February
Black History Month
Activism in the Civil Rights Movement: ny.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/5a39b52a-9082-4fa3-b40d-b4a8ea83266b/activism-in-the-civil-rights-movement-interactive-lesson/
Lesson plan for grades 6-8
As Fast As Words Could Fly by Pamela M. Tuck, read by Dule Hill, with activity guide: storylineonline.net/books/fast-words-fly/
Black History Month: http://www.infoplease.com/black-history-month/
Black History Month: https://poets.org/black-history-month
Black History With Mr. Dodson: www.youtube.com/channel/UCgrNu2ewm3n3QqZfFPIj3UQ
Catching the Moon: The Story of a Young Girl's Baseball Dream by Crystal Hubbard, read by Kevin Costner & Jillian Estell, with activity guide: storylineonline.net/books/catching-the-moon-the-story-of-a-young-girls-baseball-dream/
Civil Rights Teaching: http://civilrightsteaching.org/
Free Learning Resources for Black History Month (And Beyond): www.commonsense.org/education/articles/free-learning-resources-for-black-history-month-and-beyond
Freedom Quilts: http://mathwire.com/quilts/quilts.html
Kid-Friendly Videos and Podcasts for Exploring Black History and Culture: www.commonsensemedia.org/blog/kid-friendly-videos-and-podcasts-for-exploring-black-history-and-culture
Rent Pary Jazz by William Miller, read by Viola Davis, with activity guide: storylineonline.net/books/rent-party-jazz/
Trombone Shorty by Troy Andrews, read by Angela Bassett, with activity guide: storylineonline.net/books/trombone-shorty/
To Be a Drum by Evelyn Coleman, read by James Earl Jones
Chinese/Lunar New Year
Lotus & Feather by Ji-li Jiang, read by Michelle Yeoh, with activity guide: storylineonline.net/books/lotus-and-feather/
National Children's Dental Health Month
Presidents' Day - third Monday in February
American President: A Reference Resource: http://millercenter.org/president
Chronological List of Presidents, First Ladies, and Vice Presidents of the United States: http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/057_chron.html
If I Ran for President by Catherine Stier, read by Lonnie Chavis & Parker Bates & Mackenzie Hancsicsak, with activity guide: storylineonline.net/books/if-i-ran-for-president/
The Presidents: https://www.whitehouse.gov/1600/presidents
Presidents' Day: http://www.educationworld.com/a_special/presidents_day.shtml
Presidents' Day: http://www.alphabet-soup.net/hol/president.html
Winter Olympics
February 1
World Read-Aloud Day: http://www.litworld.org/wrad/
- 1790: Supreme Court convenes for first time in New York City
- 1894: John Ford (Sean Aloysius O'Fearna), film director, was born in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.
- 1902: Playwright, poet and author Langston hughes is born.
- 1968: Lisa Marie Presley, daughter and only child of Elvis Presley and actress Priscilla Beaulieu Presley (who were divorced in 1973), was born.
February 2
Candlemas [KAN duhl mahs], a church feast, is held this day commemorating the purification of the Virgin Mary. Candles for sacred uses are blessed on this day. If Candlemas Day is bright and clear, there'll be twa (two) winters in the year. -- old Scottish couplet
Groundhog Day
Groundhog Day Party: Activities and Games Across the Grades: http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/lesson048.shtml
Groundhog Day: http://www.stormfax.com/ghogday.htm
Stormfax Weather Almanac
Groundhogs at Hoghaven: http://tiimages.wix.com/hoghaven#!
Groundhog Day: http://www.groundhog.org/
The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club
World Read Aloud Day
-1807: Congress bans foreign slave trade.
-1913: New York City's Grand Central Terminal opened.
-1922: "Ulysses" by James Joyce was published in Paris.
-1965: Judith Viorst was born.
February 3
National Carrot Cake Day
The Case of the Missing Carrot Cake by Robin Newman, read by Wanda Sykes, with activity guide: storylineonline.net/books/missing-carrot-cake/
-1690: First paper money in America issued (colony of Mass.)
-1811: Horace Greeley, journalist and politician, was born in Amherst, N.H.
-1821: Elizabeth Blackwell was born.
-1894: Norman Rockwell, illustrator, was born.
-1956: Autherine Lucy enrolls as the first black student at the University of Alabama.
February 4
-1809: Louis Braille was born.
-1902: Charles Lindbergh was born.
-1906: Clyde Tombaugh, astronomer, was born in Streator, Illinois.
-1913: Rosa Parks, civil rights activist, was born.
-1945: Yalta Conference takes place with Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin
February 5
-1782: Spain captured the island of Minorca from the British.
-1919: League of Nations met for the first time in Paris.
-1934: Henry "Hank" Aaron, baseball player, was born in Mobile, Alabama.
-1945: Gen. Douglas MacArthur enters Manila
-1990: Columbia University graduate and Harvard University law student Barack Obama became the first African American named president of the Harvard Law Review.
February 6
-1820: The first organized emigration back to Africa began when 86 free African Americans left New York Harbor aboard the Mayflower of Liberia. They are bound for the British colony of
Sierra Leone, which welcomes free African Americans as well as fugitive slaves.
-1865: General Robert E. Lee was appointed Commander in Chief of the Confederate armies.
-1867: Robert Tanner Jackson becomes first black to receive a degree in dentistry.
-1899: Spanish-American War ends; peace treaty ratified by Senate
-1911: Ronald Reagan, fortieth United States president and former movie actor, was born in Tampico, Illinois.
-1933: Walter E. Fauntroy was born in Washington, D.C. He went on to become a District of Columbia delegate to the House of Representatives.
-1945: Bob Marley, reggae singer, guitarist, and composer, was born.
February 7
-1478: English statesman and writer Sir Thomas More was born.
-1804: Farm equipment manufacturer John Deere was born.
-1812: English novelist Charles Dickens was born.
-1834: Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleyev, who devised the periodic table, was born.
-1867: "Little House" books author Laura Ingalls Wilder was born.
-1883: Ragtime composer and piano player Eubie Blake was born.
-1885: Novelist Sinclair Lewis was born.
-1904: A massive fire, possibly started by a discarded cigarette, struck Baltimore, burning for 31 hours and destroying an 80-block downtown area. Miraculously no lives or homes were lost.
-1908: Olympic swimmer and actor Buster Crabbe was born.
-1915: D.W. Griffith's "Birth Of A Nation," a landmark in the history of cinema and the first American full-length motion picture, opened in Los Angeles and was immediately a smash hit though many found its racism offensive.
-1940: British railroads were nationalized.
-1954: Actor Miguel Ferrer was born.
-1956: Autherine Lucy, the first black person admitted to the University of Alabama, was expelled after she accused school officials of conspiring in the riots that accompanied her court-ordered enrollment.
-1960: Actor James Spader was born.
-1960: The Dead Sea scrolls were found at Qumran.
-1962: Garth Brooks, country singer, was born.
-1964: The Beatles arrived in the United States for the first time and immediately set off a frantic wave of "Beatlemania."
-1966: Comedian Chris Rock was born.
