TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Wednesday, Feb. 13.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
On Feb. 13, 2016, Justice Antonin Scalia, the influential conservative and most provocative member of the U.S. Supreme Court, was found dead at a private residence in the Big Bend area of West Texas; he was 79.
ON THIS DATE
In 1633, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome for trial before the Inquisition, accused of defending Copernican theory that the Earth revolved around the sun instead of the other way around. (Galileo was found vehemently suspect of heresy, and ended up being sentenced to a form of house arrest.) In 1861, Abraham Lincoln was officially declared winner of the 1860 presidential election as electors cast their ballots.
In 1935, a jury in Flemington, New Jersey, found Bruno Richard Hauptmann guilty of first-degree murder in the kidnap-slaying of Charles A. Lindbergh Jr., the 20-monthold son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh. (Hauptmann was later executed.)
In 1943, during World War II, the U.S. Marine Corps Women’s Reserve was officially established.
In 1974, Nobel Prize-winning Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet Union.
In 1984, Konstantin Chernenko was chosen to be general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee, succeeding the late Yuri Andropov.
In 1988, the 15th Winter Olympics opened in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
In 1996, the rock musical “Rent,” by Jonathan Larson, opened off-Broadway.
In 1998, Dr. David Satcher was sworn in as the 16th Surgeon General of the United States during an Oval Office ceremony.
In 2013, beginning a long farewell to his flock, a weary Pope Benedict XVI celebrated his final public Mass as pontiff, presiding over Ash Wednesday services inside St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican.
In 2017, President Donald Trump’s embattled national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned following reports he had misled Vice President Mike Pence and other officials about his contacts with Russia.
Ten years ago: A $787 billion stimulus bill aimed at easing the worst economic crisis in decades cleared both houses of Congress. Peanut Corp. of America, the Lynchburg, Va.-based peanut processing company at the heart of a national salmonella outbreak, filed for bankruptcy. Five years ago: Justyna Kowalczyk of Poland dominated her favorite event at the Sochi Olympics, winning the women’s cross-country 10-kilometer classical race despite skiing with a fractured foot.
One year ago: President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, said he had paid $130,000 out of his own pocket to a porn actress who claimed to have had a sexual relationship with Trump.
THOUGHT FOR TODAY
“The world has no sympathy with any but positive griefs; it will pity you for what you lose, but never for what you lack.” — Anne Sophie Swetchine, Russian-French author (17821857).
— ASSOCIATED PRESS