February 19 is the 50th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 315 days remaining until the end of the year (316 in leap years).
Holidays
- Armed Forces Day (Mexico)
- Birthday of Shivaji or Shivaji Jayanti (Maharashtra, India)
- Christian Feast Day:
- Commemoration of Bulgaria’s Apostle of Freedom Vassil Levski (Bulgaria)
- Flag Day (Turkmenistan)
History
In 197, Emperor Septimius Severus defeats usurper Clodius Albinus in the Battle of Lugdunum, the bloodiest battle between Roman armies.
In 356, Emperor Constantius II issues a decree closing all pagan temples in the Roman Empire.
In 1594, Having already inherited the throne of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth through his mother Catherine Jagellonica of Poland in 1587, Sigismund III of the House of Vasa is crowned King of Sweden, having succeeded his father John III of Sweden in 1592.
In 1600, The Peruvian stratovolcano Huaynaputina explodes in the most violent eruption in the recorded history of South America.
In 1649, The Second Battle of Guararapes takes place, effectively ending Dutch colonization efforts in Brazil.
In 1674, England and the Netherlands sign the Treaty of Westminster, ending the Third Anglo-Dutch War. A provision of the agreement transfers the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam to England, and it is renamed New York.
In 1700, Last day of the Julian calendar in Denmark.
In 1789, Nicholas Van Dyke, English-American lawyer and politician, 7th Governor of Delaware (b. 1738) dies. He was an American lawyer and politician from New Castle, in New Castle County, Delaware. He served in the Delaware General Assembly, as a Continental Congressman from Delaware, and as President of Delaware. Van Dyke entered political life in 1774 as a member of the Boston Relief Committee in Delaware. He then was a member of the Delaware Constitutional Convention of 1776 and served in the State Council for two years beginning with the 1776/77 session. That same year he was appointed as Judge of Delaware’s Admiralty Court, and on February 22, 1777 he was elected to the Continental Congress to replace John Evans who had declined to serve. He would remain in Congress through 1781 and signed the Articles of Confederation for Delaware. For five sessions, from 1778/79 until he became President of Delaware in 1783, he served in the State House and was the Speaker in the 1780/81 session.
In 1797, 1/3 of Papal domain ceded to France.
In 1799, Jean-Charles de Borda, French mathematician, physicist, and sailor (b. 1733) dies. He was a French mathematician, physicist, political scientist, and sailor. spending time in the Caribbean testing out advances in chronometers. Between 1777 and 1778, he participated in the American Revolutionary War. In 1781, he was put in charge of several vessels in the French Navy. In 1782, he was captured by the English, and was returned to France shortly after. He returned as an engineer in the French Navy, making improvements to waterwheels and pumps. He was appointed as France’s Inspector of Naval Shipbuilding in 1784, and with the assistance of the naval architect Jacques-Noël Sané in 1786 introduced a massive construction programme to revitalise the French navy based on the standard designs of Sané.
In 1770, Borda formulated a ranked preferential voting system that is referred to as the Borda count. The French Academy of Sciences used Borda’s method to elect its members for about two decades until it was quashed by Napoleon Bonaparte who insisted that his own method be used after he became president of the Académie in 1801. The Borda count is in use today in some academic institutions, competitions and several political jurisdictions. The Borda count has also served as a basis for other methods such as the Quota Borda system and Nanson’s method.
In 1778, He published his method of reducing Lunar Distances for computing the longitude, still regarded as the best of several similar mathematical procedures for navigation and position-fixing in pre-chronometer days; and used, for example, by Lewis and Clarke to measure their latitude and longitude during their exploration of the North-western United States.
Another of his contributions is his construction of the standard metre, basis of the metric system to correspond to the measurements of Delambre.
In 1803, Congress voted to accept Ohio’s borders and constitution, but in a bizarre oversight, did not get around to formally ratifying Ohio statehood until 1953.
In 1807, Former Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr is arrested for treason in Wakefield, Alabama and confined to Fort Stoddert.
In 1819, British explorer William Smith discovers the South Shetland Islands, and claims them in the name of King George III.
In 1831, the first practical US coal-burning locomotive Atlantic made its first trial run in Pennsylvania.
