Today in History
Today is Friday, Feb. 17, the 48th day of 2023. There are 323 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Feb. 17, 1801, the U.S. House of Representatives broke an electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, electing Jefferson president; Burr became vice president.
On this date:
• In 1815, the United States and Britain exchanged the instruments of ratification for the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812.
• In 1863, the International Red Cross was founded in Geneva.
• In 1864, during the Civil War, the Union ship USS Housatonic was rammed and sunk in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, by the Confederate hand-cranked submarine HL Hunley in the first naval attack of its kind; the Hunley also sank.
• In 1897, the forerunner of the National PTA, the National Congress of Mothers, convened its first meeting in Washington.
• In 1959, the United States launched Vanguard 2, a satellite that carried meteorological equipment.
• In 1964, the Supreme Court, in Wesberry v. Sanders, ruled that congressional districts within each state had to be roughly equal in population.
• In 1972, President Richard M. Nixon departed the White House with his wife, Pat, on a historic trip to China.
• In 1988, Lt. Col. William Higgins, a Marine Corps officer serving with a United Nations truce monitoring group, was kidnapped in southern Lebanon by Iranian-backed terrorists (he was later slain by his captors).
• In 1995, Colin Ferguson was convicted of six counts of murder in the December 1993 Long Island Rail Road shootings (he was later sentenced to a minimum of 200 years in prison).
• In 2015, Vice President Joe Biden opened a White House summit on countering extremism and radicalization, saying the United States needed to ensure that immigrants were fully included in the fabric of American society to prevent violent ideologies from taking root at home.
Today’s Birthdays: Actorcomedian Barry Humphries (aka “Dame Edna”) is 89. Actor Christina Pickles is 88. Football Hall of Famer Jim Brown is 87. Actor Brenda Fricker is 78. Actor Becky Ann Baker is 70. Actor Rene Russo is 69. Actor Richard Karn is 67. Actor Lou Diamond Phillips is 61. Basketball Hall of Famer Michael Jordan is 60. Actor-comedian Larry, the Cable Guy is 60. TV personality Rene Syler is 60. Movie director Michael Bay is 59. Singer Chante Moore is 56.