February 20: This Day In History

EVENTS

1472 – Orkney and Shetland are pawned by Norway to Scotland in lieu of a dowry for Margaret of Denmark.1792 – The Postal Service Act, establishing the United States Post Office Department, is signed by President George Washington.

1816 – Rossini’s opera The Barber of Seville premieres at the Teatro Argentina in Rome.

1835 – Concepción, Chile is destroyed by an earthquake.1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Olustee occurs – the largest battle fought in Florida during the war.1865 – End of the Uruguayan War, with a peace agreement between President Tomás Villalba and rebel leader Venancio Flores, setting the scene for the destructive War of the Triple Alliance.1877 – Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake receives its première performance at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.

1909 – Publication of the Futurist Manifesto in the French journal Le Figaro.

1921 – The Young Communist League of Czechoslovakia is founded.

1931 – The Congress of the United States approves the construction of the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge by the state of California.

1933 – The Congress of the United States proposes the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution that will end Prohibition in the United States.

1933 – Adolf Hitler secretly meets with German industrialists to arrange for financing of the Nazi Party’s upcoming election campaign.

1935 – Caroline Mikkelsen becomes the first woman to set foot in Antarctica.

1943 – American movie studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor movies.

1952 – Emmett Ashford becomes the first African-American umpire in organized baseball by being authorized to be a substitute umpire in the Southwestern International League.

1960 – Jimi Hendrix made his stage debut when he played a show at a High School in Seattle.

1962 – Mercury program: While aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the earth, making three orbits in 4 hours, 55 minutes.

1968 – State troopers used tear gas to stop demonstrations at Alcorn A&M College.

1987 – Unabomber: In Salt Lake City, a bomb explodes in a computer store.

1988 – The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast votes to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia, triggering the Nagorno-Karabakh War.

1989 – An IRA bomb destroys a section of a British Army barracks in Ternhill, England

1991 – A gigantic statue of Albania’s long-time leader, Enver Hoxha, is brought down in the Albanian capital Tirana, by mobs of angry protesters.

1991 – Bob Dylan was awarded a lifetime achievement award at the 33rd annual Grammy’ Awards.

1998 – American figure skater Tara Lipinski becomes the youngest gold-medalist at the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

2005 – Spain becomes the first country to vote in a referendum on ratification of the proposed Constitution of the European Union, passing it by a substantial margin, but on a low turnout.

2009 – Two Tamil Tigers aircraft packed with C4 explosives en route to the national airforce headquarters are shot down by the Sri Lankan military before reaching their target, in a kamikaze style attack.

2010 – In Madeira Island, Portugal, heavy rain causes floods and mudslides, resulting in at least 43 deaths, in the worst disaster in the history of the archipelago.

2013 – The smallest Extrasolar planet, Kepler-37b is discovered.

1901 – Muhammad Naguib, Egyptian general and politician, 1st President of Egypt (d. 1984)

1902 – Ansel Adams, American photographer (d. 1984)

1920 – Yevgeny Dragunov, Russian weapons designer, designed the Dragunov sniper rifle (d. 1991)

1925 – Robert Altman, American director and screenwriter (d. 2006)

1927 – Roy Cohn, American lawyer (d. 1986)

1927 – Actor and thespian Sidney Poitier born.

1935 – Ellen Gilchrist, American writer

1936 – Jazz singer, actress, Nancy Wilson born in Chillicothe, Ohio

1941 – Buffy Sainte-Marie, Canadian-American singer-songwriter and producer

1943 – Mike Leigh, English director

1946 – J. Geils, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (The J. Geils Band)

1949 – Mab Segrest, American author and activist

1954 – Patty Hearst, American actress

1963 – Charles Barkley, American basketball player and sportscaster

1967 – Kurt Cobain, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (Nirvana) (d. 1994)

1967 – Lili Taylor, American actress

1988 – Rihanna, Barbadian-American singer-songwriter and actress