Category: Today

On February 20, 1933, the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution (to end alcohol Prohibition in the United States) was proposed in Congress.

On February 19, 1807, former Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr was arrested for treason and confined to Fort Stoddert. He would later be acquitted.

In 1861, on this day in February, serfdom was abolished in Russia.

More than 60 tornadoes struck the Southern United States, on February 19, 1884, one of the largest tornado outbreaks in U.S. history. It must have been due to global warming.

In a sad day for the cause of human liberty, on February 18, 1943, the Nazis arrested the members of the White Rose movement.

On February 17, 1801, an electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr was resolved when Jefferson was elected President of the United States and Burr Vice President by the United States House of Representatives.

On February 16, 1838, Henry Adams was born. One of the long line of Adamses, grandson of John Quincy Adams, Henry became a world-famous historian and critic of American politics. He also wrote several novels, including the classic, “Democracy.”

On February 16, 1918, the Council of Lithuania unanimously adopts the Act of Independence, declaring Lithuania an independent state.

On February 15, 1879, American President Rutherford B. Hayes signed a bill allowing female attorneys to argue cases before the Supreme Court of the United States.

On February 14, 1859, Oregon was admitted into the American union as the 33rd of the United States.

February 13 birthdays include those of economists Gordon Tullock (1922) and Israel Kirzner (1930).

On February 12, 1809, Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born. But today’s big birthday celebration here at Common Sense must be that of Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, 1851.

Böhm-Bawerk was an Austrian economist who followed in the footsteps of Carl Menger, ushering in what has been called “the marginalist revolution” in economics. He applied the new understanding of economics’ first principles to the problems of capital and interest, penning two of the great classics of the literature, known “Capital and Interest”: the two major volumes are “History and Critique of Interest Theories ” and “Positive Theory of Capital.” He also wrote the first scholarly and systematic refutations of Karl Marx’s exploitation theory and general economic perspective, including the brilliant “Karl Marx and the Close of His System.”

On February 11, 1752, Benjamin Franklin opened Pennsylvania Hospital, the first hospital in the United States. On the same date in 1790, the Religious Society of Friends, also known as Quakers, petitioned U.S. Congress to abolish slavery.

In an early effort towards republican government transparency, on this date in 1794, the first session of United States Senate opened to the public.

February 11 birthdays include

1805 – Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, son of Sacagawea

1833 – Melville Weston Fuller, American jurist and 8th Chief Justice of the United States

1847 – Thomas Alva Edison, American inventor