What is today history February 20

Today in History : February 20

1513 : Pope Julius II dies. He will lay in rest in a huge tomb sculptured by Michelangelo.

1725 : New Hampshire militiamen partake in the first recorded scalping of Indians by whites in North America.

1792 : The U.S. Postal Service is created.

1809 : The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the power of the federal government is greater than any individual state in the Union.

1831 : Polish revolutionaries defeat the Russians in the Battle of Grochow.

1864 : Confederate troops defeat a Union army sent to bring Florida into the union at the Battle of Olustee, Fla.

1900 : J.F. Pickering patents his airship.

1906 : Russian troops seize large portions of Mongolia.

1915 : President Woodrow Wilson opens the Panama-Pacific Expo in San Francisco to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal.

1918 : The Soviet Red Army seizes Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine.

1938 : Hitler demands self-determination for Germans in Austria and Czechoslovakia.

1941 : The United States sends war planes to the Pacific.

1942 : Lt. Edward O’Hare downs five out of nine Japanese bombers that are attacking the carrier Lexington.

1943 : German troops of the Afrika Korps break through the Kasserine Pass, defeating U.S. forces.

1954 : The Ford Foundation gives a $25 million grant to the Fund for Advancement of Education.

1959 : The FCC applies the equal time rule to TV newscasts of political candidates.

1962 : Mercury astronaut John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth.

1963 : Moscow offers to allow on-site inspection of nuclear testing.

1965 : Ranger 8 hits the moon and sends back 7,000 photos to the United States.

1968 : North Vietnamese army chief in Hue orders all looters to be shot on sight.

1971 : Young people protest having to cut their long hair in Athens, Greece.

1982 : Carnegie Hall in New York begins $20 million in renovations.

Born on February 20

1726 : William Prescott, U.S. Revolutionary War hero at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

1808 : Honore Daumier, French caricaturist.

1844 : Ludwig Boltzmann, atomic physics engineer

1888 : Marie Rambert, ballet dancer and director.

1894 : Curt Richter, biologist.

1898 : Jimmy Yancey, American blues pianist.

1901 : Rene Dubos, microbiologist, developed the first commercial antibiotic.

1901 : Louis I. Kahn, architect.

1902 : Ansel Adams, American landscape photographer, especially of western wilderness and mountain panoramas.

1904 : Aleksey Nikolayevich Kosygin, Premier of the Soviet Union (1964-1980).

1924 : Gloria Vanderbilt, fashion designer

1925 : Robert Altman, film director (Nashville, The Player).

1927 : Sidney Poitier, American actor, first African American male to win an Oscar (Lillies of the Field).