Feb. 14, 1912 Arizona became the 48th U.S. state as President William Howard Taft signed a proclamation.
1778 The American ship Ranger carried the recently adopted Stars and Stripes to a foreign port for the first time as it arrived in France.
1859 Oregon was admitted as the 33rd U.S. state.
1862 Confederate President Jefferson Davis signed a proclamation making Arizona a Confederate territory.
1876 Inventors Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray applied separately for patents related to the telephone. (The Supreme Court eventually ruled Bell the rightful inventor.)
1895 Oscar Wilde's final play, "The Importance of Being Earnest," opened in London.
1903 The Department of Commerce and Labor was established. (It was divided into separate departments in 1913.)
1920 The League of Women Voters was established in Chicago.
1929 The "St. Valentine's Day Massacre" took place in a Chicago garage as seven rivals of Al Capone's gang were gunned down.
1949 Israel's Knesset convened for the first time.
1979 Adolph Dubs, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, was kidnapped in Kabul by Muslim extremists and killed in a shootout between his abductors and police.
1989 Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini called on Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie, author of "The Satanic Verses," a novel condemned as blasphemous.
Ten years ago Enron executive Sherron Watkins told a House subcommittee it was common knowledge at the company that partnerships were used improperly to hide debt and inflate profits.
Five years ago ConAgra recalled all Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter made at a Georgia plant because of a salmonella outbreak.
One year ago The TV game show "Jeopardy!" aired the first of three episodes pitting human players Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings against an IBM computer named "Watson." (Watson ended up winning with a cumulative total of $77,147, compared with $24,000 for Jennings and $21,600 for Rutter.)
Thought for today "We are effectively destroying ourselves by violence masquerading as love." — R.D. Laing, Scottish psychiatrist (1927-1989)
The Associated Press
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