Today in history

On Feb. 14, 1778, the U.S. ship Ranger carried the recently adopted Stars and Stripes to a foreign port for the first time as it arrived in France. In 1859 Oregon was admitted as the 33rd state. In 1912 Arizona became the 48th state.

In 1920 the League of Women Voters was founded in Chicago; its first president was Maud Wood Park.

In 1929 the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre took place in a Chicago garage as seven rivals of Al Capone’s gang were gunned down. In 1945 Peru, Paraguay, Chile and Ecuador joined the United Nations.

In 1984 6-year-old Stormie Jones became the world’s first heart-liver transplant recipient, at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh; she lived until November 1990.

In 1989 Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini called on Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie, author of “The Satanic Verses,” a novel condemned as blasphemous.

In 1993 the body of James Bulger, a 2-year-old who had been lured away from his mother in a Liverpool, England, mall two days earlier, was found along a stretch of railroad track. (Two 10-year-old boys were later convicted of murder.)

In 2001 the Kansas Board of Education restored evolution to the state’s science curriculum.

In 2004 guerrillas overwhelmed a police station west of Baghdad, killing 23 people and freeing dozens of prisoners. In 2006 Iran said it had resumed uranium enrichment; Russia and France immediately called on Iran to halt its work.

In 2008 a former student walked onto the stage of a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University and opened fire on a packed class; Steven Kazmierczak killed five students before committing suicide.