-1973: The Senate voted to set up a committee to investigate the break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters in Washington's Watergate complex.
-1984: Two American shuttle astronauts made the first untethered space walk.
-1986: Both Ferdinand Marcos and challenger Corazon Aquino claimed victory in the Philippine presidential election. Haiti's President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvalier fled to France.
-1989: A State Department report on international human rights accused Israel of mishandling the Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories.
-1991: Jean-Bertrand Aristide was inaugurated as Haiti's first democratically elected president in 186 years.
-1992: Three people were killed and one critically injured when a gunman angry with his girlfriend opened fire in Winter Garden, Fla.
-1995: The alleged "mastermind" in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, was arrested in Pakistan. He was extradited to New York the next day.
-1995: President Clinton invited the two sides in the major league baseball strike to the White House in a final effort to reach an agreement. The next day, he announced the effort had failed and called for binding arbitration.
-1998: The Winter Olympics opened in Nagano, Japan.
-1999: King Hussein of Jordan died following a battle with cancer. He was 63. Hussein had ruled Jordan for 46 years.
-2002: Despite exchanges between Israel and the Palestinians that at times approached outright warfare, Israeli Prime Minister Sharon said he expected a Palestinian state to emerge from the conflict.
February 8
-1861: Confederate States of America founded by 7 southern states.
-1910: Boy Scouts of America was incorporated.
-1931: James Dean, film actor, was born in Marion, IN.
-1968: Three South Carolina State students were killed during a segregation protest in Orangeburg, South Carolina.
-1986: Diminutive actor Gary Coleman was born in Zion, Illinois. Despite a childhood of medical troubles, Coleman went on to become a television star in numerous situation comedies.
-1996: In a ceremony at the Library of Congress, President Clinton signed legislation revamping the telecommunications industry, saying it would "bring the future to our doorstep."
February 9
-1943: The World War II battle of Guadalcanal in the southwest Pacific ended with an American victory over Japanese forces.
-1964: Arthur Ashe, Jr. became the first black tennis player on the U.S. Davis Cup team.
-1994: Israeli minister Shimon Peres signs peace accord with PLO's Yasser Arafat
February 10
-1763: French-Indian Was ends, surrendering Canada to England
-1837: Russian poet and novelist Aleksandr Pushkin died at the age of 37 of wounds received in a duel defending his wife's honor (in the Julian calendar he died on January 29). Pushkin is often regarded as his country's best poet and the founder of Russian literature.
-1863: "Tom Thumb" and Lavinia Warren were married.
-1868: Journalist William Allen White was born.
-1890: Russian author Boris Pasternak was born.
-1893: Entertainer Jimmy Durante was born.
-1897: The slogan "All The News That's Fit To Print" first appeared on page one of The New York Times.
-1898: German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and actress Dame Judith Anderson were born.
-1905: Actor Lon Chaney Jr. was born.
-1927: Operatic soprano Leontyne Price was born.
-1930: Actor Robert Wagner was born.
-1940: Singer Roberta Flack was born.
-1946: Donovan was born.
-1949: Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman," a classic play of US theater, premiered on Broadway.
-1962: The Soviet Union released captured US pilot Francis Gary Powers in exchange for Soviet spy Rudolph Abel.
-1989: Ronald H. Brown was elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
-1950: Olympic gold medal swimmer Mark Spitz was born.
-1962: U-2 spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers was returned to the United States in exchange for Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.
-1964: 82 Australian sailors died when an aircraft carrier and a destroyer collided off New South Wales, Australia.
-1967: Actress Laura Dern was born.
-1984: Americans and other foreigners were evacuated from Beirut following the withdrawal of U.S. Marines from Lebanon.
-1991: ANC gunmen ambushed an Inkatha Freedom Party motorcade outside Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, killing 17 and wounding 29.
-1993: A gang of more than 40 people ambushed two trucks in a mountainous region of Mexico, shooting to death at least 24 men in a drug-related family feud.
February 11
-1573: Francis Drake becomes first European to see the Pacific, from Panama.
-1800: Englishman William Talbot, a developer of photography, was born.
-1847: Inventor Thomas Edison was born.
-1858: French peasant girl Bernadette Sourbirous said the Virgin Mary appeared to her at Lourdes.
-1917: Author Sidney Sheldon was born.
-1920: King Farouk, Egypt's last monarch, was born.
-1925: Actor Kim Stanley was born.
-1926: Leslie Nielsen, actor, was born in Saskatchewan, Canada.
-1990: Nelson Mandela was released from prison after 27 years.
-1934: Tina Louise was born.
-1936: Burt Reynolds was born.
-1941: Brazilian musician Sergio Mendes was born.
-1953: Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was born.
-1945: President Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin ended their wartime conference at Yalta.
-1960: Jack Parr walked off "The Tonight Show" after NBC censored his slightly off-color "water closet" joke the night before. He returned to the late-night show March 7.
-1962: Singer/songwriter Sheryl Crow was born.
-1965: U.S. and South Vietnamese planes made the first bombing raids on North Vietnam.
-1969: Actress Jennifer Aniston was born.
-1970: Japan put a satellite in space, following in the footsteps of the Soviet Union, the United States and France.
-1979: Singer/actress Brandy (Norwood) was born.
-1987: Corazon Aquino was sworn in for a six-year presidential term under the new Philippine constitution.
-1990: Nelson Mandela, leader of the movement to end South African apartheid, was released from prison after 27 years behind bars.
-1992: One police officer was killed and four persons injured in a terrorist attack on the U.S. ambassador's residence in Lima, Peru.
-1993: President Clinton nominated Florida prosecutor Janet Reno to the post of U.S. attorney general.
-1993: A 20-year-old Ethiopian student hijacked a Lufthansa airliner en route from Frankfurt, Germany, to Cairo. He forced the pilot to fly to New York City, where he surrendered peacefully.
-1993: British Prime Minister John Majors said Queen Elizabeth II will pay income tax on all her personal income, as well as being subject to capital and inheritance levies.
-1998: Olympic officials took away the gold medal of Canadian snowboarder Ross Rebagliati after he tested positive for a minute amount of marijuana. He blamed second-hand smoke. An arbitration panel would restore his medal two days later.
-1998: A federal judge ruled that pro golfer Casey Martin, who suffered from a circulatory disorder that made it hard for him to walk, was covered by the American with Disabilities Act and should be allowed to use a golf cart to complete in PGA tournaments.
-2002: The Russian figure skating pair won the gold medal in the Winter Olympics over the overwhelming crowd favorite Canadian team but a judging controversy that grew into an international scandal prompted the International Skating Union to award a gold medal to Canada also.
February 12
-1809: Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth U.S. president, was born in Hodgenville, KY.
-1909: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded in New York City by a group of black and white citizens committed to social justice.
-1938: Judy Blume was born.
February 13
-1935: B. Hauptmann guilty of kidnapping and murder of Lindbergh's infant.
-1950: Peter Gabriel, rock singer, was born.
-1970: Joseph L. Searles became the first black member of the New York Stock Exchange.
