16 February History


Month:                           Date:     

  • 1760    -    Cherokee Indians held hostage at Fort St. George are killed in revenge for Indian attacks on frontier settlements.
  • 1804    -    Lt. Stephen Decatur attacks the Tripoli pirates who burned the USS Philadelphia.
  • 1862    -    Fort Donelson, Tennessee, falls to Grant's Federal forces, but not before Nathan Bedford Forrest escapes.
  • 1865    -    Columbia, South Carolina, surrenders to Federal troops.
  • 1923    -    Bessie Smith makes her first recording "Down Hearted Blues."
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  • 1934    -    Thousands of Socialists battle Communists at a rally in New York's Madison Square Garden.
  • 1937    -    Dupont patents a new thread, nylon, which will replace silk in a number of products and reduce costs.
  • 1940    -    The British destroyer HMS Cossack rescues British seamen from a German prison ship, the Altmark, in a Norwegian fjord.
  • 1942    -    Tojo outlines Japan's war aims to the Diet, referring to "new order of coexistence" in East Asia.
  • 1945    -    American paratroopers land on Corregidor, in a campaign to liberate the Philippines.
  • 1951    -    Stalin contends the U.N. is becoming the weapon of aggressive war.
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  • 1952    -    The FBI arrests 10 members of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina.
  • 1957    -    A U.S. flag flies over an outpost in Wilkes Land, Antarctica.
  • 1959    -    Fidel Castro takes the oath as Cuban premier in Havana.
  • 1965    -    Four persons are held in a plot to blow up the Statue of Liberty, Liberty Bell and the Washington Monument.
  • 1966    -    The World Council of Churches being held in Geneva, urges immediate peace in Vietnam.
  • 1978    -    China and Japan sign a $20 billion trade pact, which is the most important move since the 1972 resumption of diplomatic ties.
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  • 16 February Birthdays

  • 1620    -    Frederick William, founder of Brandenburg-Prussia.
  • 1838    -    Henry Adams, U.S. historian, son and grandson of the presidents.
  • 1852    -    Charles Taze Russell, founder of the International Bible Students Association which later became the Jehovah's Witnesses.
  • 1845    -    Quinton Hogg, English philanthropist.
  • 1886    -    Van Wyck Brooks, biographer, critic and literary historian.
  • 1903    -    Edgar Bergen, ventriloquist and radio comedian.
  • 1904    -    George Kennan, U.S. diplomat and historian.
  • 1944    -    Richard Ford, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist (The Sportswriter, Independence Day).