What is today history February 15

Today in History : February 15

1798 : The first serious fist fight occurs in Congress.

1804 : New Jersey becomes the last northern state to abolish slavery.

1862 : Union General Ulysses S. Grant launches a major assault on Fort Donelson, Tenn.

1869 : Charges of treason against Jefferson Davis are dropped.

1898 : The U.S. battleship Maine blows up in Havana Harbor, killing 268 sailors and bringing hordes of Western cowboys and gunfighters rushing to enlist in the Spanish-American War.

1900 : The British threaten to use natives in the Boer War fight.

1925 : The London Zoo announces it will install lights to cheer up fogged-in animals.

1934 : U.S. Congress passes the Civil Works Emergency Relief Act, allotting new funds for Federal Emergency Relief Administration.

1940 : Hitler orders that all British merchant ships will be considered warships.

1942 : British forces in Singapore surrender to Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita.

1943 : The Germans break the American Army’s lines at the Fanid-Sened Sector in Tunisia, North Africa.

1944 : American bombers attack the Abbey of Monte Cassino in an effort to neutralize it as a German observation post in central Italy.

1946 : Royal Canadian mounted police arrest 22 as Soviet spies.

1950 : Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung sign a mutual defense treaty in Moscow.

1957 : Andrei Gromyko replaces Dmitri T. Shepilov as the Soviet Foreign Minister.

1961 : Eighteen members of the U.S. figure skating team are lost in an airplane crash in Belgium.

1965 : Canada’s maple leaf flag is raised for the first time.

1967 : Thirteen U.S. helicopters are shot down in one day in Vietnam

1974 : U.S. gas stations threaten to close because of federal fuel policies.

Born on February 15

1564 : Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer and mathematician.

1710 : Louis XV, King of France

1726 : Abraham Clark, signer of Declaration of Independence.

1797 : Henry Steinway, piano maker

1820 : Susan B. Anthony, suffragette and political activist.

1882 : John Barrymore, actor, sibling to actors Lionel Barrymore & Ethel Barrymore, father of actors John Drew Barrymore & Diana Barrymore and grandfather of actor Drew Barrymore.

1905 : Harold Arlen, composer, arranger and pianist (“Stormy Weather,” “It’s Only a Paper Moon”).

1954 : Matt Groening, cartoonist (The Simpsons).