In the day of prosperity be happy, But in the day of adversity consider— God has made the one as well as the other So that man may not discover anything that will be after him.


ECC 7:14

0155: Martyrdom of St. Polycarp of Smyrna

0303: Emperor Diocletian orders general persecution of Christians

0687: Pepin of Heristal arrives in France

1011: Death of St. Willigis

1040: Consecration of the abbey-church at Le Bec, France

1072: Death of St. Peter Damian

1245: John of Plato Carpini connects with the Mongols

1305: A sermon preached in Italy mentioned eye-glasses

1370: Death of David II, King of Scotland

1421: Coronation of Catherine, Queen to Henry V of England

1440: Execution of Gilles de Raiz

1447: Death of Pope Eugenius IV

1455: Johannes Gutenberg prints 1st book, the Bible (approximate date)

1505: Columbus granted a licence to ride a mule in Spain

1505: Tomas de Berlanga, Bishop of Panama, sails for Peru

1516: Death of Ferdinand, King of Spain

1570: Assassination of Sir James Bellenden, Lord Justice Clerk

1574: The 5th War of Religion breaks out in France.

1611: Madeleine de la Palud interrogated concerning witchcraft

1615: French Estates General is dissolved

1642: Henrietta Marie, Queen of England, and her daughter, the Princess Mary, flee England

1732: Handel' s Oratorio is performed for the first time, in Britain.

1778: Baron von Steuben joins the Continental Army at Valley Forge.

1821: English poet John Keats dies.

1821: The Philadelphia College of Apothecaries established the first pharmacy college in Philadelphia.

1822: Boston was granted a charter to incorporate as a city.

1836: Alamo is besieged by Santa Anna, entire garrison eventually killed.

1846: The Liberty Bell tolls for the last time, to mark George Washington's birthday.

1847: Forces led by Zachary Taylor defeat the Mexicans at the Battle of Buena Vista. The United States and Mexico had been at war over territorial disputes since May 1846.

1847: U.S. troops under Gen. Zachary Taylor defeated Mexican Gen. Santa Anna at the Battle of Buena Vista in Mexico.

1848: The sixth president of the United States, John Quincy Adams, died of a stroke at age 80.

1855: In England, officials attempted to hang murderer John Lee. Every time they tried to release the trap door, it failed. When they tested it without him, it opened. After several attempts, they gave up and changed his sentence to life in prison.

1861: Texas secedes from the Union.

1861: President-elect Lincoln arrived secretly in Washington to take office, an assassination plot having been foiled in Baltimore.

1870: Mississippi was readmitted to the union. .

1886: Charles M. Hall completed his invention of aluminum. He produced it using electricity.

1887: Congress grants Seal Rocks to San Francisco.

1887: The import of opium from China into the U.S. is forbidden.

1897: Gustav Mahler converted to Catholicism. It was a tacit condition of employment for the job he wanted leading the Vienna Opera, and with it the Vienna Philharmonic. Later in life Mahler would convert back to Judaism.

1898: Novelist Emile Zola was imprisoned in France for writing his "J'accuse" letter accusing the government of anti-Semitism and wrongly jailing Captain Alfred Dreyfus.

1901: Britain and Germany agree on a boundary between German East Africa and Nyasaland.

1904: Japan guarantees Korean sovereignty in exchange for military assistance.

1905: The Rotary Club was founded. Paul Harris, a Chicago lawyer and three friends founded the organization after Harris noticed visitors to cities were often treated like strangers. The name comes from members rotating through various positions.

1906: Johann Hoch is imprisoned in Chicago for murdering six of his thirteen wives.

1917: French actress Sarah Bernhardt has her right leg amputated.

1921: An airmail plane sets a record of 33 hours and 20 minutes from San Francisco to New York.

1926: President Calvin Coolidge opposes a large air force, believing it would be a menace to world peace.

1929: Chinese rebels seize Hunan.

1927: President Coolidge signed a bill creating the Federal Radio Commission. The comission began its work of assigning frequencies, hours of operation and power allocations for radio broadcasters across the U.S. The name was changed to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on July 1, 1934.

1934: Casey Stengel became manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team as he signed the first (of many) major league contracts.

1936: In Russia, an unmanned balloon rises to a record height of 25 miles.

1938: Twelve Chinese fighter planes drop bombs on Japan. The China Air Task Force was a scrappy but beleaguered fill-in that fought both the Japanese and supply shortcomings until the Fourteenth Air Force was formed.

1939: Walt Disney won an Oscar for the film, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" at the Academy Award ceremonies that were held at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, California. Mr. Disney actually received one Oscar statuette and seven miniature ones for his work."

1942: The first shelling of the U.S. mainland during World War II as a Japanese submarine fired 25 shells on an oil refinery in Ellwood, California.

1944: American bombers strike the Marianas Islands bases, only 1,300 miles from Tokyo.

1945: Eisenhower opens a large offensive in the Rhineland. Turkey declares war on Germany and Japan.

1945: During World War II, U.S. Marines on Iwo Jima captured Mount Suribachi, and raised the American flag. A larger flag was then brought in to replace the first; the second flag-raising was captured in the famous picture taken by Joe Rosenthal.

1946: Anti-British demonstration in India draws a crowd of 300,000.

1947: Several hundred Nazi organizers are arrested in Frankfurt by U.S. and British forces.

1950: New York's Metropolitan Museum exhibits a collection of Hapsburg art. The first showing of this collection in the U.S.

1954: The first mass inoculation of children against polio with the Salk vaccine began in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

1955: Eight nations meet in Bangkok for the first SEATO council.

1960: Whites join Negro students in a sit-in at a Winston-Salem, N.C. Woolworth store.

