On February 19th...

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1473 Astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus was born.

1594 Sigismund III was crowned King of Sweden.

1717 Actor David Garrick was born.

1803 The U. S. Congress accepted Ohio's state constitution.

1807 U. S. Vice-President Aaron Burr was arrested in Alabama for treason.

1819 William Smith discovered the South Shetland Islands and claimed them in the name of King George III.

1831 The first practical U. S. coal-burning locomotive made its first trial run, in Pennsylvania.

1846 Texas officially moved its seat of government to Austin.

1852 The Phi Kappa Psi fraternity was founded at Jefferson College in Vanonsburg, Pennsylvania.

1856 Hamilton Smith patented the tin-type camera.

1864 Union troops captured Gainesville, Florida, during the Battle of Olustee.

1878 Thomas Edison received a patent for the gramophone (phonograph).

1881 Kansas became the first state to prohibit all alcoholic beverages.

1906 W. K. Kellogg and Charles D. Bolin incorporated Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company in Battle Creek, Michigan.

1913 General Victoriano Huerta took control of the Mexican government, with U. S. support.
1913 The first prize was inserted into a Cracker Jack box.

1917 Frederick Funston, botanist and adventurer, died.

1932 Astronaut Joseph P. Kerwin was born.

1936 Manuel Azaña became Prime Minister of Spain for the second time.

1942 U. S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the detention and internment of all west-coast Japanese-Americans.
1942 Japanese troops landed on Timor.
1942 The New York Yankees announced that 5,000 uniformed soldiers would be admitted free at each of their upcoming home games.

1943 German tanks under Major-General Karl Buelowius attacked Kasserine Pass, Tunisia.

1945 U.S. marines stormed Iwo Jima.

1949 Ezra Pound was awarded the first ever Bollingen Prize for Poetry.

1950 A groundbreaking ceremony was held for Mississippi Vocational College (now Mississippi Valley State University).

1953 Georgia approved the first literature censorship board in the United States.

1955 The South East Asia Collective Defense TReaty went into effect.

1959 Great Britain, Greece, Turkey, and leaders of the Greek and Turkish Cypriotes agreed to a plan that would make Cyprus an indepedent republic in 1960.
1959 Former Teamsters president Dave Beck was convicted on six counts of tax evasion by a federal jury in Tacoma, Washington.

1960 Bill Keane's Family Circus comic strip debuted.
1960 Andrew, Duke of York, was born.
1960 Norwegian Prime Minister Hans Christian Svane Hansen died.

1963 The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan, was published.

1968 "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" debuted on NET (now PBS).

1974 Helen Reddy and Jim Croce were among the first American Music Awards winners.

1976 Frente Polisario formed the Democratic Republic of Sahara.

1978 Bobby Allison won the Daytona 500.

1979 A Gates Learjet Model 29 crewed by Neal Armstrong, Pete Reynolds, and John Plunkett set a time-to-climb to 49,215-feet record.

1984 Cale Yarborough won the Daytona 500.

1985 A Spanish airliner crashed on approach to Bilbao, Spain, killing 150 persons.
1985 William Schroeder became the first recipient of an artificial heart to leave the hospital (for 15 minutes).

1989 Darrell Waltrip won the Daytona 500.

1995 Sterling Marlin won the Daytona 500.

1997 Deng Xiaoping, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, died.

2006 Jimmie Johnson won the Daytona 500.

2008 Fidel Castro stepped down as President of Cuba due to poor health.

2012 A brawl between two rival cartels in an Apocada, Mexico, prison, left 44 persons dead.

2013 A Yemeni Air Force plane crashed in Sana'a, killing 12 persons and injuring 11.

2016 Novelist Harper Lee died.

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This page was last updated on February 19, 2018.