15 February History
- 1798 - The first serious fist fight occurs in Congress.
- 1804 - New Jersey becomes the last northern state to abolish slavery.
- 1862 - Union General Ulysses S. Grant launches a major assault on Fort Donelson, Tenn.
- 1869 - Charges of treason against Jefferson Davis are dropped.
- 1898 - The U.S. battleship Maine blows up in Havana Harbor, killing 268 sailors and bringing hordes of Western cowboys and gunfighters rushing to enlist in the Spanish-American.
- 1900 - The British threaten to use natives in the Boer War fight.
- 1925 - The London Zoo announces it will install lights to cheer up fogged-in animals.
- 1934 - U.S. Congress passes the Civil Works Emergency Relief Act, allotting new funds for Federal Emergency Relief Administration.
- 1940 - Hitler orders that all British merchant ships will be considered warships.
- 1942 - British forces in Singapore surrender to Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita.
- 1943 - The Germans break the American Army's lines at the Fanid-Sened Sector in Tunisia, North Africa.
- 1944 - American bombers attack the Abbey of Monte Cassino in an effort to neutralize it as a German observation post in central Italy.
- 1946 - Royal Canadian mounted police arrest 22 as Soviet spies.
- 1950 - Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung sign a mutual defense treaty in Moscow.
- 1957 - Andrei Gromyko replaces Dmitri T. Shepilov as the Soviet Foreign Minister.
- 1961 - Eighteen members of the U.S. figure skating team are lost in an airplane crash in Belgium.
- 1965 - Canada's maple leaf flag is raised for the first time.
- 1967 - Thirteen U.S. helicopters are shot down in one day in Vietnam
- 1974 - U.S. gas stations threaten to close because of federal fuel policies.
15 February Birthdays
- 1564 - Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer and mathematician.
- 1710 - Louis XV, King of France
- 1726 - Abraham Clark, signer of Declaration of Independence.
- 1797 - Henry Steinway, piano maker
- 1820 - Susan B. Anthony, suffragette and political activist.
- 1882 - John Barrymore, actor, sibling to actors Lionel Barrymore & Ethel Barrymore, father of actors John Drew Barrymore & Diana Barrymore and grandfather of actor Drew Barrymore.
- 1905 - Harold Arlen, composer, arranger and pianist ("Stormy Weather," "It's Only a Paper Moon").
- 1954 - Matt Groening, cartoonist (The Simpsons).