1964: The U.S. and Britain recognize the new Zanzibar government.

1965: Stan Laurel -- the "skinny" half of the Laurel and Hardy comedy team -- died in Santa Monica, California.

1967: Jim Ryun set the record in the half-mile run at Lawrence, Kansas. He ran the distance in 1:48.3.

1967: Amendment 25, concering presidental succession, passed.1

1971: James Franciscus starred in "Longstreet", a made-for-TV movie that became a series in the fall of 1971.

1974: The Symbionese Liberation Army demanded $4 million for the release of Patty Hearst. Hearst was kidnapped on February 4th and her father, publisher Randolph Hearst, had already paid $2 million.

1981: An attempted coup began in Spain as 200 members of the Civil Guard invaded the Parliament, taking lawmakers hostage. (However, the attempt collapsed 18 hours later.)

1983: Meeting with reporters at the White House, President Reagan spoke of the need for a "homeland" for the Palestinians as part of a Mideast peace, but added, "no one has ever advocated creating a nation."

1983: The rock group Toto won Grammy Awards for the hit single, "Rosanna", and the album, "Toto IV", at the 25th annual ceremonies in Los Angeles.

1985: The U.S. Senate confirmed Edwin Meese III to be attorney general; by a vote of 63-31.

1986: In his strongest message yet to embattled Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos, President Reagan threatened to cut off U.S. military aid if Marcos used force against his opponents.

1987: Missouri congressman Richard A. Gephardt announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.

1988: President Reagan named William L. Ball III to succeed James H. Webb Jr. as Navy Secretary.

1988: presidential hopeful Bob Dole defeated Vice President George Bush in the South Dakota and Minnesota Republican primaries; among Democrats, Michael S. Dukakis won in Minnesota, Dick Gephart in South Dakota.

1989: The Senate Armed Services Committee voted eleven-to-nine against recommending the nomination of John Tower to become secretary of defense.

1990: Former Salvadoran President Jose Napoleon Duarte died at age 64.

1991: President Bush announced that the allied ground offensive against Iraqi forces had begun. (Because of the time difference, it was already the early morning of Feb. 24 in the Persian Gulf.) 

1991: Military forces in Thailand overthrew the elected government and imposed martial law.

1991: French forces unofficially start the Persian Gulf ground war by crossing the Saudi-Iraqui border.

1992: The XVI Winter Olympic Games ended in Albertville, France.

1992: In Moscow, thousands of pro-Communist demonstrators, some shouting, "Down with the Russian government!," clashed with police.

1992: Paul Tsongas won a narrow victory over Jerry Brown in the Maine Democratic caucuses

1993: L'Oiseau Lyre decided to reissue virtually everything Baroque it had recorded in the past 20 years, which mostly means a festival of the Academy of Ancient Music under the direction of Christopher Hogwood.

1993: President Clinton won United Nations support for a plan to airdrop relief supplies to starving Bosnians during an Oval Office meeting with Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

1994: The military chiefs of Bosnia's Muslim-led government and their second-strongest foes, Bosnia's Croats, signed a truce.

1994: Nancy Kerrigan led the women's figure skating short program at the Winter Olympics in Norway, while Tonya Harding placed tenth.

1994: Russia's new parliament took a swipe at President Boris Yeltsin by granting amnesty to leaders of the 1991 Soviet coup and the hard-liners who'd fought him in 1993.

1995: The Dow Jones industrial average closed above the 4,000 mark for the first time, ending the day at 4003.33.

1995: Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter arrived in Haiti to help prepare for peaceful elections.

1995: Administration officials said President Clinton would review dozens of affirmative action programs.

1996: The Iraqi News Agency reported that Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel al-Majid and his brother Saddam Kamel al-Majid, a pair of defectors who were also the sons-in-law of Saddam Hussein, were killed by clan members after returning to their homeland. 

1996: Dutch tourist Tosca Dieperink, 39, was killed in a holdup at a Miami service station. Two men later pleaded guilty to the slaying and were sentenced to prison. 

1997: Scientists in Scotland announced they had succeeded in cloning an adult mammal, producing a lamb named "Dolly."

1997: Ali Hassan Abu Kamal, a Palestinian teacher, opened fire on the 86th-floor observation deck of New York's Empire State Building, killing one person and wounding six others before shooting himself to death.

1997: In eastern India, nearly 200 people were killed when fire swept through a tent built for a religious festival.

1998: The southeastern edge of an El Nino storm system spawned several tornadoes that cut across the Florida peninsula. Forty-two people were killed, some 2,600 homes and businesses damaged or destroyed, by the tornadoes. The storms were the deadliest disaster in Florida since Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

1998: President Clinton gave cautious approval to a UN agreement reached by Secretary-General Kofi Annan with Saddam Hussein for monitoring suspected weapons sites in Iraq.

1998: Oil-rich Brunei celebrated 14 years of independence, thankful for the wealth that has largely shielded the sultanate from a regional economic crisis but worried over smog and unemployment. A resurgence of smoke from bush fires on Borneo island forced authorities to move the sultanate's National Day celebrations from an outdoor parade ground to an indoor stadium for health concerns.

1999: A jury in Jasper, Texas convicted white supremacist John William King of murder in the gruesome dragging death of a black man, James Byrd Jr.; King was sentenced to death two days later.

1999:  The first of two avalanches that claimed 38 lives over two days struck in Austria.

1999: Serbs agreed in principle to give limited self-rule to majority ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, thereby temporarily heading off NATO air strikes, but during their talks in Rambouillet, France, the two sides failed to conclude a deal for ending their yearlong conflict.

 2000: Carlos Santana won eight Grammy awards, including album of the year for "Supernatural," tying the record set by Michael Jackson in 1983 for most trophies in one night.