional power by declaring legislation unconstitutional—in the new nation.

The court ruled that the new president, Thomas Jefferson, via his secretary of state, James Madison, was wrong to prevent William Marbury from taking office as justice of the peace for Washington County in the District of Columbia. However, it also ruled that the court had no jurisdiction in the case and could not force Jefferson and Madison to seat Marbury. The Judiciary Act of 1789 gave the Supreme Court jurisdiction, but the Marshall court ruled the Act of 1789 to be an unconstitutional extension of judiciary power into the realm of the executive.

In writing the decision, John Marshall argued that acts of Congress in conflict with the Constitution are not law and therefore are non-binding to the courts, and that the judiciary’s first responsibility is always to uphold the Constitution. If two laws conflict, Marshall wrote, the court bears responsibility for deciding which law applies in any given case. Thus, Marbury never received his job.

 

[CMRivdogs]

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history

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On February 25, 1964, 22-year-old Cassius Clay shocks the odds-makers by dethroning world heavyweight boxing champ Sonny Liston in a seventh-round technical knockout. Former champ Joe Louis called it "the biggest upset in the history of boxing." 

The dreaded Liston, who had twice demolished former champ Floyd Patterson in one round, was an 8-to-1 favorite. However, Clay predicted victory, boasting that he would “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” and knock out Liston in the eighth round.

1870..

Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Natchez, Mississippi, is sworn into the U.S. Senate, becoming the first African American ever to sit in Congress.

During the Civil War, Revels, a college-educated minister, helped form African American army regiments for the Union cause, started a school for freed men, and served as a chaplain for the Union army. Posted to Mississippi, Revels remained in the former Confederate state after the war and entered into Reconstruction-era Southern politics.

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On February 25, 1779, Fort Sackville is surrendered, marking the beginning of the end of British domination in America’s western frontier.

Eighteen days earlier, George Rogers Clark departed Kaskaskia on the Mississippi River with a force of approximately 170 men, including Kentuckymilitia and French volunteers. The party traveled over 200 miles of land covered by deep and icy flood water until they reached Fort Sackville at Vincennes (Indiana) on February 23, 1779. After brutally killing five captive British-allied Native Americans within view of the fort, Clark secured the surrender of the British garrison under Lieutenant-Governor Henry Hamilton at 10 a.m. on February 25.

 

[CMRivdogs]

“The Ministry who are both foolish and wicked, think by depriving us of Assemblies to take away the advantage that results from united and collected counsels.
But they are grievously mistaken. In despight of all their machinations, public Councils will be held and public measures adopted for general security.      Still we hope that the proceedings of the last Continental Congress when communicated to the people of England will rouse a spirit that proving fatal to an abandoned Ministry may save the whole Empire from Its impending destruction.”   
Lee tells his brother of the willingness to fight throughout British America. Even Virginia’s Ohio frontier is ready to provide “the most formidable light Infantry in the world. The six frontier Counties can produce 6000 of these Men who from their amazing hardihood, their method of living so long in the woods without carrying provisions with them, the exceeding quickness with which they can march to distant parts, and above all, the dexterity to which they have arrived in the use of the Rifle Gun. 

Their is not one of these Men who wish a distance less than 200 yards on a larger object than an Orange. Every shot is fatal.” buff.ly/40IfKxk

 

[CMRivdogs]

February 26

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At 12:18 p.m., a terrorist bomb explodes in a parking garage of the World Trade Center in New York City, leaving a massive, multi-story crater and causing the collapse of several steel-reinforced concrete floors in the vicinity of the blast. 

Although the terrorist bomb failed to critically damage the main structure of the skyscrapers, six people were killed and more than 1,000 were injured. The World Trade Center itself suffered more than $500 million in damage. After the attack, authorities evacuated 50,000 people from the buildings, hundreds of whom were suffering from smoke inhalation. The evacuation lasted the whole afternoon.

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On February 26, 1935, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler signs a secret decree authorizing the founding of the Reich Luftwaffe as a third German military service to join the Reich army and navy. In the same decree, Hitler appointed Hermann Goering, a German air hero from World War I and high-ranking Nazi, as commander in chief of the new German air force.

The Versailles Treaty that ended World War I prohibited military aviation in Germany, but a German civilian airline—Lufthansa—was founded in 1926 and provided flight training for the men who would later become Luftwaffe pilots. After coming to power in 1933, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler began to secretly develop a state-of-the-art military air force and appointed Goering as German air minister. (During World War I, Goering commanded the celebrated air squadron in which the great German ace Manfred von Richthofen–“The Red Baron”–served.) In February 1935, Hitler formally organized the Luftwaffe as a major step in his program of German rearmament.

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On this day in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson officially designated the Grand Canyon as a national park. The geological wonder would go on to become one of America's most popular tourist attractions.

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In a controversial move that inspires charges of eastern domination of the West, Congress establishes Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.

In 1916, Horace M. Albright, the director of the National Park Service, was the first to seriously suggest that the region be incorporated into Yellowstone. The ranchers and businesses catering to tourists, however, strongly resisted the suggestion that they be pushed off their lands to make a “museum” of the Old West for eastern tourists.

Finally, after more than a decade of political maneuvering, Grand Teton National Park was created in 1929. As a concession to the ranchers and tourist operators, the park only encompassed the mountains and a narrow strip at their base. Jackson Hole itself was excluded from the park and designated merely as a scenic preserve. Albright, though, had persuaded the wealthy John D. Rockefeller to begin buying up land in the Jackson Hole area for possible future incorporation into the park. This semisecret, private means of enlarging the park inspired further resentment among the residents, and some complained that it was a typical example of how “eastern money interests” were dictating the future of the West.

 

[CMRivdogs]

February 27

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/day/february-27

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On the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, some 200 members of the Oglala Lakota tribe, led by members of the American Indian Movement (AIM), occupy Wounded Knee, the site of the infamous 1890 massacre of 300 Sioux by the U.S. Seventh Cavalry. The AIM members, some of them armed, took 11 residents of the historic Oglala Sioux settlement hostage as local authorities and federal agents descended on the reservation.

The Wounded Knee occupation lasted for a total of 71 days, during which time two Sioux men were shot to death by federal agents and several more were wounded. On May 8, the AIM leaders and their supporters surrendered after officials promised to investigate their complaints. Russell Means and Dennis Banks were arrested, but on September 16, 1973, the charges against them were dismissed by a federal judge because of the U.S. government’s unlawful handling of witnesses and evidence.

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In deciding the case Leser v. Garnett, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of the 19th Amendment—which, when ratified two years earlier, provided American women with the right to vote. The justices were unanimous in their decision to dismiss the challenge.

In the case, a prominent Baltimore lawyer named Oscar Leser sued to strike all women from Maryland's voting rolls on the grounds that the 19th Amendment infringed on state sovereignty, since the Maryland state legislature had refused to ratify the amendment. Maryland didn't certify the 19th amendment until 1958.

The 19th Amendment, which stated that “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of sex,” was the product of more than seven decades of meetings, petitions, and protests by women suffragists and their supporters.

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On February 27, 1860, President Abraham Lincoln poses for the first of several portraits by noted Civil War-era photographer Mathew Brady. Days later, the photograph is published on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar with the caption, "Hon. Abram [sic] Lincoln, of Illinois, Republican Candidate for President."