In 1846, In Austin, Texas the newly formed Texas state government is officially installed. The Republic of Texas government officially transfers power to the State of Texas government following the annexation of Texas by the United States.
In 1847, The first group of rescuers reaches the Donner Party.
In 1856, The tintype camera was patented by Professor Hamilton L. Smith of Gambier, OH.
In 1859, Daniel E. Sickles, a New York Congressman, is acquitted of murder on grounds of temporary insanity. This is the first time this defense is successfully used in the United States.
In 1861, Serfdom is abolished in Russia.
In 1864, The Knights of Pythias’ first lodge was formed in Washington D.C. A dozen members formed what became Lodge No. 1.
In 1872, The First Cumberland Presbyterian Church was organized in Jackson, TN.
In 1876, Founding of the National Amateur Press Association (NAPA) in Philadelphia.
In 1878, Thomas Edison patents the phonograph.
In 1881, Kansas became the first state to prohibit all alcoholic beverages.
In 1884, More than sixty tornadoes strike the Southern United States, one of the largest tornado outbreaks in U.S. history.
In 1910, At a New York dinner party, Diamond Jim Brady amazed his guests by eating five helpings of roast beef, gallons of stewed fruit, 84 oysters and three gallons of orange juice to wash it all down!
In 1913, the first prize was inserted into a Cracker Jack box.
In 1915, World War I: The first naval attack on the Dardanelles begins when a strong Anglo-French task force bombards Ottoman artillery along the coast of Gallipoli.
In 1917, American troops are recalled from the Mexican border. It was a military operation conducted by the United States Army against the paramilitary forces of Mexican revolutionary Francisco “Pancho” Villa.
In 1918, A decree was issued by the Soviet Central Executive Committee abolishing all private ownership of land, water and natural resources in Russia.
In 1919, the first Pan-African Congress, organized by W E B Du Bois, was held in Paris, France.
In 1920, Netherlands joins League of Nations.
In 1921, The U.S. Red Cross reports that approximately 20,000 children die yearly in auto accidents. Progressivism hits the road.
In 1926, Dr. Lane of Princeton estimates the earth’s age at one billion years.
In 1936, Billy Mitchell, American general (b. 1879) died of a variety of ailments including a bad heart and an extreme case of influenza in a hospital in New York City on February 19, 1936, and was buried at Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was a United States Army general who is regarded as the father of the United States Air Force.
Mitchell served in France during World War I and, by the conflict’s end, commanded all American air combat units in that country. After the war, he was appointed deputy director of the Air Service and began advocating increased investment in air power, believing that this would prove vital in future wars. He argued particularly for the ability of bombers to sink battleships and organized a series of bombing runs against stationary ships designed to test the idea.
He antagonized many people in the Army with his arguments and criticism and, in 1925, was returned from appointment as a brigadier general to his permanent rank of Colonel. Later that year, he was court-martialed for insubordination after accusing Army and Navy leaders of an “almost treasonable administration of the national defense” for investing in battleships instead of aircraft carriers. He resigned from the service shortly afterward.
Mitchell received many honors following his death, including a commission by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a Major General. He is also the only individual after whom a type of American military aircraft, the North American B-25 Mitchell, is named.
In 1937, Yekatit 12: During a public ceremony at the Viceregal Palace (the former Imperial residence) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, two Ethiopian nationalists of Eritrean origin attempt to kill viceroy Rodolfo Graziani with a number of grenades.
In 1942, World War II: nearly 250 Japanese warplanes attack the northern Australian city of Darwin killing 243 people.
In 1942, World War II: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the executive order 9066, allowing the United States military to relocate Japanese-Americans to internment camps.
In 1943, World War II: Battle of the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia begins.
In 1944, 823 British bombers attack Berlin.
In 1944, U-264 sinks off Ireland.
In 1945, World War II: Battle of Iwo Jima – about 30,000 United States Marines land on the island of Iwo Jima. Some 30,000 U.S. Marines landed where they encountered ferocious resistance from Japanese forces. The Americans took control of the strategically important island after a month-long battle. AP photographer Joe Rosenthal shot the most memorable image of WWII: five Marines and a Navy medical corpsman raising the U.S. flag at Iwo Jima.
