February 22
1819
After years of negotiations, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams achieved a diplomatic coup when he and the Spanish minister Do Luis de Onis signed the Florida Purchase Treaty, which officially put Florida into U.S. hands at no cost beyond the U.S. assumption of some $5 million of claims by U.S. citizens against Spain. Formal U.S. occupation began in 1821, and General Andrew Jackson, the hero of the War of 1812, was appointed military governor. Florida was organized as a U.S. territory in 1822 and was admitted into the Union as a slave state in 1845.
1959
Lee Petty, father of fellow NASCAR legend Richard Petty, defeated Johnny Beauchamp in a photo finish at the just-opened Daytona International Speedway in Florida to win the first-ever Daytona 500. The race was so close that Beauchamp was initially named the winner by William France, the owner of the track and head of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR). However, Petty challenged the results and three days later, with the assistance of news photographs, he was officially named the champ. There was speculation that France declared Beauchamp the winner in order to intentionally stir up controversy and generate publicity for his new racetrack.
1980
Known as the "Miracle on Ice," the underdog U.S. hockey team, made up of college players, defeated the four-time defending gold-medal winning Soviet team at the XIII Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid, New York. The Soviet squad, previously regarded as the finest in the world, fell to the youthful American team 4-3 before a frenzied crowd of 10,000 spectators. Two days later, the Americans defeated Finland 4-2 to clinch the hockey gold. The win is one of the most dramatic upsets in Olympic history and was later memorialized in a 2004 film, Miracle, starring Kurt Russell.
February 23
1940
Folk singer Woody Guthrie wrote one of his best-known songs, “This Land is Your Land.” The song reflected not only Guthrie’s support for the common folk, but also his deep love for his country. The verse celebrated the beauty and grandeur of America while the chorus drove home the populist sentiment that the nation belonged to all the people, not merely the rich and powerful. Guthrie died in 1967, having lived long enough to see his music inspire a whole new generation and “This Land is Your Land” become a rallying song for the civil rights movement.
1945
During the bloody Battle for Iwo Jima, U.S. Marines from the 3rd Platoon, E Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Regiment of the 5th Division take the crest of Mount Suribachi, the island’s highest peak and most strategic position, and raise the U.S. flag. Joe Rosenthal, a photographer with the Associated Press, took three photographs atop Suribachi. The first, which showed five Marines and one Navy corpsman struggling to hoist the heavy flagpole, became the most reproduced photograph in history and won him a Pulitzer Prize.
1980
21-year-old skating phenom Eric Heiden speed-skated into Olympic history when he won the 10,000-meter race at the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, setting a world record with his time of 14:28:13. Heiden would go onto win an unprecedented individual five gold medals at the games, the first to do so in Olympic history.
February 24
1803
The Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Marshall, decided the landmark case of William Marbury versus James Madison, Secretary of State of the United States and confirmed the legal principle of judicial review—the ability of the Supreme Court to limit Congressional power by declaring legislation unconstitutional—and, subsequently, positioned the judicial branch as equal to its partners in the American government: the legislative and executive branches.
1868
The U.S. House of Representatives voted 11 articles of impeachment against President Andrew Johnson, nine of which cite Johnson’s removal of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, a violation of the Tenure of Office Act. The House vote made President Johnson the first president to be impeached in U.S. history. His impeachment trial began in the Senate on March 13 under the direction of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase. The trial ended on May 26 with Johnson’s opponents narrowly failing to achieve the two-thirds majority necessary to convict him.
1988
The U.S. Supreme Court voted 8-0 to overturn the $200,000 settlement awarded to the Reverend Jerry Falwell for his emotional distress at being parodied in Hustler, a pornographic magazine. Falwell, a religious conservative and founder of the Moral Majority political advocacy group, sued Hustler and its publisher, Larry Flynt, for libel. Falwell won the lower court case, but Flynt appealed, leading to the Supreme Court’s hearing the case because of its constitutional implications. The Supreme Court ruled that, although in poor taste, Hustler‘s parody fell within the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of speech and the press.
February 25
1836
Samuel Colt received US patent number 138 for a “revolving gun," later known as 9430X. His improvement in fire-arm design allowed a gun to be fired multiple times without reloading and helped usher in the era of the multi-shot pistol, effectively replacing the single shot devices of the day. It marked the transition from single- and double-barrel flintlock pistols to a multiple shot pistol. This patent gave us the famous saying: “God made man, but Samuel Colt made man equal."
1964
22-year-old Cassius Clay shocked the odds-makers by dethroning world heavyweight boxing champ Sonny Liston in a seventh-round technical knockout. The dreaded Liston, who had twice demolished former champ Floyd Patterson in one round, was an 8-to-1 favorite. However, Clay predicted victory, boasting that he would “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” and knock out Liston in the eighth round. Muhammad Ali would go on to become one of the 20th century’s greatest sporting figures, as much for his social and political influence as his prowess in his chosen sport. At a White House ceremony in November 2005, Ali was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. On June 3, 2016, Ali passed away after a period of failing health.