February 14
Valentine's Day
Love Poems: https://poets.org/love-poems
Paper Hearts: https://kinderart.com/art-lessons/seasons/winter/valentines-day/paper-stained-glass-hearts/
Relevant Valentine's Day Graph: http://lessonplanspage.com/sciencevalentinesdaygraphingsweetheartscandieswithrelevancyk-htm/
Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch by Eileen Spinelli, read by Hector Elizondo, with activity guide: storylineonline.net/books/somebody-loves-you-mr-hatch/
Valentine Heart Flowers: http://www.freekidscrafts.com/valentine-heart-flowers/
-1473: Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus was born.-1817: Possible birthday of Frederick Douglass, abolitionist and orator. Born into slavery as Frederick Baile, Douglass purchased his freedom in 1845 and went on to become the greatest
abolitionist of his time.
-1847: Suffrage leader Anna Howard Shaw was born.
-1879: B.K. Bruce of Mississippi became the first black to preside over the U. S. Senate.
-1894: Comedian Jack Benny was born.
-1886: The West Coast citrus industry was born. The first trainload of oranges left Los Angeles for eastern markets.
-1903: President Theodore Roosevelt signed a law creating the Department of Commerce and Labor.
-1913: Jimmy Hoffa, labor leader, was born in Brazil, IN.
-1921: Broadcaster Hugh Downs was born.
-1929: St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago, seven gangsters killed.
-1933: An eight-day bank holiday was declared in Michigan in a Depression-era move to avert a financial panic. $50 million was rushed to Detroit to bolster bank assets.
-1934: Actress/singer Florence Henderson was born.
-1941: U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala was born.
-1944: Journalist Carl Bernstein was born.
-1946: Dancer/actor Gregory Hines was born.
-1948: Magician Teller, of Penn and Teller was born.
-1956: Actor Ken Wahl was born.
-1960: Actress Meg Tilly was born.
-1979: Iranian guerrillas stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, trapping Ambassador William Sullivan and 100 staff members. Forces of the Ayatollah Khomeini later freed them but the incident foreshadowed the embassy takeover in November
-1989, Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini, offended by "The Satanic Verses," called on Muslims to kill its British author, Salman Rushdie. He offered a $1 million reward for Rushdie's death, sending the writer into hiding. In 1998, Tehran rescinded the death sentence.
-1990: 90 people were killed and 56 injured in the crash of an Indian Airlines Airbus 320 50 yards short of the runway in Bangalore, India.
-1991: Allied commanders reported a surge in desertions of Iraqi soldiers.
-1992: The Bush administration denied lying about the fate of repatriated Haitians and asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reject efforts to stop the return of thousands of boat people.
-1992, on the third anniversary of his death sentence, author-in-hiding Salman Rushdie said he would no longer "go on living in a box."
-1993: Six people were systematically killed in a modern Valentine's Day massacre in a Bronx, New York, neighborhood so violent that the neighbors ignored the gunfire.
-1994: A convicted serial killer who admitted murdering 55 people was executed by firing squad in a Russian prison.
-1996: Republican Phil Gramm withdrew from the presidential campaign.
February 15
-1564: Galileo Galilei was born.
-1820: Susan B. Anthony, women's rights leader, was born in Adams, Massachusetts.
-1898: US Battleship Maine blown up in Havana harbor, 260 die; "Remember the Maine".
-1961: U.N. sessions were disrupted by U.S. and African nationalists over the assassination of Congo Premier Patrice Lumumba.
February 16
-1857: Frederick Douglass elected President of Freedman Bank and Trust.
-1959: Fidel Castro proclaims himself Cuba's premier after overthrowing Batista.
-1959: John McEnroe, tennis player, was born in Wiesbaden, Germany (to an American military family).
February 17
-1897: National Congress of Parents and Teachers was founded in Washington, D.C.
-1902: Marion Anderson, internationally acclaimed opera stare, was born.
-1908: Walter "Red" Barber, baseball broadcaster for the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees, was born in Columbus, Mississippi.
-1949: Chaim Weitzman elected first President of Israel
-1967: Ronald De Voe, singer of Bell Biv DeVoe, was born in Boston, MA.
February 18
-1848: Stained glass artist Louis Comfort Tiffany was born.
-1856: The American Party, also known as the "Know-Nothing Party," nominated its first presidential candidate, former President Millard Fillmore.
-1861: Jefferson Davis was sworn in as provisional president of the Confederate States of America.
-1865: After a long siege, Union naval forces captured Charleston, S.C. Sherman's troops burned the city.
-1892: Republican presidential candidate Wendell Wilkie was born.
-1893: Classical guitarist Andres Segovia was born.
-1898: Italian automaker Enzo Ferrari was born.
-1931: Toni Morrison was born.
-1920: Actor Jack Palance was born.
-1921: Barbara Hale was born.
-1922: Author and magazine editor Helen Gurley Brown was born.
-1927: George Kennedy was born.
-1930: Pluto, the outermost planet of the solar system, was discovered by astronomer Clyde Tombaugh.
-1931: Toni Morrison (born Chloe Anthony Wofford) , winner of the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, was born.
-1932: Filmmaker Milos Forman was born.
-1933: Yoko Ono, widow of John Lennon, was born.
-1950: Actress Cybill Shepherd was born.
-1954: John Travolta, actor and producer, was born in Englewood, New Jersey.
1957: Game show hostess Vanna White was born.
-1960: Actor Greta Scacchi was born.
-1964: Matt Dillon was born.
-1967: J. Robert Oppenheimer, the "father of the atomic bomb," died in Princeton, N.J., at the age of 62.
-1968: Molly Ringwald was born.
-1991: One person was killed and 40 more injured when the IRA bombed two railroad stations in central London.
-1993: A ferry carrying more than 800 people capsized off Haiti's western coast, killing at least 150 people and leaving several hundred more missing and presumed drowned.
1993: A plane used by missionaries with 13 people aboard was commandeered at gunpoint in Haiti and flown to Miami, where the alleged hijacker surrendered.
-1994: U.S. skater Dan Jansen ended his Olympic drought with a win in the men's 1,000-meter speed-skating event at the 17th Olympic Winter Games in Norway.
-1995: Myrlie Evers-Williams, widow of assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers, was elected chairwoman of the NAACP.
-2001: A 25-year veteran of the FBI, Robert Hanssen, was arrested at a park near his suburban Washington home and charged with spying for the Russians.
2001: Dale Earnhardt Sr., stock-car racing's top driver, was killed in a crash in the final turn of the final lap of the Daytona 500. He was 49.
February 19
-1473: Nicolaus Copernicus, the father of modern astronomy, was born in Torun, a city in north-central Poland on the Vistula River
-1717: British actor David Garrick was born.
-1807: Aaron Burr, a former U.S. vice president, was arrested in Alabama on charges of plotting to annex Spanish territory in Louisiana and Mexico to be used toward the establishment of an independent republic.
-1878: Thomas Edison patented the first gramophone.
-1911: Actress Merle Oberon was born.
-1912: Bandleader Stan Kenton was born.
-1916: Jockey Eddie Arcaro was born.
-1917: Novelist Carson McCullers was born.
-1919: The 1st Pan African Congress is held in Paris, France.
