February 3rd
Today in America's Present Past
1743 | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania establishes a “pesthouse” to quarantine immigrants.
1747 | Samuel Osgood was born.
1811 | Publisher Horace Greeley was born.
1812 | Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story is sworn in.
1817 | General Samuel Ryan Curtis was born.
1820 | Explorer Elisha Kent Kane was born.
1821 | Doctor Elizabeth Blackwell was born.
1823 | Ornithologist Spencer Fullerton Baird was born.
1834 | Wake Forest University is established in North Carolina.
1836 | The Whig Party holds its first national convention in Albany, New York.
1855 | Civil Rights: The Wisconsin Supreme Court declares the U.S. Fugitive Slave Law unconstitutional.
1860 | Thomas Clemson takes office as the nation’s first Superintendent of Agriculture.
1863 | Samuel Clemens publishes his first piece under the pseudonym “Mark Twain in a Virginia newspaper.
1864 | Civil War: General Sherman begins his march through Mississippi.
1874 | Novelist Gertrude Stein was born.
1876 | Entrepreneur Albert Spading starts a sporting goods empire.
1882 | Entrepreneur P.T. Barnum purchased his first elephant, “Jumbo.”
1883 | Author Clarence E. Mulford was born.
1887 | Congress: Passage of the Electoral Counts Act.
1889 | Outlaw Belle Starr died.
1894 | Illustrator Norman Rockwell was born.
1895 | Activist and author Theodore Dwight Weld died.
1900 | Kentucky Gubernatorial candidate William Goebel is assassinated.
1900 | General William W. Averell died.
1904 | Outlaw “Pretty Boy Floyd” was born.
1907 | Author James A. Michener was born.
1908 | SCOTUS: Union boycotts are ruled to violate the Sherman Antitrust Act.
1913 | The 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified.
1914 | Inventor George Nissen was born.
1917 | WWI: Germany sinks the U.S. passenger ocean liner, the U.S.S. Housatonic.
1919 | Astronomer Edward Charles Pickering died.
1924 | President Woodrow Wilson died.
1930 | SCOTUS: Chief Justice William Howard Taft resigns.
1931 | Civil Rights: The legislature of Arkansas passed a motion to “pray for the soul” of journalist H.L. Mencken after he wrote that the state was the “apex of moronia.”
1941 | SCOTUS: The Court upheld Federal Wage & Hour Laws.
1943 | WWII: Four Chaplins give their life vests to others on a sinking ship and die in the process.
1944 | WWII: U.S. forces liberate the Marshall Islands.
1945 | WWII: U.S. forces drop 3000 tons of bombs on Berlin, Germany.
1947 | Civil Rights: Percival Pattis, the first African-American reporter, was admitted to the U.S. Congressional gallery.
1956 | Actor Nathan Lane was born.
1959 | Musicians Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and J.P. Richardson all die “the day the music died” in a plane crash.
1962 | POTUS: Democrat President John F. Kennedy banned trade with Communist Cuba.
1964 | Civil Rights: Black and Puerto Rican students boycott NYC government schools.
1965 | 105 U.S. Air Force Academy cadets resign due to a cheating scandal.
1975 | Physicist and inventor William D. Coolidge died.
1993 | Civil Rights: The federal trial of four L.A. Police Officers charged in the beating of Rodney King begins.
1994 | POTUS: Democrat President Bill Clinton lifted the Vietnam trade embargo.
1997 | The Howard Stern Radio Show debuts in Detroit, Michigan.
2022 | War on Terror: ISIS terrorist Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al Qurayshi dies in a U.S. raid.