This Day in History
1859: Oregon is admitted to the Union as the 33rd state.
1912: Arizona is admitted to the Union as the 48th state. A revolutionary assembly in Nanjing, China elects Gen. Yüan Shih-k'ai the first president of the Republic of China.
1920: The League of Women Voters is formed in Chicago .
1929: The "St. Valentine's Day massacre" takes place in Chicago, with gangsters killing 7 members of a rival crime ring.
1956: At the 20th Communist Party Congress in Moscow (Feb. 14-25) party secretary Nikita Khrushchev condemns Stalin for having replaced the collective leadership proper to Marxism with a cult of himself, with disastrous consequences for the USSR.
1989: Union Carbide is ordered by India's Supreme Court to pay $470 million to victims of the 1984 toxic gas leak at Bhopal. Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issues a call for the death of author Salman Rushdie because of his novel The Satanic Verses.
2005: Rafik al-Hariri, the long-time Lebanese premier who resigned in October 2004 to protest Syrian political hegemony in the country, is killed by a huge bomb amidst his motorcade in downtown Beirut.
Today's Birthdays
1894: Jack Benny, comedian (Chicago, IL; died 1974)
1921: Hugh Downs, TV journalist (Akron, OH)
1934: Florence Henderson, actress (Dale, IN)
1942: Michael Bloomberg, New York City Mayor, financial information/media entrepreneur (Medford, MA)
1944: Carl Bernstein, journalist/author (Washington, DC)
1946: Gregory Hines, dancer/actor (New York, NY; died 2003)
1948: Teller, magician in the duo Penn & Teller (Philadelphia, PA)
1960: Meg Tilly, actress (Texada, British Columbia, Canada)
1964: Zach Galligan, actor (New York, NY)
1970: Simon Pegg, actor (Gloucester, England)
1972: Drew Bledsoe, football player (Ellensburg, WA)
1973: Steve McNair, football player (Mt. Olive, MS)