-1922: Vaudeville star Ed Wynn became the first big name in show business to sign for a regular radio show.
-1923: In Moore vs. Dempsey decision, U.S. Supreme Court guaranteed due process of law to blacks in state courts.
-1924: Actor Lee Marvin was born.
-1940: Singer William "Smokey" Robinson was born.
-1942: As a security measure during World War II, the U.S. government began relocating Japanese-Americans living in coastal Pacific areas to internment camps located in remote areas of Arizona, Arkansas, inland California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. They were allowed to return to
their homes in January 1945.
-1943: Lou Christie was born.
-1945: 30,000 US Marines landed on the island of Iwo Jima, opening one of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific during World War II.
-1946: Karen Silkwood, nuclear facility technician and union activist, was born in Longview, Texas.
-1952: Author Amy Tan was born.
-1955: Actor Jeff Daniels was born.
-1966: Justine Bateman was born.
-1967: Andrew Shue and Benicio Del Toro were born.
-1963: Singer Seal was born.
-1960: Britain's Prince Andrew was born.
-1986: The Senate endorsed the United Nations convention against genocide, 37 years after President Truman first sought approval of the accord.
-1991: Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin demanded the resignation of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
-1992: Conservative candidates won South African by an election seen as a barometer of white attitudes toward President de Klerk's reforms to scrap apartheid.
-1997: China's "paramount leader" Deng Xiaoping died at age 92.
-2000: George W. Bush easily defeated Arizona Sen. John McCain in the South Carolina Republican presidential primary.
-2000: President Bush, on an Asian tour, told the Japanese parliament that the United States, if necessary, would come to the aid of South Korea, the Philippines and Taiwan.
February 20
Love Your Pet Day
Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion, read by Betty White, with activity guide: storylineonline.net/books/harry-the-dirty-dog/
-1902: Ansel Adams was born.
-1934: "Four Saints in Three Acts" by Virgil Thompson and Gertrude Stein premieres as the first black-performed opera on Broadway.
-1962: John Glen Jr. was the first American to orbit the Earth, in the Mercury Friendship 7 spacecraft.
-1986: The Soviets launched the main unit of the space station Mir.
February 21
-1927: Erma Bombeck, humorist and author, was born in Dayton, Ohio. She wrote fourteen best-selling humorous books about life in 'burbs.
-1965: Malcom X was assassinated in New York.
-1972: President Nixon became the first U.S. President to visit the People's Republic of China.
February 22
Digital Learning Day
-1732: George Washington was born.
-1898: A black postmaster was lynched and his wife and three daughters shot and maimed for life in Lake City, S.C.
-1932: Ted Kennedy, U.S. senator and brother of President John F. Kennedy, was born in Boston, Massachusetts.
-1989: Col. Frederick Gregory was the first black astronaut to command a space-shuttle mission.
February 23
-1685: George Frederic Handel, composer, who established a great reputation as a keyboard virtuoso and had good success as an operatic composer, was born in Halle, Germany.
-1815: American engineer Robert Fulton, credited with building the first successful commercial steamboat, died in New York at 49.
-1868: W.E.B. Dubois, scholar, activist and author of "The Souls of Black Folk," was born.
-1868: The U.S. House of Representatives impeached President Andrew Johnson by a vote of 126-47 following his attempted dismissal of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton; Johnson was later acquitted by the Senate.
-1905: International Rotary Club was founded.
-1938: The first nylon bristle toothbrush, manufactured by DuPont under the name "Dr. West's Miracle Toothbrush," went on sale.
-1942: The S S Struma, a charter ship attempting to carry nearly 800 Jewish refugees from Romania to British-mandated Palestine, was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine in the Black Sea: all but one of the refugees perished.
-1961: The Federal Communications Commission authorized the nation's first full-scale trial of pay television in Hartford, Connecticut.
-1981: A jury in White Plaines, New York, found Jean Harris guilty of second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of "Scarsdale Diet" author Dr. Herman Tarnower. Sentenced to 15 years to life in prison, Harris was granted clemency by New York Gov. Mario Cuomo in December 1992.
-1988: In a ruling that expanded legal protections for parody and satire, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned a $150,000 award that the Rev. Jerry Falwell had won against Hustler magazine and its publisher, Larry Flynt.
-1989: A state funeral was held in Japan for Emperor Hirohito, who had died the month before at age 87.
-1993: Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney resigned after more than eight years in office.
-2008: Cuba's parliament named Raul Castro president, ending nearly 50 years of rule by his brother Fidel.
February 24
-1922: The home of Frederick Douglass was made a national shrine.
-1966: Elected leader and first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, ousted in military coup while he is away on a peace mission to Vietnam.
February 25
-1853: First black YMCA is organized in Washington, D.C.
-1888: John Foster Dulles born.
-1913: The 16th Amendment to the U.S. constitution went into effect. It granted the right of each American to pay for their government in the form of an income tax. And as a result, the IRS would be born.
-1919: Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona was established.
February 26
-1531: An earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal, killed an estimated 20,000 people.
-1802: French novelist and poet Victor Hugo was born.
-1815: Napoleon Bonaparte and 1,200 men left his exile on the Isle of Elba to start his 100-day campaign to re-gain France.
-1829: Levi Strauss born.
-1935: Germany began operation of its Air Force, the Luftwaffe, under Reichmarshall Hermann Goering.
-1846: American frontiersman William "Buffalo Bill" Cody was born.
-1852: Surgeon and cornflakes developer John Kellogg was born.
-1916: Actor Jackie Gleason was born.
-1920: Actor Tony Randall was born.
-1921: Actress Betty Hutton was born.
-1928: R&B pianist Antoine "Fats" Domino was born.
-1932: Country singer Johnny Cash was born.
-1965: Civil-rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson died after being shot by state police in Marion, Alabama
-1987: The Tower Commission declared White House chief of staff Donald Regan had "primary responsibility for the chaos" of the Iran-Contra scandal.
-1991: U.S. Marines entered Kuwait City as Iraqi troops retreated.
-1992: A U.N. report accused Iraq of systematic human rights violations including "brutal torture" and "widespread arbitrary and summary executions" during its occupation of Kuwait.
-1993: A powerful bomb exploded in the parking garage below the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000 more.
-1994: 11 members of the Branch Davidian religious cult were acquitted of murder and conspiracy charges stemming from the 1993 federal raid and siege at the compound near Waco, Texas.
-1995: China agreed to enforce copyright laws, thus avoiding threatened U.S tariffs on certain imports.
-1997: The Israeli cabinet approved development of a large Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem, a traditionally Arab area. The action drew criticism from the Palestinian National Authority.
-1998: A federal jury in Amarillo, Texas, ruled in favor of Oprah Winfrey in a lawsuit filed against her by Texas cattlemen. They said she had caused beef prices to fall with her 1996 talk show about "mad cow" disease.
February 27
-1807: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born.
-1902: John Steinbeck was born.
-1932: Elizabeth Taylor born.
-1988: Debi Thomas became the first black to win an Olympic medal in figure skating.
February 28
-1984: Michael Jackson won eight Grammy Awards.
