February 19
Today in America's Present Past
1672 | Harvard President Charles Chauncy died.
1803 | Statehood: Ohio was admitted to the Union. While Congress passed the act on this day, there was historically some confusion over the exact date because Congress forgot to set one in the legislation. In 1953, President Eisenhower signed a law officially backdating Ohio’s entry into the Union to March 1, 1803.
1807 | POTUS: Ex-Vice-President Aaron Burr was arrested for treason in Alabama (Mississippi Territory) while allegedly attempting to establish his own empire in the West. He was later tried and acquitted.
1852 | The Phi Kappa Psi fraternity was founded at Jefferson College, Pennsylvania.
1864 | The Knights of Pythias formed in Washington, D.C.
1878 | Thomas Edison was granted a patent for a cylinder phonograph.
1881 | Civil Rights: Kansas became the first state to outlaw alcoholic beverages.
1906 | Entrepreneur Will Kellogg co-founded the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company (now Kellogg’s). Kellogg founded the company in Battle Creek, Michigan. It revolutionized the American breakfast by moving the public away from heavy meats toward grain-based processed cereals.
1910 | Start of the Philadelphia General Strike.
1913 | Snack brand Cracker Jack started inserting prizes into its packaging.
1914: The parents of a four-year-old child mailed him to his grandparents 73 miles away because it was more affordable. This is a famous bit of postal lore. The Postmaster General officially banned the practice shortly after.
1915 | WWI: Germany sunk American merchant ship Evelyn.
1917 | Author Caron McCullers was born.
1919 | Civil Rights: The Pan-African Congress was formed by W.E.B. Du Bois.
1922 | Ed Wynn became the first talent signed as a professional radio entertainer.
1924 | Actor Lee Marvin was born.
1940 | Musician Smokey Robinson was born in Detroit, Michigan.
1942 | Civil Rights: Democrat President Roosevelt ordered the detention and internment of all 120,000 west-coast Japanese Americans.
1949 | Comic William Messner-Loebs was born in Ferndale, Michigan.
1953 | Civil Rights: Georgia created a literature censorship board to investigate “obscene” literature.
1955 | Actor Jeff Daniels was born.
1963 | Civil Rights: Betty Friedan published “The Feminine Mystique.” This tome is often credited with sparking the “second wave” of feminism by describing “the problem that has no name.”
1963 | Poet Robert Frost won the Bolligen Prize.
1963 | POTUS: The Soviets informed Democrat President Kennedy of intentions to withdraw troops from Cuba.
1983 | Was Mee massacre. This was a mass murder in Seattle’s Chinatown with 13 people killed during a robbery at a gambling club
1987 | POTUS: Republican President Reagan announced the lifting of the trade boycott on Poland.
2002 | NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft began mapping the surface using its thermal emission imaging system.
2016 | Novelist Harper Lee died.