1987
The NCAA suspended the Southern Methodist University football program for 1987 season for repeated rules violations, the most serious violation being the maintenance of a slush fund used for "under the table" payments to players and their families to entice them to come to SMU to play, but stopped short of imposing the so-called "death penalty." Still, the sanctions were the most severe levied by the NCAA against a major college football program. The sanctions crippled the school's football program for more than a decade. In its first season back, in 1989, SMU finished 2-9. The following two seasons, SMU won two games, and the program did not have another winning season until 1997.
February 26
1929
In a controversial move that inspired charges of eastern domination of the West, Congress established Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. Today, Grand Teton National Park encompasses 309,993 acres and lies at the heart of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, which is considered one of the few remaining, nearly intact, temperate ecosystems on Earth. Though initially hesitant to be part of the national park, Jackson Hole was eventually incorporated. Successful working ranches still exist, but the local economy is increasingly dependent on services provided to tourists and the wealthy owners of vacation homes.
1984
The last U.S. Marines sent to Lebanon as part of a multinational peacekeeping force left Beirut, the war-torn Lebanese capital where some 250 of the original 800 Marines lost their lives during the problem-plagued 18-month mission. During the mission on October 23, a Lebanese terrorist drove a truck packed with explosives into the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 U.S. military personnel. After the barracks bombing, many questioned whether President Ronald Reagan had a solid policy aim in Lebanon. In a national address on the night of October 23, President Reagan vowed to keep the Marines in Lebanon, but just four months later he announced the end of the American role in the peacekeeping force.
1993
At 12:18pm, a bomb exploded in the basement parking garage below the World Trade Center. The massive explosion killed six people and wounded more than 1,000. The bombing brought home the shocking new reality of radical Islamic terrorism as a global phenomenon that directly impacted the US and its citizens. The planned scale of the attack dwarfed previous terrorist plots, as the plot’s leader, Ramzi Yousef, later told the FBI he had hoped to topple one tower into the other, killing some 250,000 civilians. Tragically, the 1993 bombing foreshadowed the much larger attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, in which a different group of Muslim extremists would achieve at least part of Yousef’s horrific goal.
February 27
1827
A group of masked and costumed students danced through the streets of New Orleans, Louisiana, marking the beginning of the city’s famous Mardi Gras celebrations. The celebration of Carnival—or the weeks between Twelfth Night on January 6 and Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Christian period of Lent—spread from Rome across Europe and later to the Americas. Nowhere in the United States is Carnival celebrated as grandly as in New Orleans, famous for its over-the-top parades and parties for Mardi Gras (or Fat Tuesday), the last day of the Carnival season.
1922
In Washington, D.C., the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, providing for female suffrage, was unanimously declared constitutional by the eight members of the U.S. Supreme Court. The 19th Amendment, which stated that “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of sex,” was the product of over seven decades of meetings, petitions, and protests by women suffragists and their supporters.
2006
Baseball pioneer Effa Manley became the first woman elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Manley, who died in 1981, was a woman ahead of her time. In an era when few women were involved in sports management, Manley was the do-everything business manager for the Newark (New Jersey) Eagles of the Negro National League. In the 1930s and '40s, when she and her husband owned the Negro League team, she challenged fellow owners, who were all male. Later, she confronted Major League Baseball, pushing it to recognize Negro League players, who had been ignored by the Hall of Fame.
February 28
1861
With the region’s population booming because of the Pike’s Peak gold rush, Congress created the new Territory of Colorado. When the United States acquired it after the Mexican War ended in 1848, the land that would one day become Colorado was nearly unpopulated by Anglo settlers. Ute, Arapaho, Cheyenne, and other Native Americans had occupied the land for centuries, but the Europeans who had made sporadic appearances there since the 17th century never stayed for long. It was not until 1851 that the first permanent non-Indian settlement was established, in the San Luis Valley.
1982
The J. Paul Getty Museum became the most richly endowed museum on earth when it received a $1.2 billion bequest left to it by the late J. Paul Getty. The American oil billionaire died in 1976, but legal wrangling over his fortune by his children and ex-wives kept his will in probate until 1982. The $1 billion complex opened in December 1997. Fourteen years in the making, the Getty Center includes a large museum, a research institute and library, an art conservation institute, a digital information institute, an arts education institute, a museum management school, and a grant program center. The buildings were designed in a modernist style by American architect Richard Meier.
1983
The celebrated sitcom M*A*S*H bowed out after 11 seasons, airing a special two-and-a-half hour episode watched by 77 percent of the television viewing audience. It was the largest percentage ever to watch a single TV show up to that time. Set near Seoul, Korea, behind the American front lines during the Korean War, M*A*S*H was based on the 1968 novel by Richard Hooker and the 1970 film produced by 20th Century Fox and directed by Robert Altman. Its title came from the initials for the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, an isolated compound that received wounded soldiers and was staffed by the show’s cast of doctors and nurses.