Activism in the Civil Rights Movement: ny.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/5a39b52a-9082-4fa3-b40d-b4a8ea83266b/activism-in-the-civil-rights-movement-interactive-lesson/
Lesson plan for grades 6-8
As Fast As Words Could Fly by Pamela M. Tuck, read by Dule Hill, with activity guide: storylineonline.net/books/fast-words-fly/
Black History Month: http://www.infoplease.com/black-history-month/
Black History Month: https://poets.org/black-history-month
Black History With Mr. Dodson: www.youtube.com/channel/UCgrNu2ewm3n3QqZfFPIj3UQ
Catching the Moon: The Story of a Young Girl's Baseball Dream by Crystal Hubbard, read by Kevin Costner & Jillian Estell, with activity guide: storylineonline.net/books/catching-the-moon-the-story-of-a-young-girls-baseball-dream/
Civil Rights Teaching: http://civilrightsteaching.org/
Free Learning Resources for Black History Month (And Beyond): www.commonsense.org/education/articles/free-learning-resources-for-black-history-month-and-beyond
Freedom Quilts: http://mathwire.com/quilts/quilts.html
Kid-Friendly Videos and Podcasts for Exploring Black History and Culture: www.commonsensemedia.org/blog/kid-friendly-videos-and-podcasts-for-exploring-black-history-and-culture
Rent Pary Jazz by William Miller, read by Viola Davis, with activity guide: storylineonline.net/books/rent-party-jazz/
Trombone Shorty by Troy Andrews, read by Angela Bassett, with activity guide: storylineonline.net/books/trombone-shorty/
To Be a Drum by Evelyn Coleman, read by James Earl Jones
Chinese/Lunar New Year
Lotus & Feather by Ji-li Jiang, read by Michelle Yeoh, with activity guide: storylineonline.net/books/lotus-and-feather/
National Children's Dental Health Month
Presidents' Day - third Monday in February
American President: A Reference Resource: http://millercenter.org/president
Chronological List of Presidents, First Ladies, and Vice Presidents of the United States: http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/057_chron.html
If I Ran for President by Catherine Stier, read by Lonnie Chavis & Parker Bates & Mackenzie Hancsicsak, with activity guide: storylineonline.net/books/if-i-ran-for-president/
The Presidents: https://www.whitehouse.gov/1600/presidents
Presidents' Day: http://www.educationworld.com/a_special/presidents_day.shtml
Presidents' Day: http://www.alphabet-soup.net/hol/president.html
Winter Olympics
February 1
World Read-Aloud Day: http://www.litworld.org/wrad/
- 1790: Supreme Court convenes for first time in New York City
- 1894: John Ford (Sean Aloysius O'Fearna), film director, was born in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.
- 1902: Playwright, poet and author Langston hughes is born.
- 1968: Lisa Marie Presley, daughter and only child of Elvis Presley and actress Priscilla Beaulieu Presley (who were divorced in 1973), was born.
February 2
Candlemas [KAN duhl mahs], a church feast, is held this day commemorating the purification of the Virgin Mary. Candles for sacred uses are blessed on this day. If Candlemas Day is bright and clear, there'll be twa (two) winters in the year. -- old Scottish couplet
Groundhog Day
Groundhog Day Party: Activities and Games Across the Grades: http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/lesson048.shtml
Groundhog Day: http://www.stormfax.com/ghogday.htm
Stormfax Weather Almanac
Groundhogs at Hoghaven: http://tiimages.wix.com/hoghaven#!
Groundhog Day: http://www.groundhog.org/
The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club
World Read Aloud Day
-1807: Congress bans foreign slave trade.
-1913: New York City's Grand Central Terminal opened.
-1922: "Ulysses" by James Joyce was published in Paris.
-1965: Judith Viorst was born.
February 3
National Carrot Cake Day
The Case of the Missing Carrot Cake by Robin Newman, read by Wanda Sykes, with activity guide: storylineonline.net/books/missing-carrot-cake/
-1690: First paper money in America issued (colony of Mass.)
-1811: Horace Greeley, journalist and politician, was born in Amherst, N.H.
-1821: Elizabeth Blackwell was born.
-1894: Norman Rockwell, illustrator, was born.
-1956: Autherine Lucy enrolls as the first black student at the University of Alabama.
February 4
-1809: Louis Braille was born.
-1902: Charles Lindbergh was born.
-1906: Clyde Tombaugh, astronomer, was born in Streator, Illinois.
-1913: Rosa Parks, civil rights activist, was born.
-1945: Yalta Conference takes place with Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin
February 5
-1782: Spain captured the island of Minorca from the British.
-1919: League of Nations met for the first time in Paris.
-1934: Henry "Hank" Aaron, baseball player, was born in Mobile, Alabama.
-1945: Gen. Douglas MacArthur enters Manila
-1990: Columbia University graduate and Harvard University law student Barack Obama became the first African American named president of the Harvard Law Review.
February 6
-1820: The first organized emigration back to Africa began when 86 free African Americans left New York Harbor aboard the Mayflower of Liberia. They are bound for the British colony of
Sierra Leone, which welcomes free African Americans as well as fugitive slaves.
-1865: General Robert E. Lee was appointed Commander in Chief of the Confederate armies.
-1867: Robert Tanner Jackson becomes first black to receive a degree in dentistry.
-1899: Spanish-American War ends; peace treaty ratified by Senate
-1911: Ronald Reagan, fortieth United States president and former movie actor, was born in Tampico, Illinois.
-1933: Walter E. Fauntroy was born in Washington, D.C. He went on to become a District of Columbia delegate to the House of Representatives.
-1945: Bob Marley, reggae singer, guitarist, and composer, was born.
February 7
-1478: English statesman and writer Sir Thomas More was born.
-1804: Farm equipment manufacturer John Deere was born.
-1812: English novelist Charles Dickens was born.
-1834: Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleyev, who devised the periodic table, was born.
-1867: "Little House" books author Laura Ingalls Wilder was born.
-1883: Ragtime composer and piano player Eubie Blake was born.
-1885: Novelist Sinclair Lewis was born.
-1904: A massive fire, possibly started by a discarded cigarette, struck Baltimore, burning for 31 hours and destroying an 80-block downtown area. Miraculously no lives or homes were lost.
-1908: Olympic swimmer and actor Buster Crabbe was born.
-1915: D.W. Griffith's "Birth Of A Nation," a landmark in the history of cinema and the first American full-length motion picture, opened in Los Angeles and was immediately a smash hit though many found its racism offensive.
-1940: British railroads were nationalized.
-1954: Actor Miguel Ferrer was born.
-1956: Autherine Lucy, the first black person admitted to the University of Alabama, was expelled after she accused school officials of conspiring in the riots that accompanied her court-ordered enrollment.
-1960: Actor James Spader was born.
-1960: The Dead Sea scrolls were found at Qumran.
-1962: Garth Brooks, country singer, was born.
-1964: The Beatles arrived in the United States for the first time and immediately set off a frantic wave of "Beatlemania."
-1966: Comedian Chris Rock was born.
