But his delight is in the law of the LORD, And in His law he meditates day and night.



Psalm 1:2

0425: Theodosius II, Emperor of Byzantium, founds a University

1458: George of Podebrad chosen King of Bohemia

1531: Schmalkaldic League formed

1549: Ivan IV, "the Terrible" opens the Zemsky Sobor

1556: Heller discovers a "terrifying, prodigious extraordinary star"

1558: Ivan IV, "the Terrible," opens commercial relations with England

1593: Elizabeth I, Queen of England, reminds Parliament of Her Perogatives

1700: The Pacific Island of New Britain is discovered.

1801: The District of Columbia was placed under the jurisdiction of Congress.

1807: The Dominican Republic gained its independence after Haiti withdrew from the country.

1814: Napoleon's Marshal Nicholas Oudinot is pushed back at Barsur-Aube by the Emperor's allied enemies shortly before his abdication.

1827: The first Mardi-Gras celebration is held in New Orleans.

1861: Warsaw, Russian troops fired on a crowd protesting Russian rule over Poland; five marchers were killed.

1864: First Union prisoners arrive at Andersonville Prison in Georgia.

1867: Dr. William G. Bonwill of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, invented the dental mallet while watching a telegraph key sounder operate a Philadelphia hotel.

1883: Oscar Hammersteof New York City patented the first, practical, cigar-rolling machine. He was the grandfather of the music composer Oscar Hammerstein.

1890:Boxers Danny Needham and Patsy Kerrigan fought 100 rounds San Francisco before the match was declared a draw after more than 6½ hours.

1908: Star # 46 was added to the U.S. flag -- for Oklahoma -- which had entered the union on November 16, 1807.

1920: The U.S. rejects a Soviet peace offer as propaganda.

1922: The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the 19th Amendment to the Constitution that guaranteed the right of women to vote.

1922: Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover convened the first National Radio Conference Washington, D.C.

1925: Glacier Bay National Monument is dedicated in Alaska.

1932: The Glass-Steagall Act is passed, giving the Federal Reserve the right to expand credit in order to increase money circulation.

1933: Germany's parliament building, the Reichstag, caught fire. The Nazis, blaming the Communists, used the fire as a pretext for suspending civil liberties.

1939: The Supreme Court outlawed sit-down strikes.

1942: British Commandos raid a German radar station at Bruneval on the French coast.

1946: The fourth of the "Road" films, "Road to Utopia", starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour and Robert Benchley, opened in New York City.

1960: The US Olympic hockey team defeated the Soviets, three goals to two, at the Winter Games in Squaw Valley, California. (The US team went on to win the gold medal.)

1962: South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem is unharmed as two planes bomb the presidential palace in Saigon.

1963: The U.S.S.R. says that 10,000 troops will remain in Cuba.

1963: Mickey Mantle of the New York Yankees signed a contract worth $100,000. In 1949, Mantle had signed his first Yankee contract for $1,100.

1969: Thousands of students protest President Nixon's arrival in Rome.

1970: Simon and Garfunkel received a gold record for the single "Bridge over Troubled Water."

1972: President Nixon and Chinese Premier Chou En-lai issued the Shanghai Communique at the conclusion of Nixon's historic visit to China.

1973: U.S. Supreme Court rules that a Virginia pool club can't bar residents because of color.

1973: Members of the American Indian Movement occupied the hamlet of Wounded Knee in South Dakota, the site of the 1890 massacre of Sioux men, women and children. (The occupation lasted until May.)

1973: Baseball star, Dick "Don't Call Me Richie" Allen, signed a three-year pact with the Chicago White Sox for a reported $675,000 after leaving the Philadelphia Phillies.

1974: A new magazine was issued by Time-Life (now Time-Warner). The magazine was "People." It had an initial run of one million copies.

1979: Jane M. Byrne confounded Chicago's Democratic political machine as she upset Mayor Michael A. Bilandic to wtheir party's mayoral primary. (Byrne went on to win the election.)

1983: Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, attended a church service San Diego, then flew on to Palm Springs, California, as they continued their tour of the West Coast.

1985: Former Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, who had served three terms as a U.S. senator and ran as the 1960 Republican vice presidential nominee, died Beverly, Massachusetts, at age 82.

