Today in history

Today is Monday, Feb. 15, the 46th day of 2021. There are 319 days left in the year. This is Presidents Day.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Feb. 15, 1989, the Soviet Union announced that the last of its troops had left Afghanistan, after more than nine years of military intervention. On this date:

In 1564, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa.

In 1764, the site of present-day St. Louis was established by

Pierre Laclede and Auguste Chouteau.

In 1798, a feud between two members of the U.S. House of Representatives (meeting in Philadelphia) boiled over as Roger Griswold of Connecticut used a cane to attack Vermont’s Matthew Lyon, who defended himself with a set of tongs. (Griswold was enraged over the House’s refusal to expel Lyon for spitting tobacco juice in his face two weeks earlier; after the two men were separated, a motion to expel them both was defeated.)

In 1879, President Rutherford B. Hayes signed a bill allowing female attorneys to argue cases before the Supreme Court.

In 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.

In 1933, Presidentelect 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.

In 1944, Allied bombers destroyed the monastery atop Monte Cassino (MAWN’-tay kah-SEE’noh) in Italy.

In 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.