TODAY IN HISTORY
Today’s highlight:
On Feb. 25, 1964, Muhammad Ali (then known as Cas- sius Clay) became world heavyweight boxing champion as he defeated Sonny Liston in Miami Beach.
On this date:
In 1901, United States Steel Corp. was incorpo- rated by J.P. Morgan.
In 1913, the 16th Amend- ment to the U.S. Constitution, giving Congress the power to levy and collect income taxes, was declared in effect by Secretary of State Philan- der Chase Knox.
In 1919, Oregon became the first state to tax gaso- line, at one cent per gallon.
In 1954, Gamal Abdel Nasser became Egypt’s prime minister after the country’s president, Mohammed Naguib, was effectively ousted in a coup.
In 1957, the Supreme Court, in Butler v. Michigan, overturned a Michigan statute making it a misde- meanor to sell books con- taining obscene language that would tend to corrupt “the morals of youth.”
In 1973, the Stephen Sondheim musical “A Little Night Music” opened at Broadway’s Shubert Theater.
In 1986, President Ferdinand Marcos fled the Philippines after 20 years of rule in the wake of a tainted election; Corazon Aquino assumed the presidency.
In 1991, during the Persian Gulf War, 28 Americans were killed when an Iraqi Scud missile hit a U.S. barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
In 1994, American-born Jewish settler Baruch Gold- stein opened fire with an automatic rifle inside the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the
West Bank, killing 29 Muslims before he was beaten to death by worshippers.
In 1997, a jury in Media, Pennsylvania, convicted chemical fortune heir John E. du Pont of third-degree murder, deciding he was mentally ill when he shot and killed world-class wrestler David Schultz. (Du Pont died in prison in December 2010 while serving a 13- to 30-year sentence; he was 72.)
In 2020, U.S. health officials warned that the coronavirus was certain to spread more widely in the United States; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged Americans to be prepared. President Donald Trump, speaking in India, said the virus was “very well under control” in the U.S.
Ten years ago: A highstakes civil trial started in New Orleans to assign blame and help figure out exactly how much more BP and other companies should pay for the 2010 Gulf oil spill. (BP ended up reaching a record-setting $20 billion settlement with the federal government and five Gulf states.)
One year ago: President Joe Biden nominated federal appeals court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, making her the first Black woman selected to serve on it. (She would be confirmed by the Senate on April 7.) Russian troops bore down on Ukraine’s capital, with gunfire and explosions resonating ever closer to the government quarter, in an invasion of a democratic country that fueled fears of wider war in Europe and triggered worldwide efforts to make Russia stop.