In 1945, John Basilone, American sergeant, Medal of Honor recipient (b. 1916) was killed in action on Iwo Jima. He was a United States Marine Gunnery Sergeant who received the nation’s highest military award for valor, the Medal of Honor, for heroism during the Battle of Guadalcanal in World War II. He was the only Marine enlisted man to receive both the Medal of Honor and the Navy Cross in World War II.
He served three years in the United States Army with duty in the Philippines. He enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1940, claiming that the army “wasn’t tough enough” and was deployed to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and then to Guadalcanal where he held off 3,000 Japanese troops after his 15-member unit was reduced to two other men. He was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for extraordinary heroism. He has received many honors including being the namesake for streets, military locations, and a United States Navy destroyer.
In 1948, The Conference of Youth and Students of Southeast Asia Fighting for Freedom and Independence convenes in Calcutta.
In 1949, Ezra Pound is awarded the first Bollingen Prize in poetry by the Bollingen Foundation and Yale University.
In 1953, Censorship: Georgia approves the first literature censorship board in the United States. Newspapers were excluded from the new legislation. A frightening concept in any state; especially the state of the mind.
In 1959, The United Kingdom grants Cyprus independence, which is then formally proclaimed on August 16, 1960.
In 1960, China successfully launches the T-7, its first sounding rocket.
In 1963, The publication of Betty Friedan‘s The Feminine Mystique reawakens the Feminist Movement in the United States as women’s organizations and consciousness raising groups spread.
In 1963, the Soviet Union informed President Kennedy that it would withdraw “several thousand” of an estimated 17,000 Soviet troops in Cuba.
In 1965, Fourteen Vietnam War protesters are arrested for blocking U.N. doors in New York.
In 1966, Robert F. Kennedy suggests the U.S. offer the Vietcong a role in governing South Vietnam.
In 1968, teachers in Florida went on strike; it was the first statewide teachers strike in the U.S.
In 1969, the first test flight of the Boeing 747 Jumbo jet took place.
In 1972, The Asama-Sansō hostage standoff begins in Japan.
In 1974, The Prime Interest Rate went to 9 percent
In 1976, Executive Order 9066, which led to the relocation of Japanese Americans to internment camps, is rescinded by President Gerald R. Ford‘s Proclamation 4417
In 1976, Patty Hearst invoked the Fifth Amendment nineteen times at her bank-robbery trial in San Francisco.
In 1976, Iceland broke off diplomatic relations with Britain after the two countries failed to agree over fishing rights in disputed waters. The dispute became known as the “Cod War.”
In 1977, President Ford pardons Iva Toguri D’Aquino (“Tokyo Rose”).
In 1978, Egyptian forces raid Larnaca International Airport in an attempt to intervene in a hijacking, without authorisation from the Republic of Cyprus authorities. The Cypriot National Guard and Police forces kill 15 Egyptian commandos and destroy the Egyptian C-130 transport plane in open combat.
In 1980, The Prime Interest Rate went to 15.75 percent
In 1981, The U.S. State Department calls El Salvador a “textbook case” of a Communist plot.
In 1983, 13 people were found shot to death at a gambling club in Seattle’s Chinatown district in what became known as the “Wah Mee Massacre.” (Two Chinese immigrants were later convicted of the killings.)
In 1985, William J. Schroeder becomes the first recipient of an artificial heart to leave hospital.
In 1985, Cherry Coke was introduced by the Coca-Cola Company on this day, not at company headquarters in Atlanta, but in New York City, instead. Many who grew up in the ’50s rushed to buy the canned and/or bottled taste of nostalgia; hoping it would taste the same as they remembered … when they sat at the corner drug store soda fountain and ordered, “A Cherry Coke, please.”
In 1985, Iberia Airlines Boeing 727 crashes into Mount Oiz in Spain, killing 148.
In 1985, EastEnders BBC‘s flagship soap opera broadcasts for the first time.
In 1986, Akkaraipattu massacre: the Sri Lankan Army massacres 80 Tamil farm workers the eastern province of Sri Lanka.
