TODAY IN HISTORY

Feb. 14, 2018

A gunman identified as a former student opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School near Fort Lauderdale, Florida, killing 17 people in the nation’s deadliest school shooting since the attack in Newtown, Connecticut, more than five years earlier. ALSO ON THIS DATE

1663

New France became a royal province under King Louis XIV.

1859

Oregon was admitted to the Union as the 33rd state.

1903

The Department of Commerce and Labor was established.

1912

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

1913

Labor leader Jimmy Hoffa was born in Brazil, Ind.; college football coach Woody Hayes was born in Clifton, Ohio; sports broadcaster Mel Allen was born in Birmingham, Ala.

1929

The “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” took place in a Chicago garage as seven rivals of Al Capone’s gang were gunned down.

1949

Israel’s Knesset convened for the first time.

1876

Inventors Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray applied separately for patents related to the telephone.

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.

1984

6-year-old Stormie Jones became the world’s first heart-liver transplant recipient at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.

2013

Double-amputee and Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius shot and killed his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, at his home in Pretoria, South Africa; he was later convicted of murder and is serving a 13-year prison term.