February 20th
Today in America's Present Past
1725 | Indian Wars: New Hampshire colonists scalp 10 sleeping Indians for a bounty.
1805 | Abolitionist Angelina Grimke was born.
1809 | SCOTUS: Ruled, the federal government is supreme over state governments.
1820 | General Mahlon Dickerson Manson was born.
1827 | General Edward Stuyvesant Bragg was born.
1839 | Congress: A ban on dueling in the District of Columbia is passed.
1864 | Civil War: The Battle of Olustee, Florida.
1865 | Massachusetts Institute Of Technology (MIT) forms the first U.S. Collegiate Architectural School.
1869 | Civil Rights: Martial law was declared in Tennessee in response to a Ku Klux Klan crisis.
1872 | Cyrus Baldwin receives a patent for a hydraulic electric elevator.
1872 | Luther Crowell patents a machine to manufacture paper bags.
1872 | New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art opens
1877 | America’s first cantilever bridge is opened in Harrodsburg, Kentucky.
1895 | Abolitionist Frederick Douglass died.
1897 | Painter Ivan Albright was born.
1899 | Entrepreneur Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney was born.
1902 | Photographer Ansel Adams was born.
1909 | The Hudson Motor Car Company was formed in Detroit, Michigan.
1920 | Civil Rights: Lexington, Kentucky riots.
1920 | Explorer Robert Peary died.
1927 | Lawyer Roy Cohn was born.
1927 | Actor Sidney Poitier was born.
1929 | Congress: Enacted the Ratification Act of 1929 recognizing American Samoa as a territory of the United States.
1931 | Congress: Authorization for California to build the Oakland-Bay Bridget is passed.
1933 | The 21st Amendment is submitted to the states for ratification.
1937 | Entrepreneur and race car driver Roger Penske was born.
1939 The American pro-Nazi organization German American Bund held a 20,000-person rally at Madison Square Garden.
1942 | Congress: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was born.
1943 | WWII: American movie studios agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor films.
1944 | WWII: US forces liberate the Eniwetok Atoll.
1944 | WWII: US forces begin a massive bombing campaign against German manufacturing centers.
1954 | Patty Hearst was born.
1962 | John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit Earth.
1963 | Basketballer Charles Barkley was born.
1966 | Actress Cindy Crawford was born.
1966 | Admiral Chester Nimitz died.
1967 | Musician Kurt Cobain was born.
1972 | Journalist Walter Winchell died.
1977 | Tennis pro Arthur Ashe weds Jeanne Moutoussamy.
1974 | Musicians Cher and Sonny Bono divorced.
1987 | A bomb explodes in a Salt Lake City computer store attributed to the Unabomber.
1992 | TV: Texas entrepreneur Ross Perot announces on Larry King Live that he is running for President.
2005 | Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson died.
2010 | General Alexander Haig died.
2016 | Entrepreneur and winemaker Robert Mondavi died.