In 1986, the U.S. Senate approved a treaty outlawing genocide, 37 years after the pact had first been submitted for ratification. The Senate also passed a resolution declaring the Philippine presidential election had been marked by “widespread fraud.”.
In 1986, Jordanian King Hussein severs links with PLO.
In 1987 – A controversial anti-smoking ad aired for the first time on television. It featured actor, Yul Brynner, in a public service announcement that was recorded shortly before he died of lung cancer.
In 1987, President Reagan lifts economic sanctions on Poland, citing the release of political prisoners.
In 1988, a group calling itself the “Organization of the Oppressed on Earth” claimed responsibility for the kidnapping in Lebanon of U.S. Marine Lt. Col. William R. Higgins. Higgins was later slain by his captors.
In 1989, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini rejected the apology of “Satanic Verses” author Salman Rushdie, exhorting Muslims to “send him to hell” for committing-blasphemy.
In 1990, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, snubbed by Philippine President Corazon Aquino, met in Manila with Defense Minister Fidel Ramos to discuss the future of US bases in the country.
In 1991, President Bush told reporters a Soviet proposal to end the Persian Gulf War fell “well short of what would be required.”
In 1992, former Irish Republican Army fighter Joseph Doherty was deported from the United States to a jail in Belfast, Northern Ireland, following a 10-year battle for political asylum.
In 1992, Tojo Yamamoto, American wrestler (b. 1927) died in Hermitage, Tennessee of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was an American professional wrestler, better known by his ring name Tojo Yamamoto. He was born in Hawaii.
Yamamoto had success as a heel as an individual wrestler and part of a tag team, particularly in the southern United States, invoking the natural hatred for World War II enemies (in his case, Prime Minister Tojo and IJN admiral Yamamoto; also successful were The Von Brauners, who wore Iron Crosses and goose-stepped around the ring). He worked in hundreds of different tag-team combinations, and even wrestled Hulk Hogan. According to Hogan, “he hit me in the throat with his cheap shot, I fell through the ropes…(on the floor) he grabbed a cigar out of a guy’s mouth and dropped it in my boot”. These exemplify the kind of over-the-top heel tactics Yamamoto would use, in addition to the general distrust of the Japanese that many Americans held even after the war.
Wrestling in Boaz, Alabama, Yamamoto gave one of the great performances in pro wrestling. Before the start of the matches, he asked to give a statement to the crowd, which booed and hissed and threw things. In broken English he said, “I wish make aporogy. Very sorry my country bomb Pear-uh Harbor.” And the crowd quiets, as he wipes away tears, and they awwww in sympathy. “It wrong thing to do, I wish not happen.” They begin to applaud. “Yes, I wish not happen, because instead I wish they BOMB BOAZ!!!” Needless to say, the arena erupted.
He passed his decades of wrestling knowledge down to many students, including several future world champions such as Jeff Jarrett, Mike Rapada, and Sid Vicious. He even had a hand in training Jeff Jarrett’s father, Jerry Jarrett. Tojo’s other students include legends like The Moondogs (Spike and Spot), Jackie Fargo, Bobby Eaton, and “Wildfire” Tommy Rich.
In 1993, a Superior Court judge ruled that a gay group has the right to march in South Boston’s annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
In 1993, President Clinton’s economic plan won praise from Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. The president, visiting Hyde Park, N.Y., suggested the United States might have to consider a national sales tax “not too long in the future,” then said he’d meant in 10 years or so.
In 1994, with Bosnian Serbs facing a NATO deadline to withdraw heavy weapons encircling Sarajevo or face air strikes, President Clinton delivered an address from the Oval Office reaffirming the ultimatum.
In 1995, a day after being named the new chairwoman of the NAACP, Myrlie Evers-Williams outlined her plans for revitalizing the civil rights organization, saying she intended to take the group back to its grassroots.
In 1997, Deng Xiaoping, the last of China’s major Communist revolutionaries, died.
In 1998, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright again drew a skeptical response from America’s heartland to the tough U.S. policy on Iraq. Her reception in a lecture hall in Nashville, Tennessee, was polite, in contrast to the raucous session of heckling in Columbus, Ohio, but the student questioners displayed similar mistrust of the policy. Tennesseans’ were just being polite.
