This day in history
Today is Wednesday, Feb. 15, the 46th day of 2023. There are 319 days left in the year.
▶ Today’s birthdays: Actor Claire Bloom is 92. Author Susan Brownmiller is 88. Songwriter Brian Holland is 82. Rock musician Mick Avory of the Kinks is 79. Jazz musician Henry Threadgill is 79. Actormodel Marisa Berenson is 76. Actor Jane Seymour is 72. Singer Melissa Manchester is 72. “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening is 69. Actor Christopher McDonald is 68. Actor Joseph R. Gannascoli is 64. Football Hall of Famer Darrell Green is 63. Actor Michael Easton is 56. Latin singer Gloria Trevi is 55. Actor Alex Borstein is 52. Olympic gold medal swimmer Amy Van Dyken-Rouen is 50.
▶ In 1764, the site of presentday St. Louis was established by Pierre Laclede and Auguste Chouteau.
▶ In 1851, an angry crowd stormed the federal courthouse in Boston and rescued Shadrach Minkins, the first escaped slave seized in New England under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. Under the law, northern authorities were required to help owners recapture slaves. Minkins, who had escaped slavery in Norfolk, Va., and fled to Boston, was tracked down by his master and arrested by US marshals. After he was pulled from the courtroom, Minkins was hid in a home on Beacon Hill, then ushered onto the Underground Railroad to Canada.
▶ In 1898, the US 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 about four weeks later.
▶ In 1944, Allied bombers destroyed the monastery atop Monte Cassino in Italy.
▶ In 1950, Walt Disney‘s animated film “Cinderella” premiered in Boston.
▶ In 1961, 73 people, including an 18-member US 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 1967, the rock band Chicago was founded by Walter Parazaider, Terry Kath, Danny Seraphine, Lee Loughnane, James Pankow, and Robert Lamm; the group originally called itself the Big Thing, then Chicago Transit Authority.
▶ In 1989, the Soviet Union announced that the last of its troops had left Afghanistan, after more than nine years of military intervention.
ºIn 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.)
ºIn 2003, millions of protesters around the world demonstrated against the prospect of a US attack on Iraq.
▶ In 2005, defrocked priest Paul Shanley was sentenced in Boston to 12 to 15 years in prison on child rape charges.
▶ In 2013, with a blinding flash and a booming shock wave, a meteor blazed across Russia’s western Siberian sky and exploded, injuring more than 1,000 people as it blasted out windows.
▶ Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he welcomed a security dialogue with the West as his military reported pulling back some of its troops near Ukraine. President Biden said the US had “not yet verified” Russia’s claim and that an invasion still remains a distinct possibility. (Russia would invade Ukraine five days later.) The families of nine victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting agreed to a $73 million settlement of a lawsuit against the maker of the rifle used to kill 20 first-graders and six educators in 2012.