Monthly Archives: February 2012

1732 – George Washington, the 1^st President of the United State (1789 – 1797) was born.

1819 – The United States acquired Florida from Spain under the Adams – Onís Treaty.

1879 – Frank W. Woolworth opened his first 5 and 10-cent store in Utica, NY.

1918 – The Montana legislature passed a Sedition Law in reaction to fears of treacherous German spies and domestic labor violence.  Three months later, the U.S. Congress adopted a federal Sedition Act modeled on the Montana law.

1919 – The first dog race track to use an imitation rabbit opened in Emeryville, CA.

1923 – The first successful chinchilla farm opened in Los Angeles, CA.

1954 – ABC radio’s popular Breakfast Club, program with longtime host, Don McNeill, was simulcast on TV beginning this day.  The telecast didn’t do well, but the radio program went on to break records as the longest-running program on the air.

1956 – Elvis Presley entered the music charts for the first time, when Heartbreak Hotel began its climb to the number one spot on the pop listing, reaching the top on April 11, 1956.  It stayed at the top for eight weeks.

1969 – Barbara Jo Rubin became the first woman to win a U.S. thoroughbred horse race.  She was riding Cohesian at Charlestown Race Course in West Virginia.

1980 – The ‘Miracle on Ice’ occurred during the XIII Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid, NY, when the U.S. defeated the Soviet Union in a dramatic 4-3 victory in men’s hockey.  The U.S. went on to defeat Finland, 4-2, two days later to win the gold medal.

1828 – The first printing press designed to use the newly-implemented Cherokee alphabet arrived in New Echota, GA, to help the General Council of the Cherokee Nation produce its Cherokee-language newspaper.

1842 – John J. Greenough of Washington, DC patented the sewing machine on this day.

1848 – Karl Marx, with the assistance of Friedrich Engels, published The Communist Manifesto in London.

1878 – The first telephone directories issued in the U.S. were distributed to residents in New Haven, CT, with only 50 subscribers’ names were listed.

1885 – The Washington Monument, built in honor of the nation’s first president, was dedicated in Washington, D.C.

1925 – The first issue of The New Yorker was published.

1926 – Swedish actress Greta Garbo’s first U.S. film, The Torrent, opened.

1932 – William N. Goodwin of Newark, New Jersey patented the camera exposure meter.

1947 – Edwin Land demonstrated the Polaroid Land Camera to the Optical Society of America in New York City.  It was the first camera to take, develop and print a picture on photo paper (in black and white back then) all in about a minute.

1948 – The National Association for Stock Racing (NASCAR) was officially incorporated.

1950 – The first International Pancake Race was held in Liberal, Kansas.  The annual event, scheduled each year on Shrove Tuesday, pits the women of Liberal against the women of Olney, Bucks, England.

1965 – Black activist Malcolm X was shot by Black Muslim assassins as he was about to address a rally in New York.

1995 – Former Chicago stockbroker and U.S. balloonist Steve Fossett became the first person to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon, landing in Leader, Saskatchewan, Canada.