Author: Editor

On Feb. 17, 1801, Thomas Jefferson was elected by the U.S. House of Representatives to be the third president of the United States, after an arduous election process that ended only 15 days prior to inauguration.

The fracas included a tie vote in the Electoral College followed by 35 indecisive ballots in the House. At that time, votes were cast for president, with the second place candidate becoming Vice-President. But in the Electoral College, Jefferson tied with his vice-presidential running mate, Aaron Burr. When that sent the balloting to the House of Representatives, the Federalists opposing Jefferson initially threw their support to Burr.

On Feb. 17, 1933, a constitutional amendment to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which had established the national prohibition of alcohol, was passed by the U.S. Senate. Known as the Blaine Act, the prime author was Wisconsin Senator John J. Blaine. By the end of 1933, the repeal of prohibition was adopted as the 21st Amendment to the Constitution.

On Feb. 16, 1878, the Bland-Allison Act, which provided for a return to the minting of silver coins, became U.S. law. Today, the value of American money is secured only by public faith in the stability of the government, but during the 19th Century, money was backed by actual deposits of silver and gold.

That is, money was silver and gold. But that did not mean that all was right with the monetary system.

Five years earlier, when Congress had stopped buying silver and minting silver coins — following the lead of European nations — a financial panic ensued. Reasons for the suspension lay in the fact that the exchange value of silver and gold had retained an old, out-moded fixed ratio that favored silver producers. Had the United States Treasury let the two standards freely float, making a distinction between silver dollars and gold dollars, none of the political strife over bimetallism would have occurred.

As it was, with silver over-valued, the silver coins increasingly “drove” gold out of circulation, as well as out of the Treasury and into private hands.

In 1893, in the midst of another financial panic, this time as a result of depletion of gold reserves in the U.S. Treasury, President Grover Cleveland called a special session of Congress to repeal the bimetallic standard. He was successful, though agrarian inflationists took over the Democratic Party and offered up, for the next election, William Jennings “Cross of Gold” Bryan as a counter to Cleveland’s old-fashioned fiscal conservative/social liberalism.

On Feb. 14, 278 A.D., Valentine, a priest in Rome during the reign of Emperor Claudius II, was executed. In order to facilitate the raising of an army for his unpopular military campaigns, the emperor outlawed all marriages and engagements. Valentine defied Claudius’s order and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. Once discovered, Valentine was arrested and condemned by the Prefect of Rome to be beaten to death with clubs and to have his head cut off. The sentence was carried out on February 14. Valentine was named a saint by the Roman Catholic Church after his death.

Though February 14th is celebrated as “St. Valentine’s Day,” in today’s vernacular, the 14th of February, 278, was, ahem, “not his day.”

On Feb. 13, 1633, Italian philosopher, astronomer and mathematician Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome to face charges of heresy for advocating Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus’s theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun. In April, Galileo pled guilty before the Roman Inquisition in exchange for a lighter sentence. Put under house arrest indefinitely by Pope Urban VIII, Galileo spent the rest of his life at his villa in Arcetri, near Florence, dying in 1642.

On Feb. 11, 1990, after 27 years in prison, Nelson Mandela was released by South African authorities.

Mandela had joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1944, becoming deputy national president of the group in 1952. Arrested for treason in 1961, he was acquitted — but then arrested again in 1962 for illegally leaving the country. Convicted and sentenced to five years at Robben Island Prison, he was put on trial again in 1964 on charges of sabotage. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison along with several other ANC leaders.

In 1989, F.W. de Klerk became South African president and began dismantling apartheid. De Klerk lifted the ban on the ANC, suspended executions, and in February 1990 ordered the release of Nelson Mandela.

Mandela subsequently led the ANC in negotiating an end to apartheid and the establishment of a multiracial government. In 1993, Mandela and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. One year later, the ANC won the country’s first free elections, and Mandela was elected South Africa’s president.