This Day in History

On Feb. 23, 1954, the first mass inoculation of schoolchildren against polio using the Salk vaccine began in Pittsburgh as some 5,000 students were vaccinated.

On this date:

In 1685, composer George Frideric Handel was born in present-day Germany.

In 1822, Boston was granted a charter to incorporate as a city.

In 1836, the siege of the Alamo began in San Antonio, Texas.

In 1848, the sixth president of the United States, John Quincy Adams, died in Washington D.C., at age 80.

In 1870, Mississippi was readmitted to the Union.

In 1927, President Calvin Coolidge signed a bill creating the Federal Radio Commission, forerunner of the FCC.

In 1942, the first shelling of the U.S. mainland during World War II occurred as a Japanese submarine fired on an oil refinery near Santa Barbara, California, causing little damage.

In 1945, during World War II, U.S. Marines on Iwo Jima captured Mount Suribachi, where they raised two American flags (the second flag-raising was captured in the iconic Associated Press photograph.)

In 1965, film comedian Stan Laurel, 74, died in Santa Monica, California.

In 1998, 42 people were killed, some 2,600 homes and businesses damaged or destroyed, by tornadoes in central Florida.

In 2004, the Army canceled its Comanche helicopter program after sinking $6.9 billion into it over 21 years. Education Secretary Rod Paige likened the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union, to a “terrorist organization” during a private White House meeting with governors. (Paige later called it a poor choice of words, but stood by his claim the NEA was using “obstructionist scare tactics.”)

In 2005, a jury was selected in Santa Maria, California, to decide Michael Jackson’s fate on charges that he’d molested a teenage boy at his Neverland Ranch. (Jackson was later acquitted.)

Ten years ago: President Barack Obama pledged to dramatically slash the skyrocketing annual budget deficit as he started to dole out the record $787 billion economic stimulus package he’d signed the previous week.