Category: Today

On February 14, A.D. 278, 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 February 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 February 12, 1986, Soviet human rights activist Anatoly Scharansky was released after spending eight years in Soviet prisons and labor camps. The amnesty deal was arranged at a summit meeting between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan. Scharansky had been imprisoned for his campaign to win emigration rights for Russian Jews — who had been forbidden to practice Judaism in the USSR.

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On Feb. 12, 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded.

On Feb. 12, 1593, approximately 3,000 Korean defenders led by General Kwon Yul successfully repelled more than 30,000 invading Japanese forces in the Siege of Haengju.

On February 11, 1812, Governor Elbridge Gerry signed into law a plan to redistrict Massachusetts so that the Federalists would lose votes. The new Republican districts were said to be in the form of a salamander, so Gerry was accused of “gerrymandering” — the epithet deriving from his name and a salamander, which some said was the shape of the districts he had drawn up to favor his party. A cartoon gerrymander map was published in the Boston Gazette on March 26, 1812, with the salamander more in the mythical draconic form than the natural amphibious form.

On February 10, 1967, the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. Submitted to the states on July 6, 1965, by the 89th Congress, it was adopted on the day the requisite number of states ratified it — the 38th, which was in this case Nevada. The Amendment deals with presidential disability and succession in cases of emergency or inability to perform the constitutional duties of the office.

The text reads:

Section 1. In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.
Section 2. Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.
Section 3. Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.
Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department [sic] or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

On February 9, 1991, voters in Lithuania voted for independence from the Soviet Union, eleven months after independence from the Soviet Union had been declared on March 11, 1990. Just over 93 percent of those voting voted in favor of independence, while the number of eligible voters voting “yes,” was 76.5 percent, far exceeding the 50 percent threshold. Independence was subsequently achieved in August 1991.

On February 7, 1990, the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party agreed to give up its monopoly on power, thus ushering the way for the dissolution of the putatively communist empire.

On February 6, 2018, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, a super heavy launch vehicle, made its maiden flight.

The payload was random/not-random: A Tesla Roadster. Elon Musk runs both SpaceX and Tesla.

Paul Jacob wrote about this at the time.

SpaceX boasts the Falcon Heavy as one of its chief successes:

Falcon Heavy is composed of three reusable Falcon 9 nine-engine cores whose 27 Merlin engines together generate more than 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, equal to approximately eighteen 747 aircraft. As one of the world’s most powerful operational rockets, Falcon Heavy can lift nearly 64 metric tons (141,000 lbs) to orbit.

On February 5, 1958, a hydrogen bomb known as the Tybee Bomb was lost by the U.S. Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia. It has yet to be recovered.

On February 4, 1789, George Washington was unanimously elected as the first President of the United States, under the new Constitution, by the U.S. Electoral College.

On the same date five years later, the French legislature abolished slavery throughout all territories of the French Republic.