In 1998, Grandpa Jones, American singer-songwriter and banjo player (b. 1913) dies. Louis Marshall Jones (October 20, 1913 – February 19, 1998), known professionally as Grandpa Jones, was an American banjo player and “old time” country and gospel music singer. He is a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. Born in the farming community of Niagara in Henderson County, Kentucky, Jones spent his teenage years in Akron, Ohio, where he began singing country music tunes on a radio show on WJW. In 1931, Jones joined the Pine Ridge String Band, which provided the musical accompaniment for the very popular Lum and Abner show. By 1935 his pursuit of a musical career took him to WBZ (AM) radio in Boston, Massachusetts where he met musician/songwriter Bradley Kincaid, who gave him the nickname “Grandpa” because of his off-stage grumpiness at early-morning radio shows. Jones liked the name and decided to create a stage persona based around it. Later in life, he lived in Mountain View, Arkansas. In January 1998, Jones suffered two strokes after his second show performance at the Grand Ole Opry. He died at 7:00 p.m. Central Time on February 19, 1998 at McKendree village Home Health Center in Hermitage, Tennessee, at age 84
In 1998, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan set out for Iraq on a last-chance peace mission, saying he was “reasonably optimistic” about ending the standoff over weapons inspections without the use of force.
In 1999, President Clinton posthumously pardoned Henry O. Flipper, the first black graduate of West Point, whose military career was tarnished by a military discharge.
In 2001, The Oklahoma City bombing museum is dedicated at the Oklahoma City National Memorial.
In 2002, NASA‘s Mars Odyssey space probe begins to map the surface of Mars using its thermal emission imaging system. The project was developed by NASA, and contracted out to Lockheed Martin, with an expected cost for the entire mission of US$297 million. Its mission is to use spectrometers and a thermal imager to detect evidence of past or present water and ice, as well as study the planet’s geology and radiation environment.
In 2003, An Ilyushin Il-76 military aircraft crashes near Kerman, Iran, killing 275.
In 2006, A methane explosion in a coal mine near Nueva Rosita, Mexico, kills 65 miners.
In 2008, Barack Obama and John McCain built on their leads Tuesday night with wins in the Wisconsin primary that move them closer to presidential nominations from their respective parties. Obama officially took the lead from Hillary Clinton after the Potomac Primary and McCain is inching closer every election towards the GOP nomination. On the Republican side, McCain received 55 percent of the Wisconsin vote compared to 27 percent for Mike Huckabee, who remains in the race to remind McCain that he must embrace pro-life voters.
Ron Paul, who has shifted to retaining his Congressional seat, received 4 percent of the vote and 2 percent of the Wisconsin GOP voters backed Mitt Romney, who has dropped out of the race and endorsed McCain. On the Democratic side in Wisconsin, Obama captured 56 percent of the vote while Hillary Clinton took 43 percent. That split gave Obama 38 more delegates and Clinton 27 more as they look forward to the key states of Texas and Ohio.
In 2011, The debut exhibition of the Belitung shipwreck, containing the largest collection of Tang Dynasty artefacts found in one location, begins in Singapore.
In 2012, Forty-four people are killed in a prison brawl in Apodaca, Nuevo León, Mexico.
In 2016, Harper Lee, American author (b. 1926) dies in her sleep on the morning of February 19, 2016, at the age of 89. Nelle Harper Lee was better known by her pen name Harper Lee, was an American novelist widely known for To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960. Immediately successful, it won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize and has become a classic of modern American literature. Though Lee had only published this single book, in 2007 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contribution to literature. Additionally, Lee received numerous honorary degrees, though she declined to speak on those occasions. She was also known for assisting her close friend Truman Capote in his research for the book In Cold Blood (1966). Capote was the basis for the character Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird. The plot and characters of To Kill a Mockingbird are loosely based on Lee’s observations of her family and neighbors, as well as an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936, when she was 10 years old. The novel deals with the irrationality of adult attitudes towards race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s, as depicted through the eyes of two children. The novel was inspired by racist attitudes in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. Another novel, Go Set a Watchman, was written in the mid-1950s and published in July 2015 as a “sequel”, though it was later confirmed to be To Kill a Mockingbird‘s first draft.