Feb. 23, 1942 The first shelling of the U.S. mainland in World War II occurred as a Japanese sub fired on an oil refinery near Santa Barbara, Calif., causing little damage.
1685 Composer George Frideric Handel was born in Germany.
1836 The Alamo siege began in San Antonio.
1848 The sixth president of the United States, John Quincy Adams, died in Washington at age 80.
1861 President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrived secretly in Washington to take office, following word of a possible assassination plot in Baltimore.
1870 Mississippi was readmitted to the Union.
1927 President Calvin Coolidge signed a bill creating the Federal Radio Commission, forerunner of the Federal Communications Commission.
1945 In World War II, Marines on Iwo Jima captured Mount Suribachi.
1954 The first mass inoculation of kids against polio with the Salk vaccine began in Pittsburgh.
1965 Film comedian Stan Laurel, 74, died in Santa Monica, Calif.
1970 Guyana became a republic within the Commonwealth of Nations.
1981 An attempted coup began in Spain as 200 members of the Civil Guard invaded Parliament, taking lawmakers hostage. (The attempt collapsed 18 hours later.)
10 years ago Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt was kidnapped by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. (She was rescued along with 14 other hostages in July 2008.)
Five years ago A Mississippi grand jury refused to bring new charges in the 1955 slaying of Emmett Till, a black teen who was shot after whistling at a white woman; it declined to indict the woman, Carolyn Bryant Donham, for manslaughter. Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport became the first in the U.S. to begin testing new X-ray screening technology that could see through people's clothes.
One year ago In a policy reversal, the Obama administration said it would no longer defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, a law banning recognition of same-sex marriage.
Thought for today "Men are more often bribed by their loyalties and ambitions than by money." — Robert H. Jackson, U.S. Supreme Court Justice (1892-1954)
The Associated Press
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