On February 14, 1876, Elisha Gray applies for a patent for his telephone device. But he's beaten to the punch; just a few hours earlier, Alexander Graham Bell files for a patent on a very similar invention. In addition to the same day filings, the two applications have a design similarity; use of a "liquid transmitter." Despite US Patent Office records that show Bell's application to be the fifth filed that day and Gray's to be the 39th, some scholars maintain Gray filed first. They also believe Bell stole the liquid transmitter idea from Gray (they offer the drawing seen below, that gray made of the concept, dated 3 days before the application filing). The same day filings triggered a court inquiry that went in favor of Bell, who was granted his patent a month later. The debate continues in some scholarly circles to this day. Gray would receive 70 patents in his lifetime, including a sound generator he developed the same year that is considered the model for the modern music synthesizer. On February 14, 1912, the Skipjack and the Sturgeon, the US Navy's first diesel-powered submarines, are commissioned. They would be the only 2 entries of the Navy's "E Class" of subs, and other than their engines, were little different from the previous D Class, which were gasoline powered. The two subs saw little action in the First World War; the Skipjack made combat patrols in the vicinity of the Azores but never engaged the enemy, while the Sturgeon was assigned as a training boat. The Skipjack (below) is also noteworthy in that her first commander was Lt. Chester Nimitz, the first of 4 submarines he would command during his rise to Fleet Admiral. Both subs were decommissioned and scrapped in 1922. On February 14, 1778, at Quiberon Bay, France, the French ship-of-the-line Robuste, commanded by Admiral Toussaint-Guillaume Picquet de la Motte, offers a 9-gun salute to the USS Ranger, commanded by John Paul Jones. It is considered the first time a foreign power formally recognized the Stars and Stripes. On February 14, 1975, Rush releases its second album, Fly By Night. It is the band's first album with Neil Peart as drummer (replacing John Rutsey) and lyricist, and is also considered the band's first progressive rock album, the first, self-titled album being considered hard rock. Peart incorporated his love of sci-fi literature into his lyrics; most Rush fans know the final track of side 1, "By Tor and the Snow Dog" (at about 8 minutes, their first of many compositions of exaggerated length) as a sci-fi romp that actually came from Peart watching light technician Howard Ungerleider's two dogs - named "Biter" and "Snow Dog" - play fighting. The lyrics ends with Snow Dog winning the battle while By Tor "retreats to hell". The song itself ends with Neil fanning a set of wind chimes; discs of the album's first release had a locked groove at the end, so the chimes never stop (until the listener manually lifted the tone arm), signifying By Tor will one day return. ("By Tor and the Snow Dog", from 1976's live All The World's A Stage album)
On February 17, 1864, the Confederate submarine CSS H.L. Hunley sinks the Federal sloop USS Housatonic, part of the Union blockade of Charleston (SC) Harbor. It is the first time a submarine sinks a surface vessel in combat, though there's an asterisk to the feat; the Hunley was not completely submerged when it rammed the Housatonic. Also, the Hunley did not survive the attack. The Hunley successfully used its primary weapon, a "spar torpedo," which was an explosive charge with a contact fuse at the end of a 22-foot long pole mounted to the sub's bow. The Hunley disappeared immediately after the attack; studies of her wreck (discovered in 2008) suggest she was fatally damaged by her own torpedo. On February 17, 1913, the International Exhibition of Modern Art opens at NYC's 69th Regiment Armory. Also known as the Armory Show, the month-long exhibit featured the works of more than 300 avant-guarde American and European artists, including many nude subjects not previously seen in America due to morality laws. Works such as Matisse's Blue Nude, Kirchner's Naked Playing People, and the most famous work displayed, Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase (below right, which one critic compared to "an explosion in a shingles factory"), were criticized and mocked by some, including President Teddy Roosevelt ("that's not art!"), but in general, were well-received by the American audience. The show, which was brought to Chicago and Boston after the New York exhibition, influenced many of America's top artists of the early 20th century.