1985: Former vice-presidential candidate, Geraldine Ferraro, was seen in a TV commercial in an ad for a diet soft drink.

1985: Dale Berra started his first day as a New York Yankee. It marked the first significant father-son combination in major-league baseball.

1986: The US Senate approved telecasts of its debates on a trial basis.

1986: President/dictator Ferdinand Marcos decided to get out of the Philippines while he still could. The widow of a slain anti-Marcos politician, homemaker Corazon Aquino had been elected President earlier in the month.

1987: President Reagan replaced his White House chief of staff, Donald T. Regan, with former Senator Howard H. Baker.

1987: The longest-running program on the Public Broadcasting System (PBS), "Washington Review," celebrated its 20th anniversary.

1988: Katarina Witt won the gold medal in women's figure skating at the Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada, with Elizabeth Manley of Canada placing second and Debi Thomas of the United States, third.

1989: President Bush warned of what he called the "fool's gold" of trade protectionism as he addressed South Korea's National Assembly before returning home.

1990: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that prison officials could force inmates to take powerful anti-psychotic drugs without a judge's consent.

1990: The Exxon Corporation and Exxon Shipping were indicted on five criminal counts relating to the

1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

1991: President Bush declared that "Kuwait is liberated, Iraq's army is defeated," and announced that the allies would suspend combat operations at midnight. General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the US commander in the Gulf, briefed reporters in detail on the successful allied offensive. 

1992: William Aramony resigned as president of United Way of America amid charges of financial mismanagement and lavish spending.

1993: President Clinton, in his weekly radio address, promised to find out who was behind the huge explosion at New York's World Trade Center, a bombing later blamed on Islamic militants.

1993: Actress Lillian Gish died in New York at age 99.

1994: The Winter Olympic Games ended Lillehammer, Norway.

1995: Court-appointed salvagers swarmed into Britain's oldest investment bank to evaluate the remaining assets of Barings PLC after Nick Leeson, a 29-year-old trader, ruined the firm by gambling on Tokyo stock prices.

1996: Bob Dole won the North Dakota and South Dakota primaries, while Steve Forbes captured Arizona's winner-take-all primary.

1997: A jury in Fayetteville, North Carolina, convicted former Army paratrooper James N. Burmeister of murdering a black couple so he could get a skinhead tattoo. (He was later sentenced to life in prison.)

1997: Divorce became legal in Ireland. Legislation banning most handguns in Britain went into effect.

1998: With the approval of Queen Elizabeth the Second, Britain's House of Lords agreed to end 1,000 years of male preference by giving a monarch's first-born daughter the same claim to the throne as any first-born son.

1998: Condemning tobacco companies for targeting children, Vice President Al Gore unveiled a $7.5 million national advertising campaign to encourage retailers to stop selling cigarettes to minors. Gore, who owes his livelyhood to the tobacco industry, also urged Congress to pass comprehensive, bipartisan legislation by this summer that would reduce the number of teen smokers.

1998: President Clinton and his wife Hillary celebrated daughter Chelsea's 18th birthday at an exclusive ski resort high in the Rocky Mountains. They borrowed a vacation home owned by Hollywood executive Jeffrey Katzenberg for the weekend.

1998: The FBI arrested suspected serial killer Tony Ray Amati in Atlanta, just 4 days after he was listed as one of the 10 most wanted fugitives in the U.S.

1998: The teen-age leader of a cult of self-professed vampires was sentenced to die in the electric chair for the beating deaths of a Florida couple. In 1996, Ferrell inducted 15-year-old Heather Wendorf into his vampire clan then bludgeoned her parents to death with a crow bar hours later.

1999: The Rev. Henry Lyons, president of the National Baptist Convention USA, was convicted in Largo, Fla., of swindling millions of dollars from companies seeking to do business with his followers.

1999: Nigerians voted to elect Olusegun Obasanjo their new president as the country marked the final phase of its return to democracy.

2000: Texas Governor George W. Bush's campaign released a letter to New York Cardinal John O'Connor in which the Republican presidential candidate said he "deeply" regretted "causing needless offense" by making a campaign appearance at Bob Jones University, a South Carolina school whose leaders had espoused anti-Catholic views.