This day in history...

On February 13, 1861, Colonel Bernard J.D. Irwin, an assistant surgeon with the U.S. Army in the Arizona Territory, volunteers to lead a platoon on a 100-mile trek to relieve a 60-man force under siege by Apache Indians led by Cochise. Irwin and his small band complete the journey the next day, and he strategically places his men to deceive Cochise into believing he is facing a much larger force. Cochise withdraws, taking with him a young boy they had kidnapped during the siege. Now with a force of more than 70 at his command, Irwin pursues Cochise and rescues the boy. A year later, Congress authorized creation of the Medal of Honor. When Irwin retired from the Army in 1894, he was awarded the Medal for his actions against Cochise. The backdating of the award makes Irwin officially the first-ever Medal of Honor winner.


On February 13, 1542, Catherine Howard, fifth wife of King Henry VIII is executed for adultury. Catherine's exact birth date is unknown, and she was anywhere between 15 and 19 years old when she married Henry in 1540. She had been a lady-in-waiting to Anne of Cleaves (wife number 4), and may have already been romantically involved with one of Henry's favorite courtiers, Thomas Culpeper, when she married Henry. They were found out when a letter from Catherine to Thomas fell into Henry's hands, and he stripped her of her royal titles 11/23/41. Culpeper would place his head on the chopping block two weeks later, to be followed later by Catherine.


On February 13, 1954, Furman University basketball star Frank Selvy scores 100 points in the Paladins' 149-95 win over Newberry College. It is a contrived event: Selvy had led the nation in scoring as a junior and was poised to do so again as a senior. As the season's end neared, Coach Lyles Alley designated the Newberry game "Frank Selvy Night" to honor the small school's greatest player ever. It would be the first ever live basketball TV broadcast in the state of South Carolina, and his family would make a 6 hour drive from Corbin, Ky to see Frank play (it was the first time his mother saw him play in college). With all of that background, Alley's pregame instructions to the team were simple; Frank is shooting tonight, get the ball to Frank. Selvy obliged by hitting 41 of 66 field goals (no 3-point line then) and 18 of 22 free throws. The 100th point came on a shot from half court at the buzzer. It remains the only 100-point night in NCAA Division I history. Selvy would be the first pick in the NBA draft that summer, and after a short pro career, returned to Furman as a coach in the '60's.
Frank Selvy scores 100 for Furman - YouTube

 

On February 14, 1886, the first trainload of oranges is shipped east from Los Angeles. Orange trees were introduced to California by Spanish missionaries in the 1760's, but the only commercial interest for the next century was from western mining settlements. The introduction of refrigerated rail cars, and the first rail lines into LA finally made commercial shipments to the east possible, and the rest of the country gobbled up what was previously a rare, expensive treat. LA orange growers soon launched a nationwide advertise campaign promoting the healthy goodness of the fruit (their co-op used several names before settling on "Sunkist") and the resulting demand is one of the main reasons Los Angeles boomed from 11,000 residents in 1886 to half a million by 1920.


On February 14, 1989, Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issues a fatwa (a judgment from a religious scholar) against British-American novelist Salman Rushdie, calling on "all brave Muslims" to kill Rushdie and his publishers. Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses brought about Khomeini's ire. The novel contained a number of mocking references to Islam and the prophet Muhammad, and featured a comic character resembling Khomeini himself. Many Muslim clerics had already condemned the novel, and book burnings had taken place, but Khomeini's pronouncement brought the controversy to new heights. The nature of a fatwa is that it can only be repealed by the scholar who issued it. Khomeini died just a few months later, and as such, Rushdie has lived (resident of lower Manhattan since 2000) with a death sentence for the last 32 years.


On February 14, 1990 at an altitude of about 3.7 billion miles, Voyager 1 photographs the Earth. Launched in 1977, Voyagers 1 & 2 were tasked with taking a series of photographs of our Solar System from its outer reaches. Having cleared Neptune's orbit in early 1990, the Voyagers begin relaying a series of images now known as the "Family Portrait" of our Solar System. The photo of the earth, the "Pale Blue Dot (the title is from Carl Sagan's book of the same name)" shows our home as barely a pixel in size. It is the farthest away that a recognizable image of Earth has been captured. Voyager 1 continues its journey today, having cleared the Sun's magnetic field in 2012, and is the farthest-most man made object in interstellar space.

