Which may also explain why he went to such lengths to talk about it for the rest of his life. His son's book says every year as the anniversary approached, his kids were coached to tell the reporters that started calling that he was away on a fishing trip.

On February 24, 1991, Operation Desert Storm, the effort to repel Iraqi forces from Kuwait, enters the ground offensive stage. The coalition has been conducting an air campaign for the past 6 weeks, and when the ground assault begins, its all over but the shouting. By days' end, 10,000 Iraqi troops are prisoners, and the Iraqi army in general is in full retreat. Kuwait will be liberated within four days.

On February 24, 1803, the Supreme Court affirms the legal princple of judicial review with its decision in the case of Marbury vs James Madison. William Marbury was a newly-appointed justice of the peace for Washington County, District of Columbia. He was one of a number of "midnight appointments" by lame duck John Adams in the final hours of his presidency. Many of these new appointments (not Marbury) were taking their seats in new courts created by the Judiciary Act of 1789. Incoming president Thomas Jefferson and his SecSate James Madison objected to the appointments. Most were removed from office when Congress repealed the JA in 1802, but this didn't affect Marbury. In his written decision, Chief Justice John Marshall would state that JA1789 was an unconstitutional extension of judiciary power into the realm of the executive. While Jefferson and Madison had no authority to unseat Marbury, he wrote, SCOTUS did, based on the principle that it had authority to decide which of two conflicting laws applied. Since JA1789 was unconstitutional, Marbury could not be seated.

On Febuary 24, 1988, its SCOTUS again, this time defending comic satire. The Rev. Jerry Falwell had sued Hustler magazine five years earlier, over a piece parodying Falwell’s first sexual experience as a drunken, incestuous, childhood encounter with his mother in an outhouse. Falwell, an important religious conservative and founder of the Moral Majority political advocacy group, sued Hustler and its publisher, Larry Flynt, for libel. Falwell won the case (and $200,000 in damages), but Flynt appealed, leading to the Supreme Court’s hearing the case because of its constitutional implications. The Supreme Court would unanimously overturn the lower court’s decision, ruling that, although in poor taste, Hustler‘s parody fell within the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of speech and the press.

On February 25, 1862, Congress passes the Legal Tender Act, authorizing the use of paper notes to pay the government’s bills. The Legal Tender Act allows the government to print $150 million in paper money that is not backed by a similar amount of gold and silver. (Paper money is already in use in the Confederacy) Many bankers and financial experts predict doom for the economy, as they believed there would be little confidence in the scheme. There are also misgivings in Congress, but the worries prove to be unfounded. The public accepts the paper notes, called greenbacks, and the economy continues to function. A second legal tender act is passed in 1863, and by the end of the war, nearly half a billion dollars in greenbacks are in circulation.


February 25, 1948 - Under pressure from the Czechoslovakian Communist Party, President Edvard Benes allows a communist-dominated government to be organized. Western observers decried the virtually bloodless communist coup as an example of Soviet expansion into Eastern Europe, although the USSR will not actually move on Czechoslovakia until 1968.

On February 25, 1964, 22-year-old Cassius Clay shocks 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.



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Wilder blames his poor performance on having to wear a 40 pound costume into the ring pre-fight. To quote @tirk , there are no words.

On February 26, 1993, shortly after noon, a terrorist bomb explodes in a parking garage of the World Trade Center in New York City, leaving a crater 60 feet wide and causing the collapse of several steel-reinforced concrete floors in the vicinity of the blast. Although the terrorist bomb failed to critically damage the main structure of the skyscrapers, six people were killed and more than 1,000 were injured. The building itself suffered more than $500 million in damage. Within days several radical Islamic fundamentalists were arrested, and 3 were convicted. By 1997, the number of convictions had grown to more than a dozen, with the suspects also linked to conspiracies to bomb the United Nations HQ and several other prominent landmarks.



On February 26, 1984, the last U.S. Marines sent to Lebanon as part of a multinational peacekeeping force leave Beirut, the war-torn capital of Lebanon. The U.S. element of the peacekeeping force sent into Lebanon in August, 1982, consisted of 800 Marines. The mission was problematic from the beginning, and completely deteriorated on October 23, 1983, when a Lebanese terrorist killed 241 U.S. servicemen, including 220 Marines, by driving an explosive-filled truck into the Marine barracks.

On February 26, 2012 in Samford, Florida, Trayvon Martin, a local teenager, is shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer in the Retreat at Twin Lakes gated community. Zimmerman claimed self-defense and was not arrested the night of the shooting, but after the story gained national attention and sparked a national debate about racial profiling and "stand your ground" laws, he was arrested and charged with second degree murder, but was acquitted.

February 27 is a relatively uneventful date in history, but here we go:

On February 27, 1827, Mardi Gras is celebrated for the the first time in New Orleans as a group of masked and costumed students dance through the streets on the day before Ash Wednesday. The revelers were attempting to recreate the celebrations they had experienced while studying in Paris. It will be another 30 years before the first celebration resembling a modern Mardi Gras parade, organized and presented by a secret society called the Mistick Krewe of Comus, will roll through the streets of New Orleans (Feb. 24, 1857, sorry I missed that one). Literally hundreds of "Krewes" have formed and disbanded in New Orleans since then; about 45 traditional parades rolled this year. Comus ceased parading in 1991, when the city council passed a non-discrimination ordinance for all social organizations requesting a parade permit. The Krewe still holds a traditional ball on Mardi Gras night.

On February 27, 1964, the Italian government announces that it is accepting suggestions on how to save the renowned Leaning Tower of Pisa from collapse. The top of the 180-foot tower was hanging 17 feet south of the base, and studies showed that the tilt was increasing by a fraction every year. Experts warned that the medieval building–one of Italy’s top tourist attractions–was in serious danger of toppling in an earthquake or storm. Proposals to save the Leaning Tower arrived in Pisa from all over the world, but it was not until 1999 that successful restorative work began. Engineers that year began a 2-year process of replacing the soft sand under the tower's north side that reduced the lean by about a foot and a half; its believed the effort will extend the tower's life by 300 years. (photo is dated 1890's)


On February 27, 1936, 20th Century Fox signs 7-year old Shirley Temple to a contract guaranteeing her $50,000 per film. Temple made her movie debut at age 4, appearing in a series of short films spoofing current movies called "Baby Burlesks." She hit stardom in a 1934 film called "Stand Up and Cheer,' and Fox gave her a 7-year contract. Temple's films were profitable despite the hardships of the Great Depression, and Fox made it worth her while with the 1936 deal. She continued to deliver box office gold throughout the decade, but she didn't age well with American film audiences, and Temple retired from films in 1950, at age 22 (she would make a brief run at TV in the late '50's before entering politics under her married name, Shirley Temple Black). Nearly 100 years after her movie debut, Shirley Temple is still the measuring stick for child stardom.