Category: Today

On February 24, 1803, the Supreme Court, in Marbury v. Madison, established the principle of judicial review. William Marbury (pictured) was a businessman appointed as a “midnight judge” by lame duck president John Adams. He became the plaintiff in Marbury v. Madison.

On February 24, 1917, United States ambassador to the United Kingdom, Walter Hines Page, was shown the intercepted Zimmermann Telegram, in which Germany offered to give the American Southwest back to Mexico were Mexico to declare war on the United States.

February 19, 1455, is the traditional date of the publication of the Gutenberg Bible, the first Western book printed with movable type. Thus began a new era in human civilization, eventually bringing literacy, information, and entertainment to the masses.

On February 22, 1632, Ferdinando II de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, received the first printed copy of Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Dialogo sopra i Due Massimi Sistemi del Mondo). The Grand Duke was the dedicatee.

Galileo’s Dialogo is a witty and entertaining defense of the Copernican system, where the Sun is at the center of “the universe.” This was opposed to the traditional view — held by Aristotle and Ptolemy — of an Earth-​centered armillary sphere.

Only two systems appear in the Dialogo; Galileo pitting what we now call the Ptolemaic system with the Copernican, nowhere mentioning the Tychonic system then favored by most astronomers, one in which the Sun and Moon and stars revolve around Earth, but the planets revolve around the Sun. 

Once published, Pope Urban VIII gave orders for the Dialogo to be recalled and summoned Galileo to Rome for trial.

On February 22, 1943, brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl, and their colleague in the White Rose resistance organization, Christoph Probst, stood trial before the Volksgericht — the People’s Court that tried political offenses against the Nazi German state. Found guilty of treason by Roland Freisler, head judge of the court, the three were executed that same day.

The method of capital punishment was beheading by guillotine.

Their six pamphlets had spread throughout German-​held territory before the war ended.

On February 20, 1991, in the Albanian capital Tirana, a gigantic statue of Albania’s long-​time leader, Enver Hoxha, was brought down by mobs of angry protesters. 

February 19, 1942, was a sad day for constitutional rights, with President Franklin D. Roosevelt signing Executive Order 9066, authorizing the Secretary of War to prescribe certain areas of the country as military zones. These zones were used to incarcerate Japanese Americans in internment camps.