This Day in HISTORY
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHTS
270 ce: St Valentine, a priest and physician, is martyred in Rome; Valentine’s Day love displays stem from legend that Valentine had signed a letter to his jailer’s daughter, with whom he had fallen in love, “From your Valentine.”
1899: The US Congress approves, and US President William Mckinley signs, legislation authorising states to use voting machines for federal elections.
1929: During the Prohibition
(of alcohol) era members of Al Capone’s gang of bootleggers massacre a rival gang run by George Moran in Chicago, in what becomes known as the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre.
2001: Violent protests against the celebration of Valentine’s Day, popular among the younger, more Westernised population, take place in cities throughout India.
OTHER EVENTS
1540: Holy Roman Emperor Charles V enters Ghent, in Belgium, and executes leaders of the revolt.
1831: Vicente Guerrero, revolutionary general and president of Mexico, dies at 48 after being executed by the firing squad of the conservative government that ousted him.
1893: The United States annexes Hawaii by treaty.
1922: Gracekennedy and Company Limited — one of the Caribbean’s largest conglomerates — is launched in Jamaica.
1924: Thomas J Watson renames the Computingtabulating-recording Company (CTR) as International Business Machines (IBM).
1967: At Atlantic Studio in
New York City Aretha Franklin records the single Respect, her rendition of Otis Redding’s tune.
1971: Richard Nixon installs a secret taping system in the White House.
1972: Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey’s musical Grease opens in New York City and runs for 3,388 performances.
1984: Britain’s Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean record nineof-nine perfect scores for artistic impression in their free dance routine at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics.
1985: Whitney Houston’s debut album of the same name is released; it wins the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance (Female), and Billboard Album of Year in 1986.
1989: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran issues an edict sentencing British author Salman Rushdie to death for allegedly insulting Islam, sending him into hiding for years.
1991: Several Latin American countries halt food imports from Peru, seeking to contain a cholera epidemic responsible for the deaths of 3,000 people. The Silence of the Lambs is released in American theatres.
2005: Steve Chen, Chad
Hurley and Jawed Karim register Youtube, a website for sharing videos, with more than one billion unique users visiting the site every month.
2009: The Group of Seven finance ministers pledge to avoid resorting to protectionism as they try to stimulate their own economies in the face of the world’s worst economic crisis since the 1930s.
2012: Oscar Pistorious, the double-amputee Olympic sprinter dubbed the Blade Runner, is charged in the slaying of his girlfriend at his upscale home in South Africa.
2014: For the first time in men’s figure skating all three Olympic singles medallists are of Asian descent — Yuzuru Hanyu (Japan) gold, Patrick Chan (Canada) silver, and Denis Ten (Kazakhstan) bronze.
2017: The Laureus World Sports Awards are won by Jamaican sportsman Usain Bolt and sportswoman Simone Biles.
2018: Amid scandals and corruption allegations, South African President Jacob Zuma resigns and is later replaced by Cyril Ramaphosa.
2021: At the 63rd Daytona 500 Michael Mcdowell navigates through a fiery, final-lap pileup to claim his first career NASCAR Cup Series win in his 14th season; the race is delayed by rain for six hours after a huge lap14 crash.
2023: Rapper and musician Pharrell Williams is appointed menswear designer for Louis Vuitton.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Thomas Malthus, English economist and demographer — theorist regarding population growth will always tend to outrun food supply and should be checked by stern reproduction limits (1766-1834); Frederick Douglass, abolitionist, US official and diplomat, and best-selling author of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1818-1895); Christopher Latham Sholes, US inventor of the QWERTY keyboard (18191890); Charles Hyatt, renowned broadcaster and actor (19312007)