TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Monday, Feb. 19, the 50th day of 2018. There are 315 days left in the year. This is Presidents Day.
Today’s Highlight in History
On Feb. 19, 1968, the children’s program “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” created by and starring Fred Rogers, made its network debut on National Educational Television, a forerunner of PBS, beginning a 31-season run.
On this date
1473 — Astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus was born in Torun, Poland. 1881 — Kansas prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. 1915 — During World War I, British and French warships launched their initial attack on Ottoman forces in the Dardanelles, a strait in northwestern Turkey. (The Gallipoli Campaign that followed proved disastrous for the Allies.) 1934 — A blizzard began inundating the northeastern United States, with the heaviest snowfall occurring in Connecticut and Massachusetts. 1942 — During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which paved the way for the relocation and internment of people of Japanese ancestry, including U.S.-born citizens. Imperial Japanese warplanes raided the Australian city of Darwin; at least 243 people were killed. 1945 — Operation Detachment began during World War II as some 30,000 U.S. Marines began landing on Iwo Jima, where they commenced a successful month-long battle to seize control of the island from Japanese forces. 1959 — An agreement was signed by Britain, Turkey and Greece granting Cyprus its independence. 1963 — “The Feminine Mystique” by Betty Friedan was first published by W.W. Norton & Co. 1976 — President Gerald R. Ford, calling the issuing of Executive Order 9066 in 1942 “a sad day in American history,” signed a proclamation formally confirming its termination. 1984 — The Winter Olympics closed in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. 1986 — The U.S. Senate approved, 83-11, the Genocide Convention, an international treaty outlawing “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” nearly 37 years after the pact was first submitted for ratification. 1997 — Deng Xiaoping, the last of China’s major Communist revolutionaries, died at age 92.
One year ago
A SpaceX rocket soared from NASA’s longidled moonshot pad, sending up space station supplies from the exact spot where astronauts embarked on the lunar landings nearly a halfcentury earlier.
Hundreds of scientists, environmental advocates and their supporters held a rally in Boston to protest what they saw as increasing threats to science and research.