What is today history February 23

Today in History : February 23

1516 : The Hapsburg Charles I succeeds Ferdinand in Spain.

1540 : Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado begins his unsuccessful search for the fabled Seven Cities of Gold in the American Southwest.

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

1615 : The Estates-General in Paris is dissolved, having been in session since October 1614.

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

1821 : Poet John Keats dies of tuberculosis at the age of 25.

1836 : The Alamo is besieged by Santa Anna.

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.

1854 : Great Britain officially recognizes the independence of the Orange Free State.

1861 : Texas becomes the seventh state to secede from the Union.

1885 : John Lee survives three attempts to hang him in Exeter Prison, as the trap fails to open.

1898 : Writer Emile Zola is imprisoned in France for his letter J’accuse in which he accuses the French government of anti-semitism and the wrongful imprisonment of army 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.

1916 : Secretary of State Lansing hints that the U.S. may have to abandon the policy of avoiding “entangling foreign alliances”.

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

1938 : Twelve Chinese fighter planes drop bombs on Japan.

1942 : A Japanese submarine shells an oil refinery near Santa Barbara, California, the first Axis bombs to hit American soil.

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

1945 : Eisenhower opens a large offensive in the Rhineland.

1945 : U.S. Marines plant an American flag atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima.

1946 : Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita is hanged in Manila, the Philippines, for war crimes.

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 : Mass innoculation begins as Salk’s polio vaccine is given to children for first time.

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.

1967 : American troops begin the largest offensive of the war, near the Cambodian border.

1972 : Black activist Angela Davis is released from jail where she was held for kidnapping , conspiracy and murder.

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

Born on February 23

1633 : Samuel Pepys, English diarist.

1685 : George F. Handel, German composer.

1743 : Meyer Amschel Rothschild, banker and founder of the Rothschild dynasty in Europe.

1868 : W.E.B. [William Edward Burghardt] Du Bois, U.S. historian and civil rights leader, founder of what became the NAACP.

1883 : Victor Fleming, film director (The Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind)

1899 : Erich Kastner, German poet, novelist and children’s author (Emil and the Detectives).

1904 : William Shirer, CBS broadcaster and author (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich).

1924 : Allan MacLeod Cormack, physicist, developed the CAT scan.