 

On February 15, 1950, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China - the world's two largest Communist nations - announce a mutual aid and defense agreement. PRC Premier Zhou En-lai would proudly pronounce that the agreement would make the two nations "impossible to defeat." Western analysts declared that the agreement was proof that communism was in fact a global monolith, with Moscow calling the shots for all communist governments. But not all was as peachy as it would have seemed - before the decade was over, PRC party chairman Mao Zedong would state that the U.S.S.R. was allying itself with the U.S. to overturn the Chinese revolution.


On February 15, 1961, a commercial airline crash in Belgium kills all 74 people on board, including all 18 members of the U.S. Figure Skating Team. The team was on the way to the World Championships in Prague, Czechoslovakia. The cause of the crash was never determined. The dead included 16-year old Laurence Owen, the U.S. Women's national champion (who had been featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated just two days before), as well as the Men's champion, the Pairs champions (including Laurence's sister Maribel) and the Ice Dancing champions. The World Championships were cancelled in the team's memory.


On February 15, 1903, Brooklyn toy maker Morris Michtom places two stuffed bears in his store window, along with a sign: Teddy bears for sale. Earlier, Michtom had petitioned U.S. President Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt for permission to use the name, and Roosevelt had agreed. The name was inspired by a Washington Post editorial cartoon depicting Roosevelt - an avid hunter and conservationalist - refusing to shoot a helpless bear cub. The cartoon was based on an event involving TR on a hunt in Mississippi in which he either spared a sick and aging bear or shot it out of sympathy - no one ever concluded which was true. Michtom's "Teddy bears" became so popular that he co-founded the Ideal Toy and Novelty Company to mass produce the toy. By the time of Michtom's death in 1938, Ideal was the largest manufacturer of dolls in the U.S.

 

On February 16, 1804, a band of volunteers led by Lt. Stephen Decatur board and burn the USS Philadelphia in Tripoli Harbor. The U.S. had been at war with the Barbary States (a loose coalition of 4 North African Ottoman states that sponsored piracy in the Med Sea), for about 3 years. It had been mostly a war of nuisance until October of '03 when the pirates captured the Philadelphia, a 36-gun frigate, after it had run aground off Tripoli. Rather than see the Philadelphia repaired and turned pirate ship, Commodore Edward Preble authorized Decatur to assemble a volunteer crew and destroy her. Disguised as Maltese sailors and using a small British ketch, Decatur and his men boarded the Philadelphia, overpowered its captors and set it ablaze. England's Lord Horatio Nelson would call the operation "the most daring act of the age."


On February 16, 1878, Congress passes the Brand-Allison Act, authorizing the minting of silver dollar coins as legal tender. Congress had approved a gold standard - demonetizing silver - just 5 years earlier. The result was a financial panic and mini-depression that spilled into Europe as well as North America, and led for a call to return to a bimetalized (currency based on the value of two metals) economy. The Brand-Allison Act called for the Treasury to buy a small amount of silver (no more than $4 million annually) from U.S. mines for minting coins. The bill was vetoed by President Hayes but Congress would override. The marketplace, however, continued to favor gold over silver, and Brand-Allison was repealed in 1893.


On February 16, 2006, the US Army decommissions the 212th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, bringing the MASH era of combat medicine to an end. Following WWII, the Army recognized the need for getting wounded from the battlefield and onto an operating table within an hour of being wounded. Several prominent doctors, including pioneering heart surgeon Michael DeBakey, had a hand in designing the first MASH units that operated during the Korean Conflict. During the course of the conflict, 97% of soldiers treated by MASH units survived. The operating parameters of the MASH hospitals did not fit the conditions of the Vietnam War, though they were deployed successfully in Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom. Improvements in transporting wounded from the battlefield has led to the evolution of the MASH concept into the Combat Support Hospital, larger and less mobile, but operating further from the front lines. (photo shows surgeons in action at the 8209th MASH in Korea, 1952, operating less than 20 miles from the lines)

 

According to the Library of Congress website "to the shores of Tripoli" is a reference to the Barbary Wars in general, not necessarily the Philadelphia event. Maybe an expert on Marine Corps lore might say different.

 

Got with my brother, a retired E-8. He believes "to the shores of Tripoli" refers to the Battle of Derne, a year later. That victory represented the first time the Stars and Stripes was raised over an Old World territory, and was the Corps' first victory on foreign soil.