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 this date in 1989, the Soviet Union announced that the last of its troops had left Afghanistan, after more than nine years of military intervention. In 1564, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa. In 1764, the site of what is now 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, 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. 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. In 1992, a Milwaukee jury found that Jeffrey Dahmer was sane when he killed and mutilated 15 men and boys. (The decision meant that Dahmer, who had already pleaded guilty to the murders, would receive a mandatory life sentence for each count; Dahmer was beaten to death in prison in 1994.) In 2004, Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the Daytona 500 on the same track where his father had been killed three years earlier. In 2018, the last of the bodies of the 17 victims of a school shooting in Florida were removed from the building after authorities analyzed the crime scene; 13 wounded survivors were still hospitalized. In response to the Florida school shooting, President Donald Trump, in an address to the nation, promised to “tackle the difficult issue of mental health” but avoided any mention of guns. Nikolas Cruz, the suspect in the shooting, was ordered held without bond at a brief court hearing. TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Actor Claire Bloom is 90. Author Susan Brownmiller is 86. Songwriter Brian Holland is 80. Rock musician Mick Avory (The Kinks) and jazz musician Henry Threadgill are 77. Actor-model Marisa Berenson is 74. Actor Jane Seymour and singer Melissa Manchester are 70. Actor Lynn Whitfield is 68. “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening is 67. Model Janice Dickinson and actor Christopher McDonald are 66. Reggae singer Ali Campbell and actor Joseph R. Gannascoli are 62. Musician Mikey Craig (Culture Club), and College and Pro Football Hall-of-Famer Darrell Green are 61. Actor-comedian Steven Michael Quezada is 58. Actor Michael Easton is 54. Actor Sarah Wynter and Olympic gold medal swimmer Amy Van DykenRouen are 48. Actor-director Miranda July is 47. Rock singer Brandon Boyd (Incubus) and rock musician Ronnie Vannucci (The Killers) are 45. Rock singer/guitarist Adam Granduciel (The War on Drugs) is 42. Singer-songwritermusician Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes) is 41. Actor Ashley Lyn Cafagna is 38. Blues-rock musician Gary Clark Jr. is 37. Actor Natalie Morales is 36.