February 23rd in History

Michael Dobson | February 23

This Day in History

  • The Gutenberg Bible, the first Western book printed with movable type, is published (1455)
  • The Battle of the Alamo begins (1836)
  • President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrives secretly in Washington, DC, after avoiding an assassination plot in Baltimore (1961)
  • Mississippi is readmitted to the Union (1870) and Alabama becomes the first state to pass an anti-trust law (1883)
  • The Tootsie Roll® is invented (1896)
  • The French imprison Émile Zola for writing “J’accuse” about the imprisonment of Captain Alfred Dreyfus (1898)
  • Cuba leases Guantánamo Bay to the US “in perpetuity.” (1903)
  • The Rotary Club is founded (1905)
  • The February Revolution begins in Russia (1917)
  • Werner Heisenberg describes his uncertainty principle in writing for the first time (1927)
  • Plutonium is first produced and isolated (1941)
  • Japanese submarines fire artillery shells at the US mainland near Santa Barbara (1942)
  • US Marines and a Navy Corpsman reach the top of Mount Suribachi on the island of Iwo Jima and are photographed raising an American flag (1945)
  • Manila is liberated (1945)
  • The first mass inoculation of children against polio begins in Pittsburgh (1954)
  • Supernova 1987a is seen in the Large Magellanic Cloud (1987)

Birthdays

  • Samuel Pepys, diarist (1633)
  • George Frideric Handel, composer (1685)
  • César Ritz, hotelier (1850)
  • W. E. B. DuBois, civil rights leader (1868)
  • William L. Shirer, historian (1904)
  • Paul Tibbets, Hiroshima bomber pilot (1915)
  • Majel Barrett, Star Trek player (1932)
  • Peter Fonda, easy rider (1940)
  • John Sandford, mystery writer (1944)
  • Johnny Winter, blues rocker (1944)
  • Michael Dell, computer maker (1965)
  • Dakota Fanning, actress (1994)

Deaths

  • John Keats, poet (1821)
  • John Quincy Adams, president (1848)
  • Horst Wessel, lieder (1930)
  • Edward Elgar, composer (1934)
  • Stan Laurel, Hardy partner (1965)
  • Saud, monarch (1969)
  • Jessamyn West, author (1984)
  • James Herriot, veterinarian (1995)

Holidays

  • Mashramani Republic Day (Guyana)
  • National Day (Brunei)
  • Red Army Day (Soviet Union)
  • Defender of the Fatherland Day (Russia)
  • Terminalia (Ancient Rome)