February 12th
Today in America's Present Past
1606 | John Winthrop, the younger, was born.
1663 | Reverand Cotton Mather is born.
1733 | James Oglethorpe founded the colony of Georgia.
1789 | Founding: Ethan Allen died.
1791 | Entrepreneur Peter Cooper was born.
1793 | POTUS: President George Washington signed the Fugitive Slave Act.
1809 | POTUS: President Abraham Lincoln was born.
1825 | Indian Wars: The Creek Indian Treaty was signed, requiring tribal relocation westward.
1839 | The Aroostook or “Pork Bean” War starts.
1855 | Michigan State University is established.
1856 | Inventor of Dry Cleaning, Thomas L. Jennings, died.
1865 | Civil Rights: African American minister Henry Highland Garnet preaches to the U.S. Congress about abolishing slavery.
1871 | Poet Alice Cary died.
1877 | The first telephone news dispatch occurred between Salem and Boston, Massachusetts.
1879 | Frederick Thayer patients the baseball catcher’s mask.
1879 | Madison Square Garden, the nation’s first artificial ice rink, opens.
1893 | Army General Omar Bradley was born.
1898 | Composer Roy Harris was born.
1908 | The first NYC to Paris auto race started, lasting 88 days, with American George Schuster winning.
1909 | Civil Rights: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded.
1914 | First feature-length U.S. film, “The Squaw Man,” directed by Ceil B. DeMille, is released.
1914 | The Lincoln Memorial is dedicated and opened in Washington, D.C.
1924 | Composer George Gershin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” premieres.
1926 | Historian Charles Van Doren was born.
1934 | Economist Anne Krueger was born.
1935 | The USS Macon airship crashes off the coast of California.
1938 | Author Judy Blume was born.
1955 | POTUS: Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends “advisors” to Vietnam.
1956 | Entertainer Arsenio Hall was born.
1959 | Replacing Sheaves of Wheat, the Lincoln Memorial impression is minted on the U.S. penny.
1962 | Civil Rights: Macon Georgia bus boycott starts.
1967 | Jazz artist Francis “Muggsy” Spanier died.
1971 | Entrepreneur James Cash Penny died.
1973 | Vietnam War: First of 456 U.S. POWS released from North Vietnam.
1976 | Actor Sal Mineo died.
1965 | SCOTUS: Justice Brett Kavanaugh is born.
1980 | Poet Muriel Rukeyser died.
1988 | Cold War: U.S. Navy frigate USS Yorktown bumps Soviet frigate Bezzaventrny in the Baltic Sea.
1998 | A federal court declared The line-item veto unconstitutional, later upheld by SCOTUS.
1999 | Congress: The US Senate acquits Democrat President Bill Clinton after his impeachment trial.
2000 | Cartoonist Charles M. Schultz died.