TODAY IN HISTORY

On Feb. 14, 1778, the American ship Ranger carried the recently adopted Stars and Stripes to a foreign port for the first time as it arrived in France.

In 1876, inventors Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray applied separately for patents related to the telephone. (The U.S. Supreme Court eventually ruled Bell the rightful inventor.)

In 1912, Arizona became the 48th state of the Union as President William Howard Taft signed a proclamation.

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, during World War II, British and Canadian forces reached the Rhine River in Germany.

In 1967, Aretha Franklin recorded her cover of Otis Redding’s “Respect” in New York.

In 1979, Adolph Dubs, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, was kidnapped in Kabul by Muslim extremists and killed in a shootout between his abductors and police.

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

In 2013, American Airlines and US Airways announced an

$11 billion merger that turned American into the world’s biggest airline.

In 2018, a former student opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School near Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

In 2019, William Barr was sworn in for his second stint as the nation’s attorney general; he succeeded Jeff Sessions, who had been pushed out of office by President Donald Trump after Trump denounced Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation.