TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Sunday, Feb. 23, the 54th day of 2020. There are 312 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On Feb. 23, 1945, during World War II, U.S. Marines on Iwo Jima captured Mount Suribachi, where they raised two American flags (the second flagraising was captured in the iconic Associated Press photograph.)

On this date:

In 1822, Boston was granted a charter to incorporate as a city.

In 1836, the siege of the Alamo began in San Antonio, Texas.

In 1848, the sixth president of the United States, John Quincy Adams, died in Washington D.C., at age 80.

In 1861, President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrived secretly in Washington to take office, following word of a possible assassination plot in Baltimore.

In 1870, Mississippi was readmitted to the Union.

In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt signed an agreement with Cuba to lease the area around Guantanamo Bay to the United States.

In 1942, the first shelling of the U.S. mainland during World War II occurred as a Japanese submarine fired on an oil refinery near Santa Barbara, California, causing little damage.

In 1954, the first mass inoculation of schoolchildren against polio using the Salk vaccine began in Pittsburgh as some 5,000 students were vaccinated.

In 1965, film comedian Stan Laurel, 74, died in Santa Monica, California.

In 1995, the Dow Jones industrial average closed above the 4,000 mark for the first time, ending the day at 4,003.33.

In 1998, 42 people were killed, some 2,600 homes and businesses damaged or destroyed, by tornadoes in central Florida.

In 2005, a jury was selected in Santa Maria, California, to decide Michael Jackson’s fate on charges that he’d molested a teenage boy at his Neverland Ranch. (Jackson was later acquitted.)

Ten years ago: The House Energy and Commerce Committee, looking into cases of sudden, unintended acceleration of Toyota automobiles, heard tearful testimony from Rhonda Smith of Sevierville, Tennessee, who said her Lexus had raced out of control to speeds up to 100 miles an hour. Dutch skater Sven Kramer lost the Olympic gold medal to Lee Seung-hoon of South Korea when coach Gerard Kemkers sent him the wrong way on a changeover during the 10,000-meter speedskating race at Vancouver, causing Kramer to be disqualified.