Today’s highlight in history
On Feb. 23, 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, Calif., causing little damage.
On this date
In 1836, the siege of the Alamo began in San Antonio.
In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt signed an agreement with Cuba to lease the area around Guantanamo Bay to the United States.
In 1927, President Calvin Coolidge signed a bill creating the Federal Radio Commission, forerunner of the Federal Communications Commission.
In 1945, during World War II, U.S. Marines on Iwo Jima captured Mount Suribachi, where they raised a pair of American flags (the second flag-raising was captured in the famous Associated Press photograph.)
In 1954, the first mass inoculation of schoolchildren against polio using the Salk vaccine began in Pittsburgh. About 5,000 students were vaccinated.
In 1965, film comedian Stan Laurel, 74, died in Santa Monica, Calif.
In 1997, a 69year-old Palestinian teacher opened fire on the 86th-floor observation deck of New York’s Empire State Building, killing one person and wounding six others before shooting himself to death.
Ten years ago: A Mississippi grand jury refused to bring any new charges in the 1955 slaying of Emmett Till, the black teenager who was beaten and shot for supposedly whistling at a white woman, declining to indict the woman, Carolyn Bryant Donham, for manslaughter.
Five years ago: Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown University law student, spoke about the need for health coverage that included birth control during an unofficial Democratic-sponsored hearing on Capitol Hill; her comments drew a savage verbal assault from radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who accused Fluke of being a “slut” (Limbaugh later apologized).
One year ago: A 26-year-old gunman killed four family members and torched their house in Phoenix before being shot dead by authorities.