On February 19, 1976, President Gerald Ford issues Proclamation 4417, "Confirming the Termination of the Executive Order Authorizing Japanese-American Internment During World War II." It is the official end of President Franklin Roosevelt's EO 9066 (signed Feb. 19, 1942), which sent about 110,000 people of Japanese descent (about two-thirds of whom were American citizens) living on America's west coast into "relocation centers" for the duration of the war. Roosevelt "suspended" 9066 in 1944, and efforts to compensate internees during the Truman and Nixon years were not met with enthusiasm. The issue arose again shortly after Ford took office in 1975, and it was eventually agreed that an EO overturning 9066 might subject the government to legal obligations, leading to the Proclamation instead. Presidents Carter and Reagan would take the matter further, with Reagan finally authorizing monetary compensation to the internment survivors. On February 19, 1978, Egypt disastrously takes matters into its own hands. A day earlier, two gunmen raided a convention taking place in Nicosia, Cyprus, taking 16 Arab hostages and killing an Egyptian newspaper editor who was a close friend of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. The gunmen asked the Cyprian government for and received transportation to Nicosia's Larnaca International Airport, where they were given a commercial jet. They took off but, after being denied entry to three neighboring countries, returned to Larnaca. Sadat was angry with the turn of events and dispatched a 60-man special force by air to Larnaca, telling Cyprus only that "people were on the way to help." As the Egyptians advanced on the jet, which was by now surrounded by Cypriot special forces, who gave the Egyptians two verbal warnings before opening fire on them. 15 Egyptians were killed and 15 more wounded, and their transport aircraft destroyed (below). All of this happened after - unknown to Sadat - the Cyprians had negotiated the gunmen's surrender. They received life sentences, but the incident led to Cyprus severing its diplomatic ties with Egypt until Sadat's death in 1981. On the morning of February 19, 1980, Robert "Bon" Scott, lead singer and lyricist for the Australian rock band AC/DC, is found dead in his car outside his London apartment. He was 33 years old. The official coroner's report listed Scott's cause of death as "acute alcohol poisoning"; Scott had been out with friends the night before, who in subsequent interviews stated that Scott was not drunk when they parted. Some speculate his death may have come from an accidental heroin overdose. Scott had been singing for various local bands for about 10 years before joining AC/DC - who had formed a year earlier - in 1974. They earned a European following but didn't hit it big in America until their album Highway to Hell reached number 20 on the rock album charts in 1979. The band considered breaking up after Scott's death, but eventually brought in English vocalist Brian Johnson to replace him. In 2004, "Classic Rock" magazine named Scott the greatest frontman of all time.
On February 20, 1944, the American Army Air Force and British Royal Air Force commence "The Big Week." By the summer of 1943, the German Luftwaffe had built up a large enough inventory of fighter planes that they could overwhelm the defensive capabilities of American B-17 and B-24 bombers, while intelligence indicated that German factories were capable of replenishing the Luftwaffe's entire fighter inventory in a month. In that summer, USAAF 8th Air Force strategists began to develop Operation Argument, the total destruction of Germany's air defense capabilities. The RAF was reluctant to participate, but eventually agreed, and from Feb. 20-25, 1944, the combined air forces launched 19 daylight and 6 nighttime attacks on German aircraft factories. Their escorts, meanwhile, changed their defensive tactics, venturing away from the formations and forcing the German fighters to engage. The attacks cost the Allies more than 350 heavy bombers, while destroying about 260 German fighters in the air, but the success of the bombing convinced the Allies that air attacks on Berlin itself were feasible. (B-24's (left) and B-17's over German targets during "The Big Week.") On February 20, 1959, Seattle's Temple de Hirsch hosts a dance in its Jaffe Room with an unnamed local band providing music. The band was debuting a new guitar player that night, a 16-year old who didn't read music and was in the process of teaching himself to play...he didn't even know any chords and just picked single notes along with the rhythm. But he had a tendency to show off, so much so that the band fired him during their break between sets. To make the evening complete, the kid stormed out and left his guitar backstage, and when he returned the following day, found it had been stolen. It was a very inauspicious professional debut for Jimi Hendrix, to say the least.
On February 21, 1975, former U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell, and former White House staffers H.R. Haldeman and John Erlichman (L-R in photos), are sentenced to prison. They were perhaps the most noteworthy figures in the Watergate Scandal, in which members of President Richard Nixon's re-election committee broke into and planted listening devices in the Democratic Party's national headquarters in Washington's Watergate Hotel. A massive effort followed to cover up the crimes, involving Nixon himself, leading to his resignation. Mitchell, who had resigned as AG to lead Nixon's re-election campaign, served 19 months of a 1-4 year prison sentence for perjury before being released for medical reasons. Haldeman, Nixon's White House Chief of Staff, and Erlichman, White House Advisor for Domestic Affairs, were charged with conspiracy to the burglary, obstruction of justice and perjury, and served their full 18 month sentences. In all, 69 people were charged in the Watergate scandal, and 48 convicted. On February 21, 1947, Edwin Land gives the first demonstration of his "instant camera" to the Optical Society of America. Land developed the filters that would "polarize" light and reproduce it on film while studying optics as a student at Harvard. He went into business with one of his professors in 1932, eventually naming the business the Polaroid Corporation, after the name he gave the film he had created. Land conceived the idea of a camera that would self-develop photos in one minute during a vacation, when his daughter asked why he couldn't show her the photograph he had just taken. The "Land Camera" (Model 95 shown below) followed; the first production run of 57 cameras sold out the day they went into the store. Land ran the Polaroid Corp. until 1981. At its peak, Polaroid showed $3 billion in revenues in 1991 (the year of Land's death) with instant cameras as its staple product, but the development of digital photo technology made the Polaroid obsolete, and the company went defunct in 2002. On February 21, 1918, Incas, the last known Carolina parakeet, dies in captivity in the Cincinnati Zoo. One of only 3 parrot species native to the United States, the Carolina was indigenous to the Eastern, Midwest and Plains states; a subspecies was native to Louisiana only. Zoologists first noticed the Carolina was becoming rare in the mid 1800's, and the last known sighting in the wild came in 1910. Incas, ironically, inhabited the same cage where Martha, the last known passenger pigeon, had died in 1914. The Carolina was officially declared extinct in 1939, the official cause listed as deforestation. (below, a 1910 photo of a captive Carolina (not Incas) and a John J. Audubon illustration)
