TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

Feb. 15, 1961

73 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.

ALSO ON THIS DATE

1564

Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa.

1798

A feud between two members of the U.S. House of Representatives boiled over as Roger Griswold of Connecticut used a cane to attack Vermont’s Matthew Lyon, who defended himself with a set of tongs.

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.

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.

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.

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.

2014

Michael Dunn was convicted in Jacksonville, Florida, of attempted murder for shooting into a carful of teenagers after an argument over loud music, but jurors deadlocked on the charge of first-degree murder in the death of 17-year-old Jordan Davis.