-1973: The Senate voted to set up a committee to investigate the break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters in Washington's Watergate complex.
-1984: Two American shuttle astronauts made the first untethered space walk.
-1986: Both Ferdinand Marcos and challenger Corazon Aquino claimed victory in the Philippine presidential election. Haiti's President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvalier fled to France.
-1989: A State Department report on international human rights accused Israel of mishandling the Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories.
-1991: Jean-Bertrand Aristide was inaugurated as Haiti's first democratically elected president in 186 years.
-1992: Three people were killed and one critically injured when a gunman angry with his girlfriend opened fire in Winter Garden, Fla.
-1995: The alleged "mastermind" in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, was arrested in Pakistan. He was extradited to New York the next day.
-1995: President Clinton invited the two sides in the major league baseball strike to the White House in a final effort to reach an agreement. The next day, he announced the effort had failed and called for binding arbitration.
-1998: The Winter Olympics opened in Nagano, Japan.
-1999: King Hussein of Jordan died following a battle with cancer. He was 63. Hussein had ruled Jordan for 46 years.
-2002: Despite exchanges between Israel and the Palestinians that at times approached outright warfare, Israeli Prime Minister Sharon said he expected a Palestinian state to emerge from the conflict.
February 8
-1861: Confederate States of America founded by 7 southern states.
-1910: Boy Scouts of America was incorporated.
-1931: James Dean, film actor, was born in Marion, IN.
-1968: Three South Carolina State students were killed during a segregation protest in Orangeburg, South Carolina.
-1986: Diminutive actor Gary Coleman was born in Zion, Illinois. Despite a childhood of medical troubles, Coleman went on to become a television star in numerous situation comedies.
-1996: In a ceremony at the Library of Congress, President Clinton signed legislation revamping the telecommunications industry, saying it would "bring the future to our doorstep."
February 9
-1943: The World War II battle of Guadalcanal in the southwest Pacific ended with an American victory over Japanese forces.
-1964: Arthur Ashe, Jr. became the first black tennis player on the U.S. Davis Cup team.
-1994: Israeli minister Shimon Peres signs peace accord with PLO's Yasser Arafat
February 10
-1763: French-Indian Was ends, surrendering Canada to England
-1837: Russian poet and novelist Aleksandr Pushkin died at the age of 37 of wounds received in a duel defending his wife's honor (in the Julian calendar he died on January 29). Pushkin is often regarded as his country's best poet and the founder of Russian literature.
-1863: "Tom Thumb" and Lavinia Warren were married.
-1868: Journalist William Allen White was born.
-1890: Russian author Boris Pasternak was born.
-1893: Entertainer Jimmy Durante was born.
-1897: The slogan "All The News That's Fit To Print" first appeared on page one of The New York Times.
-1898: German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and actress Dame Judith Anderson were born.
-1905: Actor Lon Chaney Jr. was born.
-1927: Operatic soprano Leontyne Price was born.
-1930: Actor Robert Wagner was born.
-1940: Singer Roberta Flack was born.
-1946: Donovan was born.
-1949: Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman," a classic play of US theater, premiered on Broadway.
-1962: The Soviet Union released captured US pilot Francis Gary Powers in exchange for Soviet spy Rudolph Abel.
-1989: Ronald H. Brown was elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
-1950: Olympic gold medal swimmer Mark Spitz was born.
-1962: U-2 spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers was returned to the United States in exchange for Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.
-1964: 82 Australian sailors died when an aircraft carrier and a destroyer collided off New South Wales, Australia.
-1967: Actress Laura Dern was born.
-1984: Americans and other foreigners were evacuated from Beirut following the withdrawal of U.S. Marines from Lebanon.
-1991: ANC gunmen ambushed an Inkatha Freedom Party motorcade outside Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, killing 17 and wounding 29.
-1993: A gang of more than 40 people ambushed two trucks in a mountainous region of Mexico, shooting to death at least 24 men in a drug-related family feud.
February 11
-1573: Francis Drake becomes first European to see the Pacific, from Panama.
-1800: Englishman William Talbot, a developer of photography, was born.
-1847: Inventor Thomas Edison was born.
-1858: French peasant girl Bernadette Sourbirous said the Virgin Mary appeared to her at Lourdes.
-1917: Author Sidney Sheldon was born.
-1920: King Farouk, Egypt's last monarch, was born.
-1925: Actor Kim Stanley was born.
-1926: Leslie Nielsen, actor, was born in Saskatchewan, Canada.
-1990: Nelson Mandela was released from prison after 27 years.
-1934: Tina Louise was born.
-1936: Burt Reynolds was born.
-1941: Brazilian musician Sergio Mendes was born.
-1953: Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was born.
-1945: President Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin ended their wartime conference at Yalta.
-1960: Jack Parr walked off "The Tonight Show" after NBC censored his slightly off-color "water closet" joke the night before. He returned to the late-night show March 7.
-1962: Singer/songwriter Sheryl Crow was born.
-1965: U.S. and South Vietnamese planes made the first bombing raids on North Vietnam.
-1969: Actress Jennifer Aniston was born.
-1970: Japan put a satellite in space, following in the footsteps of the Soviet Union, the United States and France.
-1979: Singer/actress Brandy (Norwood) was born.
-1987: Corazon Aquino was sworn in for a six-year presidential term under the new Philippine constitution.
-1990: Nelson Mandela, leader of the movement to end South African apartheid, was released from prison after 27 years behind bars.
-1992: One police officer was killed and four persons injured in a terrorist attack on the U.S. ambassador's residence in Lima, Peru.
-1993: President Clinton nominated Florida prosecutor Janet Reno to the post of U.S. attorney general.
-1993: A 20-year-old Ethiopian student hijacked a Lufthansa airliner en route from Frankfurt, Germany, to Cairo. He forced the pilot to fly to New York City, where he surrendered peacefully.
-1993: British Prime Minister John Majors said Queen Elizabeth II will pay income tax on all her personal income, as well as being subject to capital and inheritance levies.
-1998: Olympic officials took away the gold medal of Canadian snowboarder Ross Rebagliati after he tested positive for a minute amount of marijuana. He blamed second-hand smoke. An arbitration panel would restore his medal two days later.
-1998: A federal judge ruled that pro golfer Casey Martin, who suffered from a circulatory disorder that made it hard for him to walk, was covered by the American with Disabilities Act and should be allowed to use a golf cart to complete in PGA tournaments.
-2002: The Russian figure skating pair won the gold medal in the Winter Olympics over the overwhelming crowd favorite Canadian team but a judging controversy that grew into an international scandal prompted the International Skating Union to award a gold medal to Canada also.
February 12
-1809: Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth U.S. president, was born in Hodgenville, KY.
-1909: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded in New York City by a group of black and white citizens committed to social justice.
-1938: Judy Blume was born.
February 13
-1935: B. Hauptmann guilty of kidnapping and murder of Lindbergh's infant.
-1950: Peter Gabriel, rock singer, was born.
-1970: Joseph L. Searles became the first black member of the New York Stock Exchange.
