February 13
1542 - Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of King Henry VIII of England, was beheaded for adultery.
1633 - Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome for trial before the Inquisition, accused of defending Copernican theory that the Earth revolved around the sun instead of the other way around. (Galileo was found vehemently suspect of heresy and ended up being sentenced to a form of house arrest.)
1635 - The Boston Public Latin School, the first public school in what is now the United States, was founded.
1861 - Abraham Lincoln was officially declared winner of the 1860 presidential election as electors cast their ballots.
1866 - The gang that included Jesse James and Cole Younger committed their first bank robbery in Liberty, Missouri.
1920 - The League of Nations recognized the perpetual neutrality of Switzerland.
1935 - Bruno Hauptmann was found guilty of murder in the Lindbergh kidnapping case.
1939 - Justice Louis D. Brandeis retired from the U.S. Supreme Court. (He was succeeded by William O. Douglas.)
1945 - Allied planes began bombing the German city of Dresden during World War II.
1960 - France detonated its first atomic bomb.
1965 - During the Vietnam War, President Lyndon B. Johnson authorized Operation Rolling Thunder, an extended bombing campaign against the North Vietnamese.
1974 - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who won the 1970 Nobel Prize for literature, was deported from the Soviet Union.
1984 - Konstantin Chernenko succeeded the late Yuri Andropov as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee.
1991 - During Operation Desert Storm, allied warplanes destroyed an underground shelter in Baghdad that had been identified as a military command center; Iraqi officials said 500 civilians were killed.
1997 - The Dow Jones industrial average broke through the 7,000 barrier for the first time, closing at 7,022.44.
1998 - Dr. David Satcher was sworn in as the 16th Surgeon General of the United States during an Oval Office ceremony.
2000 - Charles Schulz's final "Peanuts" comic strip ran in Sunday newspapers, the day after the cartoonist died at age 77.
2002 - John Walker Lindh pleaded not guilty in federal court in Alexandria, Va., to conspiring to kill Americans and supporting the Taliban and terrorist organizations. (Lindh later pleaded guilty to lesser offenses and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.).
2005 - Ray Charles won eight posthumous Grammy awards for his final album, "Genius Loves Company."
2011 - Egypt's military leaders dissolved parliament, suspended the constitution and promised elections in moves cautiously welcomed by protesters who'd helped topple President Hosni Mubarak.
2012 - Washington became the seventh state to legalize same-sex marriage.
2013 - Beginning a long farewell to his flock, a weary Pope Benedict XVI celebrated his final public Mass as pontiff, presiding over Ash Wednesday services inside St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican.
2016 - Justice Antonin Scalia, the influential conservative and most provocative member of the U.S. Supreme Court, was found dead at a private residence in the Big Bend area of West Texas; he was 79. During a Republican presidential debate that evening in South Carolina, the candidates, with the exception of Jeb Bush, insisted that President Barack Obama should let his successor nominate Scalia’s replacement. (Obama nominated Merrick Garland; Senate Republicans refused to advance the nomination, which expired the following January.)
2020 - China reported a surge in deaths and infections from the coronavirus after changing the way the count was tallied; the number of confirmed cases neared 60,000 with more than 1,300 deaths. Japan announced the country’s first death from the coronavirus, a woman in her 80s, and said the number of cases on a quarantined cruise ship had reached 218.
2020 - Attorney General William Barr told ABC that President Donald Trump’s tweets about Justice Department prosecutors and open cases “make it impossible for me to do my job.”
Birthdays
24 - Michael Jackson Jr.
26 - Leona Kate Vaughan (actress)
26 - Nurys Mateo (reality star)
32 - Katie Volding (actress)
42 - Mena Suvari (actress)
42 - Natalie Stewart (singer)
44 - Randy Moss (football player)
44 - Ian Reed Kesler (actor)
46 - Katie Hopkins (reality star)
48 - Scott Thomas (country musician)
53 - Kelly Hu (actress)
54 - Carolyn Lawrence (actress)
55 - Freedom Williams (singer)
55 - Neal McDonough (actor)
60 - Henry Rollins (singer)
61 - Matt Salinger (actor)
70 - David Naughton (actor)
71 - Peter Gabriel (singer)
77 - Jerry Springer (talk show host)
77 - Stockard Channing (actress)
80 - Bo Svenson (actor)
87 - George Segal (actor)
88 - Kim Novak (actress)
=============================================
Today in Sports History - February 13
1920 - The National Negro Baseball League was organized.
1923 - "The Renaissance," the first black pro basketball team, was organized.
1937 - The NFL's Boston Redskins moved to Washington.
1965 - Sixteen-year-old Peggy Fleming won the ladies senior figure skating title at Lake Placid, New York.
1982 - Bryan Trottier (New York Islanders) scored five goals against the Philadelphia Flyers.
1983 - The World Boxing Council became the first to cut matches from 15 to 12 rounds.
1990 - Bryan Trottier (New York Islanders) scored his 500th career goal in the NHL.
2002 - The French judge was accused of throwing the pairs figure skating decision to the Russians at the Olympics.
2002 - Bill Simpson filed a defamation suit against NASCAR for blaming a seat belt made by Simpson Performance Products for the death of Dale Earnhardt a year before. Simpson said that all he wanted was an apology, but when NASCAR refused he filed the suit.
2008 - Seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens denied having taken performance-enhancing drugs in testimony before Congress.
