This Day in History

On Feb. 24, 1989, a state funeral was held in Japan for Emperor Hirohito, who had died the month before at age 87.

On this date:

In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII issued an edict outlining his calendar reforms. (The Gregorian Calendar is the calendar in general use today.)

In 1761, Boston lawyer James Otis Jr. went to court to argue against “writs of assistance” that allowed British customs officers to arbitrarily search people’s premises, declaring: “A man’s house is his castle.” (Although Otis lost the case, his statement provided early inspiration for American independence.)

In 1803, in its Marbury v. Madison decision, the Supreme Court established judicial review of the constitutionality of statutes.

In 1864, the first Union prisoners arrived at the Confederates’ Andersonville prison camp in Georgia.

In 1868, the U.S. House of Representatives impeached President Andrew Johnson by a vote of 126-47 following his attempted dismissal of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton; Johnson was later acquitted by the Senate.

In 1942, the SS Struma, a charter ship attempting to carry nearly 800 Jewish refugees from Romania to British-mandated Palestine, was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine in the Black Sea; all but one of the refugees perished.

In 1961, the Federal Communications Commission authorized the nation’s first fullscale trial of pay television in Hartford, Connecticut.

In 1981, a jury in White Plains, New York, found Jean Harris guilty of second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of “Scarsdale Diet” author Dr. Herman Tarnower. (Sentenced to 15 years to life in prison, Harris was granted clemency by New York Gov. Mario Cuomo in December 1992.)

In 1988, in a ruling that expanded legal protections for parody and satire, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned a $150,000 award that the Rev. Jerry Falwell had won against Hustler magazine and its publisher, Larry Flynt.

In 1994, entertainer Dinah Shore died in Beverly Hills, California, five days before turning 78.

In 1996, Cuba downed two small American planes operated by the group Brothers to the Rescue that it claimed were violating Cuban airspace; all four pilots were killed.