February 14
Valentine's Day
Love Poems: https://poets.org/love-poems
Paper Hearts: https://kinderart.com/art-lessons/seasons/winter/valentines-day/paper-stained-glass-hearts/
Relevant Valentine's Day Graph: http://lessonplanspage.com/sciencevalentinesdaygraphingsweetheartscandieswithrelevancyk-htm/
Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch by Eileen Spinelli, read by Hector Elizondo, with activity guide: storylineonline.net/books/somebody-loves-you-mr-hatch/
Valentine Heart Flowers: http://www.freekidscrafts.com/valentine-heart-flowers/
-1473: Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus was born.-1817: Possible birthday of Frederick Douglass, abolitionist and orator. Born into slavery as Frederick Baile, Douglass purchased his freedom in 1845 and went on to become the greatest
abolitionist of his time.
-1847: Suffrage leader Anna Howard Shaw was born.
-1879: B.K. Bruce of Mississippi became the first black to preside over the U. S. Senate.
-1894: Comedian Jack Benny was born.
-1886: The West Coast citrus industry was born. The first trainload of oranges left Los Angeles for eastern markets.
-1903: President Theodore Roosevelt signed a law creating the Department of Commerce and Labor.
-1913: Jimmy Hoffa, labor leader, was born in Brazil, IN.
-1921: Broadcaster Hugh Downs was born.
-1929: St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago, seven gangsters killed.
-1933: An eight-day bank holiday was declared in Michigan in a Depression-era move to avert a financial panic. $50 million was rushed to Detroit to bolster bank assets.
-1934: Actress/singer Florence Henderson was born.
-1941: U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala was born.
-1944: Journalist Carl Bernstein was born.
-1946: Dancer/actor Gregory Hines was born.
-1948: Magician Teller, of Penn and Teller was born.
-1956: Actor Ken Wahl was born.
-1960: Actress Meg Tilly was born.
-1979: Iranian guerrillas stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, trapping Ambassador William Sullivan and 100 staff members. Forces of the Ayatollah Khomeini later freed them but the incident foreshadowed the embassy takeover in November
-1989, Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini, offended by "The Satanic Verses," called on Muslims to kill its British author, Salman Rushdie. He offered a $1 million reward for Rushdie's death, sending the writer into hiding. In 1998, Tehran rescinded the death sentence.
-1990: 90 people were killed and 56 injured in the crash of an Indian Airlines Airbus 320 50 yards short of the runway in Bangalore, India.
-1991: Allied commanders reported a surge in desertions of Iraqi soldiers.
-1992: The Bush administration denied lying about the fate of repatriated Haitians and asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reject efforts to stop the return of thousands of boat people.
-1992, on the third anniversary of his death sentence, author-in-hiding Salman Rushdie said he would no longer "go on living in a box."
-1993: Six people were systematically killed in a modern Valentine's Day massacre in a Bronx, New York, neighborhood so violent that the neighbors ignored the gunfire.
-1994: A convicted serial killer who admitted murdering 55 people was executed by firing squad in a Russian prison.
-1996: Republican Phil Gramm withdrew from the presidential campaign.
February 15
-1564: Galileo Galilei was born.
-1820: Susan B. Anthony, women's rights leader, was born in Adams, Massachusetts.
-1898: US Battleship Maine blown up in Havana harbor, 260 die; "Remember the Maine".
-1961: U.N. sessions were disrupted by U.S. and African nationalists over the assassination of Congo Premier Patrice Lumumba.
February 16
-1857: Frederick Douglass elected President of Freedman Bank and Trust.
-1959: Fidel Castro proclaims himself Cuba's premier after overthrowing Batista.
-1959: John McEnroe, tennis player, was born in Wiesbaden, Germany (to an American military family).
February 17
-1897: National Congress of Parents and Teachers was founded in Washington, D.C.
-1902: Marion Anderson, internationally acclaimed opera stare, was born.
-1908: Walter "Red" Barber, baseball broadcaster for the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees, was born in Columbus, Mississippi.
-1949: Chaim Weitzman elected first President of Israel
-1967: Ronald De Voe, singer of Bell Biv DeVoe, was born in Boston, MA.
February 18
-1848: Stained glass artist Louis Comfort Tiffany was born.
-1856: The American Party, also known as the "Know-Nothing Party," nominated its first presidential candidate, former President Millard Fillmore.
-1861: Jefferson Davis was sworn in as provisional president of the Confederate States of America.
-1865: After a long siege, Union naval forces captured Charleston, S.C. Sherman's troops burned the city.
-1892: Republican presidential candidate Wendell Wilkie was born.
-1893: Classical guitarist Andres Segovia was born.
-1898: Italian automaker Enzo Ferrari was born.
-1931: Toni Morrison was born.
-1920: Actor Jack Palance was born.
-1921: Barbara Hale was born.
-1922: Author and magazine editor Helen Gurley Brown was born.
-1927: George Kennedy was born.
-1930: Pluto, the outermost planet of the solar system, was discovered by astronomer Clyde Tombaugh.
-1931: Toni Morrison (born Chloe Anthony Wofford) , winner of the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, was born.
-1932: Filmmaker Milos Forman was born.
-1933: Yoko Ono, widow of John Lennon, was born.
-1950: Actress Cybill Shepherd was born.
-1954: John Travolta, actor and producer, was born in Englewood, New Jersey.
1957: Game show hostess Vanna White was born.
-1960: Actor Greta Scacchi was born.
-1964: Matt Dillon was born.
-1967: J. Robert Oppenheimer, the "father of the atomic bomb," died in Princeton, N.J., at the age of 62.
-1968: Molly Ringwald was born.
-1991: One person was killed and 40 more injured when the IRA bombed two railroad stations in central London.
-1993: A ferry carrying more than 800 people capsized off Haiti's western coast, killing at least 150 people and leaving several hundred more missing and presumed drowned.
1993: A plane used by missionaries with 13 people aboard was commandeered at gunpoint in Haiti and flown to Miami, where the alleged hijacker surrendered.
-1994: U.S. skater Dan Jansen ended his Olympic drought with a win in the men's 1,000-meter speed-skating event at the 17th Olympic Winter Games in Norway.
-1995: Myrlie Evers-Williams, widow of assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers, was elected chairwoman of the NAACP.
-2001: A 25-year veteran of the FBI, Robert Hanssen, was arrested at a park near his suburban Washington home and charged with spying for the Russians.
2001: Dale Earnhardt Sr., stock-car racing's top driver, was killed in a crash in the final turn of the final lap of the Daytona 500. He was 49.
February 19
-1473: Nicolaus Copernicus, the father of modern astronomy, was born in Torun, a city in north-central Poland on the Vistula River
-1717: British actor David Garrick was born.
-1807: Aaron Burr, a former U.S. vice president, was arrested in Alabama on charges of plotting to annex Spanish territory in Louisiana and Mexico to be used toward the establishment of an independent republic.
-1878: Thomas Edison patented the first gramophone.
-1911: Actress Merle Oberon was born.
-1912: Bandleader Stan Kenton was born.
-1916: Jockey Eddie Arcaro was born.
-1917: Novelist Carson McCullers was born.
-1919: The 1st Pan African Congress is held in Paris, France.
