15 February History


Month:                           Date:     

  • 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.
ADVERTISEMENTS
  • 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.
ADVERTISEMENTS
  • 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.
ADVERTISEMENTS
  • 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).