TODAY HISTORY IN

Today is Thursday, Feb. 14, the 45th day of 2019. There are 320 days left in the year. This is Valentine’s Day.

Today’s Highlights in History:

On Feb. 14, 2018, a gunman identified as a former student opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School near Fort Lauderdale, Florida, killing 17 people in the nation’s deadliest school shooting since the attack in Newtown, Connecticut, more than five years earlier.

On this date:

■ In 1663, New France (Canada) became a royal province under King Louis XIV.

■ In 1859, Oregon was admitted to the Union as the 33rd state.

■ In 1903, the Department of Commerce and Labor was established. (It was divided into separate departments of Commerce and Labor in 1913.)

■ In 1912, Arizona became the 48th state of the Union as President William Howard Taft signed a proclamation.

■ In 1913, labor leader Jimmy Hoffa was born in Brazil, Ind.; college football coach Woody Hayes was born in Clifton, Ohio; sports broadcaster Mel Allen was born in Birmingham, Ala.

■ In 1929, the “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” took place in a Chicago garage as seven rivals of Al Capone’s gang were gunned down.

■ In 1949, Israel’s Knesset convened for the first time.

■ In 1876, inventors Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray applied separately for patents related to the telephone. (The U.S. Supreme Court eventually ruled Bell the rightful inventor.)

■ In 1979, Adolph Dubs, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, was kidnapped in Kabul by Muslim extremists and killed in a shootout between his abductors and police.

■ In 1984, 6-year-old Stormie Jones became the world’s first heart-liver transplant recipient at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh (she lived until November, 1990).

Thought for Today: “To find a man’s true character, play golf with him.” —P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975).