This day in history

Today is Tuesday, Feb. 20, the 51st day of 2024. There are 315 days left in the year.

Birthdays: Racing Hall of Famer Roger Penske is 87. Singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie is 83. Hockey Hall of Famer Phil Esposito is 82. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, is 82. Movie director Mike Leigh is 81. Actor Brenda Blethyn is 78. Actor Sandy Duncan is 78. Actor Peter Strauss is 77. Rock musician Billy Zoom of X is 76. Former British prime minister Gordon Brown is 73. Newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst is 70. Actor Anthony Head is 70. Comedian Joel Hodgson is 64. Basketball Hall of Famer Charles Barkley is 61. Actor French Stewart is 60. Model Cindy Crawford is 58. Actor Lili Taylor is 57. Singer Brian Littrell of Backstreet Boys is 49. Actor Chelsea Peretti is 46. Actor-singer Jessie Mueller is 41. MLB All-Star pitcher Justin Verlander is 41. Comedian Trevor Noah is 40. Actor Miles Teller is 37. Singer Rihanna is 36.

► In 1792, President George Washington signed an act creating the US Post Office Department.

► In 1862, William Wallace Lincoln, the 11-year-old son of President Abraham Lincoln and first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, died at the White House, apparently of typhoid fever.

► In 1905, the US Supreme Court, in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, upheld, 7-2, compulsory vaccination laws intended to protect the public’s health.

► In 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt signed an immigration act which excluded “idiots, imbeciles, feebleminded persons, epileptics, insane persons” from being admitted to the United States.

► In 1933, Congress proposed the 21st Amendment to the US Constitution to repeal Prohibition.

► In 1938, Anthony Eden resigned as British foreign secretary following Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s decision to negotiate with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

► In 1962, astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth as he flew aboard Project Mercury’s Friendship 7 spacecraft, which circled the globe three times in a flight lasting 4 hours, 55 minutes, and 23 seconds before splashing down safely in the Atlantic Ocean 800 miles southeast of Bermuda.

► In 1965, America’s Ranger 8 spacecraft crashed on the moon, as planned, after sending back thousands of pictures of the lunar surface.

► In 1987, a bomb left by Unabomber Ted Kaczynski exploded behind a computer store in Salt Lake City, seriously injuring store owner Gary Wright.

► In 2003, a fire sparked by pyrotechnics broke out during a concert by the group Great White at The Station nightclub in West Warwick, R.I., killing 100 people and injuring about 200 others.

► In 2005, death claimed actor Sandra Dee at age 62; musical actor John Raitt at age 88; and counterculture writer Hunter S. Thompson at age 67.