TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS WEDNESDAY, FEB. 17, the 48th day of 2021. There are 317 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY:
On this date in 1815, the United States and Britain exchanged the instruments of ratification for the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812. In 1801, the U.S. House of Representatives broke an electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, electing Jefferson president; Burr became vice president. In 1863, the International Red Cross was founded in Geneva. In 1864, during the Civil War, the Union ship USS Housatonic was rammed and sunk in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, by the Confederate handcranked submarine HL Hunley in the first naval attack of its kind. The Hunley also sank. In 1897, the forerunner of the National PTA, the National Congress of Mothers, convened its first meeting in Washington. In 1944, during World War II, U.S. forces invaded Eniwetok Atoll, encountering little initial resistance from Imperial Japanese troops. (The Americans secured the atoll less than a week later.) In 1964, the Supreme Court, in Wesberry v. Sanders, ruled that congressional districts within each state had to be roughly equal in population. In 1972, President Richard M. Nixon departed the White House with his wife, Pat, on a historic trip to China. In 1988, Lt. Col. William Higgins, a Marine Corps officer serving with a United Nations truce monitoring group, was kidnapped in southern Lebanon by Iranian-backed terrorists. (He was later slain by his captors.) In 1996, world chess champion Garry Kasparov beat IBM supercomputer “Deep Blue,” winning a six-game match in Philadelphia. (However, Kasparov lost to Deep Blue in a rematch in 1997) In 2006, Tanja Frieden of Switzerland won the Olympic women’s snowboardcross, speeding past American Lindsey Jacobellis, who’d fallen on her next-to-last jump before the finish line. In 2015, Vice President Joe Biden opened a White House summit on countering extremism and radicalization, saying the United States needed to ensure that immigrants were fully included in the fabric of American society to prevent violent ideologies from taking root at home. In 2018, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, told a conference in Germany that there was now “incontrovertible” evidence of a Russian plot to disrupt the 2016 U.S. election; the statement stood in stark contrast to Trump’s claim that Russian interference in his election victory was a hoax. TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Actor-comedian Barry Humphries (aka “Dame Edna”) is 87. Actor Christina Pickles is 86. Football Hall-of-Famer Jim Brown is 85. Actor Brenda Fricker is 76. Actor Becky Ann Baker is 68. Actor Rene Russo is 67. Actor Richard Karn is 65. Actor Lou Diamond Phillips is 59. Basketball Hall-of-Famer Michael Jordan, actor-comedian Larry, the Cable Guy, and TV personality Rene Syler are 58. Movie director Michael Bay is 57. Singer Chante Moore is 54. Rock musician Timothy J. Mahoney (311), actor Dominic Purcell, and Olympic gold and silver medal skier Tommy Moe are 51. Actor Denise Richards is 50. Rock singer-musician Billie Joe Armstrong (Green Day) and rock musician Taylor Hawkins (Foo Fighters) are 49. Actor Jerry O’Connell and country singer Bryan White are 47. Actor Kelly Carlson is 45. Actor Ashton Holmes is 43. Actor Conrad Ricamora is 42. Actor Jason Ritter is 41. TV personality Paris Hilton and actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt are 40. TV host Daphne Oz is 35. Actor Chord Overstreet is 32. Actor Meaghan Martin is 29. Actor Sasha Pieterse is 25.