Category: Today

On Feb. 23, 1836, the Battle of the Alamo began with Mexican troops under President General Antonio López de Santa Anna launching an assault on the Alamo Mission near modern-day San Antonio, Texas. The siege lasted 13 days until Mexican forces overwhelmed the mission.

On Feb. 23, 1861, President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrived secretly in Washington, D.C., after dodging opposition mobs in Baltimore, Maryland.

On Feb. 23, 1903, Cuba leased Guantánamo Bay to the U.S. “in perpetuity.”

On Feb. 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.

On Feb. 22, 1943, Hans and Sophie Scholl and their friend, Christoph Probst, members of a close-knit group of University of Munich students calling themselves “The White Rose,” were executed after being caught distributing leaflets urging Germans to resist Hitler and the Nazis. [For more see today’s commentary.)

On Feb. 22, 1980, the U.S. hockey team defeated the four-time defending gold-medal-winning Soviet team 4-3 before a frenzied crowd of 10,000 spectators at the XIII Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid, New York. The victory of the youthful American college players beating the Soviet squad, considered the best in the world, became known as “The Miracle on ice.”

On Feb. 22, 1732, George Washington, who would go on to become “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen,” was born in Virginia.

On Feb. 8, 1943, Japanese troops evacuated Guadalcanal, leaving the island in Allied possession after a prolonged campaign. In August of 1942, U.S. Marines landed on the island as the Allies’ first major offensive against Japanese-held positions in the Pacific. A series of bloody battles ensued in the tropical heat as Marines engaged Japanese troops on land and the Navy has seven major battles in the waters surrounding Guadalcanal. American casualty estimates were 1,600 combat dead, 2,000 died of disease and 4,000 wounded, while roughly 24,000 Japanese perished. The American victory paved the way for other wins in the Solomon Islands.

On Feb. 7, 1775, Benjamin Franklin published “An Imaginary Speech” in London, responding to comments made to the Parliament that the British need not fear the colonial rebels, as “Americans are unequal to the People of this Country in Devotion to Women, and in Courage, and worse than all, they are religious.” In his thoughtful counter, Franklin slyly recalled that the population in the colonies had increased, while the British population had declined, and, therefore, American men must be more “effectually devoted to the Fair Sex” than their British brethren.

On Feb. 7, 1907, the first large march – known as ”the Mud March” – was organized by Britain’s National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), with more than 3,000 women slogging through the cold, muddy streets of London, from Hyde Park to Exeter Hall, to advocate for women’s suffrage.

On Feb. 7, 1990, the Central Committee of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union agreed to endorse President Mikhail Gorbachev’s recommendation that the party give up its 70-year monopoly on political power. A Communist Party official noted, “Society itself will decide whether it wishes to adopt our politics.”

On Feb. 6, 1959, Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments filed the first patent for an integrated circuit.

On Feb. 6, 1989, the Polish Round Table Talks began in Warsaw, Poland. The government initiated the discussion with the banned trade union Solidarność and other opposition groups in an attempt to defuse growing social unrest. The talks ended on April 4, 1989, with the legalization of independent trade unions and the introduction of a representative legislature, including the office of President, which annulled the power of the Communist party general secretary. In elections that June, Solidarność won almost every single seat on the ballot.

On Feb. 5, 1631, Roger Williams immigrated to America, arriving in Boston, Massachusetts. Williams went on to establish the colony of Providence Plantation, which provided a refuge for religious minorities, start the first Baptist church in America, and advocate for fair dealings with Native Americans.

On Feb. 5, 1778, South Carolina became the first state to ratify the Articles of Confederation.

On Feb. 5, 1945, General Douglas MacArthur returned to Manila. He had said he would.

On Feb. 5, 1958, a hydrogen bomb known as the Tybee Bomb was lost by the US Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, never to be recovered.

On Feb. 4, 1789, George Washington, the commander of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, was unanimously elected the first president of the United States by all 69 presidential electors who cast their votes. John Adams of Massachusetts, who received 34 votes, was elected vice president. The electors, who represented 10 of the 11 states that had ratified the U.S. Constitution, were chosen by popular vote, legislative appointment, or a combination of both, four weeks before the election. On Feb. 4, 1792, Washington was unanimously elected to a second term, becoming the only president unanimously chosen by the Electoral College.

On Feb. 4, 1794, the French legislature abolished slavery throughout all territories of the French Republic.

On Feb. 4, 1913, Rosa Parks was born in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1955, Parks would spark the Montgomery Bus Boycott by refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger. She was named “the first lady of civil rights,” by the U.S. Congress.

On Feb. 3, 313, Constantine the Great and co-emperor Valerius Licinius met in Milan and signed a letter proclaiming a policy of religious freedom, known as the Edict of Milan, officially ending the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. Constantine ruled the western parts of the empire and actively promoted Christianity. Licinius ruled the eastern parts of the empire and, though a pagan, was accepting a policy of toleration toward Christianity.

On Feb. 3, 1944, U.S. troops captured the Marshall Islands, occupied by the Japanese since 1914 and used as a base for military operations. The loss of live was relatively small, with 400 Americans killed in the assault by 53,000 soldiers.

On February 2, 1980, details of ABSCAM, an FBI operation to uncover political corruption, were released to the public. FBI agents had posed as representatives of Abdul Enterprises, a fictional business owned by an Arab sheik. Under FBI video surveillance, agents met with the officials and offered them money or other considerations in exchange for special favors, such as the approval of government contracts for companies in which the sheik had invested. Senator Harrison A. Williams (D-NJ), and five House members – John Jenrette (D-SC), Richard Kelly (R-FL), Raymond Lederer (D-PA), Michael Myers (D-PA), and Frank Thompson (D-NJ) – were convicted of bribery and conspiracy in separate trials in 1981. John Murtha (D-PA) was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the scandal, though never indicted or prosecuted. Senator Larry Pressler (R-SD) refused to take the bribe and was called a “hero” by Walter Cronkite.

On Feb. 2, 1943, the last of the German forces fighting at Stalingrad under General Field Marshall Friedrich von Paulus surrendered, despite Hitler’s order that, “The troops will defend themselves to the last!” The Battle of Stalingrad began in the summer of 1942, as German forces assaulted the city, pushed the Soviets almost to the Volga River in mid-October and encircled Stalingrad. But with diminishing resources, partisan guerilla attacks, and the cruelty of the Russian winter taking their toll, the Soviets launched a counteroffensive that encircled the Germans. Roughly half of the 280,000 men under Paulus’ command were already dead or dying, about 35,000 had been evacuated, and the remaining 91,000 were taken to Soviet POW camps, from which only 5,000 ever returned.

On Feb. 1, 1790, the Supreme Court of the United States met for the first time in the Royal Exchange Building on New York City’s Broad Street, with Chief Justice John Jay of New York presiding. The U.S. Supreme Court was established by Article Three of the U.S. Constitution, which took effect in March 1789.

On Feb. 1, 1908, King Carlos I of Portugal and his eldest son, Luis Filipe, were assassinated by revolutionaries while riding in an open carriage through the streets of Lisbon, the Portuguese capital. Carlos’ second son, Manoel, succeeded him on the throne, but in October 1910 a republican revolution forced King Manoel II to abdicate and flee to England with the rest of the royal family. In the same year, Teofilo Braga, a well-known writer, was chosen the first president of the newly democratic republic of Portugal.