Today in History

Today’s highlight:

On Feb. 15, 1898, the U.S. battleship Maine mysteriously blew up in Havana Harbor, killing more than 260 crew members and bringing the United States closer to war with Spain.

On this date:

1564: Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa.

1879: President Rutherford B. Hayes signed a bill allowing female attorneys to argue cases before the Supreme Court.

1933: President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt escaped an assassination attempt in Miami that mortally wounded Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak; gunman Giuseppe Zangara was executed more than four weeks later.

1952: A funeral was held at Windsor Castle for Britain’s King George VI, who had died nine days earlier.

1961: Seventy-three people, including an 18-member U.S. figure skating team en route to the World Championships in Czechoslovakia, were killed in the crash of a Sabena Airlines Boeing 707 in Belgium.

1989: The Soviet Union announced that the last of its troops had left Afghanistan, after more than nine years of military intervention.

1992: A Milwaukee jury found that Jeffrey Dahmer was sane when he killed and mutilated 15 men and boys. The decision meant that Dahmer, who had already pleaded guilty to the murders, would receive a mandatory life sentence for each count; Dahmer was beaten to death in prison in 1994.

2004: Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the Daytona 500 on the same track where his father was killed three years earlier.

2005: Defrocked priest Paul Shanley was sentenced in Boston to 12 to 15 years in prison on child rape charges.

2006: Vice President Dick Cheney accepted blame for accidentally shooting a hunting companion, calling it “one of the worst days of my life,” but was defiantly unapologetic in a Fox News Channel interview about not publicly disclosing the incident until the next day.

2018: In response to the Florida school shooting, President Donald Trump, in an address to the nation, promised to “tackle the difficult issue of mental health,” but avoided any mention of guns. Nikolas Cruz, the suspect in the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, was ordered held without bond at a brief court hearing.

Ten years ago: Eighteen people were killed when two trains collided south of Brussels, Belgium.

Five years ago: A video purporting to show the mass beheading of Egyptian Coptic Christian hostages was released by militants in Libya affiliated with the Islamic State group.

One year ago: In a move to secure more money for his border wall, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency at the U.s.-mexico border, exercising a broad interpretation of his presidential powers. Congress voted to block the emergency declaration, but Trump vetoed that measure.