This Day in History

• Galileo publishes the book that would get him in trouble for heresy, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems(1632)
• Spain sells Florida to the US for $5 million, throws in a free set of voting machines (1819)
• Washington University (1853) and Pennsylvania State University (1855) are founded
• the Republican Party (1856) and the Prohibition Party (1872) have their first national conventions
• Jefferson Davis is inaugurated (1862)
• Frank Woolworth opens a retail store (1879)
• North and South Dakota, Montana, and Washington become US states (1889)
• the Great White Fleet returns to America (1909)
• FDR orders MacArthur to leave the Philippines (1942)
• Lee Petty wins the first Daytona 500 (1959)
• in the Miracle on Ice, the US hockey team defeats the Soviet Union 4-3 in the Lake Placid Winter Olympics (1980)
• the Securitas depot robbery, the largest cash robbery in British history, yields over £53 million (2006)

Birthdays

• the irresistably named Ladislaus the Posthumous (1440)
• Johann Ambrosius Bach (Sebastian’s dad) and his twin Johann Christoph Bach (1645), both musicians
• father of his country George Washington (1732)
• portrait painter Rembrandt Peale (1778)
• philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788)
• composer Frédéric Chopin (1810)
• American poets James Russell Lowell (1819) and Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892)
• frequency namesake Heinrich Hertz (1857)
• scout leaders Robert (1857) and Olave (1889) Baden-Powell
• Spanish director Luis Buñuel (1900)
• TV producers Bud Yorkin (1926) and Big Bang namesake Sheldon Leonard (1907)
• played a doctor on TV Robert Young (1907)
• Burn Notice identity and baseball player Charlie Finley and announcer Don Pardo (1918)
• illustrators Reed Crandall (1917) and Edward Gorey (1925)
• scion Ted Kennedy (1932)
• mystery scribe James Patterson (1947)
• hoops star Julius Erving (1950)
• Star Trek player Jeri Ryan (1968) and Twin Peaks agent Kyle MacLachlan (1959)
• actresses Miou-Miou (1950) and Drew Barrymore (1975)

Deaths

• continental namesake Amerigo Vespucci (1512)
• Mahatma’s spouse Kasturba Gandhi (1944)
• supreme judge Felix Frankfurter (1965)
• supreme singer Florence Ballard (1976)
• New Yorker cartoonist Peter Arno (1968)
• pop artist Andy Warhol (1987)
• animation legend Chuck Jones (2002) and his long-time screenwriter Michael Maltese (1981)
• journalist Daniel Pearl (2002)

Holidays and Celebrations

• Scouting Founder’s Day
• World Thinking Day
• Scientology Celebrity Day
• Santa Lucia Independence Day