February 14
Today in America's Present Past
1794 | Entrepreneur James Davenport patiented textile machinery.
1804 | Entrepreneur and inventor Ottis Tufts was born.
1808 | Founder John Dickinson died.
1817 | Frederick Douglass was born. Though he never knew his exact birth date, Douglass chose to celebrate it on February 14.
1819 | Entrepreneur Christopher Latham Sholes was born.
1824 | General Winfield Scott Hancock was born.
1838 | Inventor Margaret E. Knight was born.
1844 | Explorer John C. Fremont becomes the first American to discover Lake Tahoe. Frémont and Charles Preuss sighted the lake from Red Lake Peak. Frémont originally named it “Lake Bonpland” after a French botanist.
1845 | SCOTUS: Justice Samuel Nelson was sworn in.
1847 | Suffragette Anna Howard Shaw was born.
1849 | POTUS: First photograph of a sitting U.S. President taken of James Polk. Matthew Brady took the picture, in New York City, New York.
1859 | Statehood: Oregon joined the Union.
1859 | Entrepreneur George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. was born.
1867 | Moorehouse College was founded. Originally as the Augusta Institute in Augusta, Georgia, before moving to Atlanta.
1870 | Civil Rights: The first female voter, Seraph Young, casts a legal vote in Utah. Two days after Utah Territory granted women the right to vote, she became the first woman in the U.S. to cast a ballot under a women’s suffrage law, months before women in Wyoming (who had passed the law earlier) went to the polls.
1876 | Inventors Alexander Bell and Elisha Gray file patents for the telephone. In one of the most famous coincidences in history, Alexander Graham Bell’s lawyer filed his patent application just hours before Elisha Gray filed a “caveat” for a similar invention.
1883 | New Jersey was the first state to legalize unions.
1884 | POTUS: In a devastating personal coincidence, both Teddy Roosevelt’s mother (Mittie) and his first wife (Alice) died in the same house, only hours apart. This event led him to abandon politics for a time and head to the Dakota Territory.
1889 | Civil Rights: The Jim Jumper massacre occurred.
1891 | William Tecumseh Sherman died.
1894 | Comedian Jack Benny was born.
1899 | John Herman Randall, Jr. was born.
1903 | POTUS: Republican President Roosevelt signed legislation creating the U.S. Department of Labor & Commerce. Roosevelt created this joint department to oversee the rapidly growing American economy. They were eventually split into two separate departments in 1913.
1912 | Statehood: Arizona joined the Union.
1912 | Historian Edmund G. Love was born.
1912 | U.S. Navy commissioned its first diesel-powered submarines.
1913 | Union leader Jimmy Hoffa was born.
1919 | Entrepreneur James Casey launched the United Parcel Service.
1920 | The League of Women Voters formed. Carrie Chapman Catt founded the organization in Chicago just six months before the 19th Amendment was ratified.
1922 | Douglas MacArthur wed Louise Cromwell Brooks.
1929 | St. Valentine’s Day massacre.
1931 | Film: “Dracula” featuring Bela Lugosi was released.
1934 | Actress Florence Henderson was born.
1942 | Entrepreneur Michael Bloomberg was born.
1943 | Entrepreneur Sam Walton wed Helen Robson.
1944 | Journalist Carl Bernstein was born.
1945 | WWII: Allied bombers accidentally bomb Prague, Czech Republic.
1945 | Actor Gregory Hines was born.
1948 | Magician Teller was born.
1951 | Boxer Sugar Ray Robinson won the middleweight title, defeating Jake LaMotta.
1956 | Baseball pro Willie Mays wed Margherite Wendall Chapman.
1957 | Civil Rights: Georgia Senate passes legislation banning interracial baseball.
1957 | Original Video Jockey Alan Hunter was born.
1962 | First televised tour of the White House hosted by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Roughly 80 million people watched the First Lady lead CBS’s Charles Collingwood through the White House, showcasing her historic restoration project.
1963 | U.S. launches first communication satellite Syncom 1.
1967 | Entertainer Aretha Franklin recorded “Respect.”
1972 | Musician Rob Thomas was born.
1975 | Author P.G. Wodehouse died.
1978 | Texas Instruments patented the “microchip.” TI received a patent (No. 4,074,351) for the “microcomputer on a chip,” a precursor to the modern microcontroller.
1989 | Author Salman Rushdie was the target of a death bounty by radical Islamic leaders in Iran.
1989 | The U.S. launches its initial Global Positioning System satellites. The first of the 24 satellites that make up the modern GPS constellation was placed into orbit on this day.
1991 | Film: “Silence of the Lambs” was released.
2005 | YouTube was founded.
2015 | Poet Philip Levine died.
2016 | Author Steven Stucky died.