1542 - Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of King Henry VIII of England, was beheaded for adultery.
1633 - Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome for trial before the Inquisition, accused of defending Copernican theory that the Earth revolved around the sun instead of the other way around. (Galileo was found vehemently suspect of heresy and ended up being sentenced to a form of house arrest.)
1635 - The Boston Public Latin School, the first public school in what is now the United States, was founded.
1861 - Abraham Lincoln was officially declared winner of the 1860 presidential election as electors cast their ballots.
1866 - The gang that included Jesse James and Cole Younger committed their first bank robbery in Liberty, Missouri.
1920 - The League of Nations recognized the perpetual neutrality of Switzerland.
1935 - Bruno Hauptmann was found guilty of murder in the Lindbergh kidnapping case.
1939 - Justice Louis D. Brandeis retired from the U.S. Supreme Court. (He was succeeded by William O. Douglas.)
1945 - Allied planes began bombing the German city of Dresden during World War II.
1960 - France detonated its first atomic bomb.
1965 - During the Vietnam War, President Lyndon B. Johnson authorized Operation Rolling Thunder, an extended bombing campaign against the North Vietnamese.
1974 - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who won the 1970 Nobel Prize for literature, was deported from the Soviet Union.
1984 - Konstantin Chernenko succeeded the late Yuri Andropov as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee.
1991 - During Operation Desert Storm, allied warplanes destroyed an underground shelter in Baghdad that had been identified as a military command center; Iraqi officials said 500 civilians were killed.
1997 - The Dow Jones industrial average broke through the 7,000 barrier for the first time, closing at 7,022.44.
1998 - Dr. David Satcher was sworn in as the 16th Surgeon General of the United States during an Oval Office ceremony.
2000 - Charles Schulz's final "Peanuts" comic strip ran in Sunday newspapers, the day after the cartoonist died at age 77.
2002 - John Walker Lindh pleaded not guilty in federal court in Alexandria, Va., to conspiring to kill Americans and supporting the Taliban and terrorist organizations. (Lindh later pleaded guilty to lesser offenses and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.).
2005 - Ray Charles won eight posthumous Grammy awards for his final album, "Genius Loves Company."
2011 - Egypt's military leaders dissolved parliament, suspended the constitution and promised elections in moves cautiously welcomed by protesters who'd helped topple President Hosni Mubarak.
2012 - Washington became the seventh state to legalize same-sex marriage.
2013 - Beginning a long farewell to his flock, a weary Pope Benedict XVI celebrated his final public Mass as pontiff, presiding over Ash Wednesday services inside St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican.
2016 - Justice Antonin Scalia, the influential conservative and most provocative member of the U.S. Supreme Court, was found dead at a private residence in the Big Bend area of West Texas; he was 79. During a Republican presidential debate that evening in South Carolina, the candidates, with the exception of Jeb Bush, insisted that President Barack Obama should let his successor nominate Scalia’s replacement. (Obama nominated Merrick Garland; Senate Republicans refused to advance the nomination, which expired the following January.)
2020 - China reported a surge in deaths and infections from the coronavirus after changing the way the count was tallied; the number of confirmed cases neared 60,000 with more than 1,300 deaths. Japan announced the country’s first death from the coronavirus, a woman in her 80s, and said the number of cases on a quarantined cruise ship had reached 218.
2020 - Attorney General William Barr told ABC that President Donald Trump’s tweets about Justice Department prosecutors and open cases “make it impossible for me to do my job.”
Birthdays
24 - Michael Jackson Jr.
26 - Leona Kate Vaughan (actress)
26 - Nurys Mateo (reality star)
32 - Katie Volding (actress)
42 - Mena Suvari (actress)
42 - Natalie Stewart (singer)
44 - Randy Moss (football player)
44 - Ian Reed Kesler (actor)
46 - Katie Hopkins (reality star)
48 - Scott Thomas (country musician)
53 - Kelly Hu (actress)
54 - Carolyn Lawrence (actress)
55 - Freedom Williams (singer)
55 - Neal McDonough (actor)
60 - Henry Rollins (singer)
61 - Matt Salinger (actor)
70 - David Naughton (actor)
71 - Peter Gabriel (singer)
77 - Jerry Springer (talk show host)
77 - Stockard Channing (actress)
80 - Bo Svenson (actor)
87 - George Segal (actor)
88 - Kim Novak (actress)
=============================================
Today in Sports History - February 13
1920 - The National Negro Baseball League was organized.
1923 - "The Renaissance," the first black pro basketball team, was organized.
1937 - The NFL's Boston Redskins moved to Washington.
1965 - Sixteen-year-old Peggy Fleming won the ladies senior figure skating title at Lake Placid, New York.
1982 - Bryan Trottier (New York Islanders) scored five goals against the Philadelphia Flyers.
1983 - The World Boxing Council became the first to cut matches from 15 to 12 rounds.
1990 - Bryan Trottier (New York Islanders) scored his 500th career goal in the NHL.
2002 - The French judge was accused of throwing the pairs figure skating decision to the Russians at the Olympics.
2002 - Bill Simpson filed a defamation suit against NASCAR for blaming a seat belt made by Simpson Performance Products for the death of Dale Earnhardt a year before. Simpson said that all he wanted was an apology, but when NASCAR refused he filed the suit.
2008 - Seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens denied having taken performance-enhancing drugs in testimony before Congress.