This Day in History
1819: Spain cedes Florida to the United States.
1847: In the Battle of Buena Vista (February 22-23), an engagement of the Mexican War, U.S. Gen. Zachary Taylor defeats some 15,000 Mexicans under Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna and gains control of northern Mexico.
1879: F. W. Woolworth opens his first 5 &10 store, in Utica, NY.
1956: Eighty of the people boycotting buses in Montgomery, AL--including Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr.--give themselves up for arrest, after white city leaders had threatened to begin making arrests.
1983: The EPA announces that it will buy all the homes in Times Beach, MO, which had been contaminated by dioxin.
2002: Jonas Savimbi, longtime leader of the Angolan rebel group UNITA, is killed in an ambush.
Today's Birthdays
1732: George Washington, first president of the United States and commander of the Continental Army (Westmoreland County, VA; died 1799)
1778: Rembrandt Peale, painter (Bucks County, PA; died 1860)
1788: Anton Schopenhauer, philosopher (Danzig, Germany; died 1860)
1862: Connie Mack, baseball manager (Brookfield, MA; died 1956)
1892: Edna St. Vincent Millay, poet (Rockland, ME; died 1950)
1908: Sir John Mills, actor (Suffolk, England)
1932: Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts senator (Brookline, MA)
1934: Sparky Anderson, baseball player and manager (Bridgewater, SD)
1944: Jonathan Demme, director (Rockville Centre, NY)
1950: Julius Erving, basketball player (Roosevelt, NY)
1956: Amy Alcott, golfer (Kansas City, MO)
1968: Jeri Ryan, actress (Munich, Germany)
1972: Michael Chang, tennis champion (Hoboken, NJ)
1975: Drew Barrymore, actress (Los Angeles, CA)