-1922: Vaudeville star Ed Wynn became the first big name in show business to sign for a regular radio show.
-1923: In Moore vs. Dempsey decision, U.S. Supreme Court guaranteed due process of law to blacks in state courts.
-1924: Actor Lee Marvin was born.
-1940: Singer William "Smokey" Robinson was born.
-1942: As a security measure during World War II, the U.S. government began relocating Japanese-Americans living in coastal Pacific areas to internment camps located in remote areas of Arizona, Arkansas, inland California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. They were allowed to return to
their homes in January 1945.
-1943: Lou Christie was born.
-1945: 30,000 US Marines landed on the island of Iwo Jima, opening one of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific during World War II.
-1946: Karen Silkwood, nuclear facility technician and union activist, was born in Longview, Texas.
-1952: Author Amy Tan was born.
-1955: Actor Jeff Daniels was born.
-1966: Justine Bateman was born.
-1967: Andrew Shue and Benicio Del Toro were born.
-1963: Singer Seal was born.
-1960: Britain's Prince Andrew was born.
-1986: The Senate endorsed the United Nations convention against genocide, 37 years after President Truman first sought approval of the accord.
-1991: Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin demanded the resignation of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
-1992: Conservative candidates won South African by an election seen as a barometer of white attitudes toward President de Klerk's reforms to scrap apartheid.
-1997: China's "paramount leader" Deng Xiaoping died at age 92.
-2000: George W. Bush easily defeated Arizona Sen. John McCain in the South Carolina Republican presidential primary.
-2000: President Bush, on an Asian tour, told the Japanese parliament that the United States, if necessary, would come to the aid of South Korea, the Philippines and Taiwan.
February 20
Love Your Pet Day
Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion, read by Betty White, with activity guide: storylineonline.net/books/harry-the-dirty-dog/
-1902: Ansel Adams was born.
-1934: "Four Saints in Three Acts" by Virgil Thompson and Gertrude Stein premieres as the first black-performed opera on Broadway.
-1962: John Glen Jr. was the first American to orbit the Earth, in the Mercury Friendship 7 spacecraft.
-1986: The Soviets launched the main unit of the space station Mir.
February 21
-1927: Erma Bombeck, humorist and author, was born in Dayton, Ohio. She wrote fourteen best-selling humorous books about life in 'burbs.
-1965: Malcom X was assassinated in New York.
-1972: President Nixon became the first U.S. President to visit the People's Republic of China.
February 22
Digital Learning Day
-1732: George Washington was born.
-1898: A black postmaster was lynched and his wife and three daughters shot and maimed for life in Lake City, S.C.
-1932: Ted Kennedy, U.S. senator and brother of President John F. Kennedy, was born in Boston, Massachusetts.
-1989: Col. Frederick Gregory was the first black astronaut to command a space-shuttle mission.
February 23
-1685: George Frederic Handel, composer, who established a great reputation as a keyboard virtuoso and had good success as an operatic composer, was born in Halle, Germany.
-1815: American engineer Robert Fulton, credited with building the first successful commercial steamboat, died in New York at 49.
-1868: W.E.B. Dubois, scholar, activist and author of "The Souls of Black Folk," was born.
-1868: The U.S. House of Representatives impeached President Andrew Johnson by a vote of 126-47 following his attempted dismissal of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton; Johnson was later acquitted by the Senate.
-1905: International Rotary Club was founded.
-1938: The first nylon bristle toothbrush, manufactured by DuPont under the name "Dr. West's Miracle Toothbrush," went on sale.
-1942: The S S Struma, a charter ship attempting to carry nearly 800 Jewish refugees from Romania to British-mandated Palestine, was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine in the Black Sea: all but one of the refugees perished.
-1961: The Federal Communications Commission authorized the nation's first full-scale trial of pay television in Hartford, Connecticut.
-1981: A jury in White Plaines, New York, found Jean Harris guilty of second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of "Scarsdale Diet" author Dr. Herman Tarnower. Sentenced to 15 years to life in prison, Harris was granted clemency by New York Gov. Mario Cuomo in December 1992.
-1988: In a ruling that expanded legal protections for parody and satire, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned a $150,000 award that the Rev. Jerry Falwell had won against Hustler magazine and its publisher, Larry Flynt.
-1989: A state funeral was held in Japan for Emperor Hirohito, who had died the month before at age 87.
-1993: Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney resigned after more than eight years in office.
-2008: Cuba's parliament named Raul Castro president, ending nearly 50 years of rule by his brother Fidel.
February 24
-1922: The home of Frederick Douglass was made a national shrine.
-1966: Elected leader and first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, ousted in military coup while he is away on a peace mission to Vietnam.
February 25
-1853: First black YMCA is organized in Washington, D.C.
-1888: John Foster Dulles born.
-1913: The 16th Amendment to the U.S. constitution went into effect. It granted the right of each American to pay for their government in the form of an income tax. And as a result, the IRS would be born.
-1919: Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona was established.
February 26
-1531: An earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal, killed an estimated 20,000 people.
-1802: French novelist and poet Victor Hugo was born.
-1815: Napoleon Bonaparte and 1,200 men left his exile on the Isle of Elba to start his 100-day campaign to re-gain France.
-1829: Levi Strauss born.
-1935: Germany began operation of its Air Force, the Luftwaffe, under Reichmarshall Hermann Goering.
-1846: American frontiersman William "Buffalo Bill" Cody was born.
-1852: Surgeon and cornflakes developer John Kellogg was born.
-1916: Actor Jackie Gleason was born.
-1920: Actor Tony Randall was born.
-1921: Actress Betty Hutton was born.
-1928: R&B pianist Antoine "Fats" Domino was born.
-1932: Country singer Johnny Cash was born.
-1965: Civil-rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson died after being shot by state police in Marion, Alabama
-1987: The Tower Commission declared White House chief of staff Donald Regan had "primary responsibility for the chaos" of the Iran-Contra scandal.
-1991: U.S. Marines entered Kuwait City as Iraqi troops retreated.
-1992: A U.N. report accused Iraq of systematic human rights violations including "brutal torture" and "widespread arbitrary and summary executions" during its occupation of Kuwait.
-1993: A powerful bomb exploded in the parking garage below the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000 more.
-1994: 11 members of the Branch Davidian religious cult were acquitted of murder and conspiracy charges stemming from the 1993 federal raid and siege at the compound near Waco, Texas.
-1995: China agreed to enforce copyright laws, thus avoiding threatened U.S tariffs on certain imports.
-1997: The Israeli cabinet approved development of a large Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem, a traditionally Arab area. The action drew criticism from the Palestinian National Authority.
-1998: A federal jury in Amarillo, Texas, ruled in favor of Oprah Winfrey in a lawsuit filed against her by Texas cattlemen. They said she had caused beef prices to fall with her 1996 talk show about "mad cow" disease.
February 27
-1807: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born.
-1902: John Steinbeck was born.
-1932: Elizabeth Taylor born.
-1988: Debi Thomas became the first black to win an Olympic medal in figure skating.
February 28
-1984: Michael Jackson won eight Grammy Awards.