This day in history...

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)

 

On February 25, 1939, the first "Anderson shelter" is erected in a family garden in Islington, a suburb of London. With war against Germany inevitable, in 1938 Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain entrusted Sir John Anderson with the assignment of preparing the citizenry for shelter against air raids. He commissioned the design and construction of the mass produced shelters, made of sheets of corrugated tin large enough to sleep six adults, and designed to be half buried in the ground for extra protection. By the time war broke out, the government had distributed about 1.5 million Anderson shelters, free to any family making less than £250 a year - families above that income paid £7 (about £550 in today's dollars). During the war another 2.1 million were distributed, many of which were designed to be erected indoors after the original version proved to be cold, damp and uncomfortable. The effectiveness of Anderson shelters is considered debatable, and despite government programs to have them removed after the war, thousands are still in place around London today.

 

On February 26, 1936, a group of officers in the Imperial Japanese Army launch a coup d'etat against their superiors and the Japanese government. Despite the overthrow of the Meiji (feudal) system of government in Japan 25 years earlier, the officer structure of the IJA remained split in factions stemming from the Meiji days. On the 26th, members of the "Imperial Way" faction led by General Sadao Araki (below) launched a coup against the "Control" faction, killing four members of the government and seizing the Imperial Palace, but failing to capture Prime Minister Keisuki Okada. They had about 1,500 soldiers backing them, but were vastly outnumbered, and the rebellion was put down in 3 days. Nineteen of the coup's leaders were executed, and their failure actually gave the military greater control of the Japanese government.


On February 26, 1935, Adolph Hitler formally orders the formation of the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force. This was Hitler's first blatant violation of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, which forbade Germany any sort of air force. In fact, the Nazis had established a program for training pilots in secret for several years. The Luftwaffe would be instrumental in Hitler's blitzkreig ("lightning war") tactics against its neighboring countries over the next few years. By the time it was disbanded in 1946, about 3.5 million Germans had served in the Luftwaffe, and their fighters recorded about 70,000 aerial victories over Allied aircraft over the course of WWII. Much of the construction on the Luftwaffe's planes was done by slave labor from concentration camps, which made Hermann Goring (below, who commanded the Luftwaffe for all but the final 3 months of the war) one of the most prominent Nazi prosecuted at the Nuremburg trials. (below right: a wing of Ju-87 "Stuka" dive bombers over Russia, 1943)


On February 26, 1975, the Superliner passenger car enters service for Amtrak. Amtrak had taken control of passenger rail service nationwide in 1971 with a fleet of about 1,200 cars from the independent services it had absorbed, most dating from the 1940's. The Superliner would be the last passenger rail car built by the famed Pullman Company, delivering 479 units from 1975 until 1996, 380 of which are still in service. The Superliner was built in 3 versions, sleepers, dining cars, and lounge cars with "observation" windows (seen from inside in right photo). The Superliners are mostly in use in the western US; they are too tall to transit tunnels on many eastern rail lines.

 

On February 28, 1947, the "228 Incident" in Taiwan triggers weeks of civil unrest and decades of martial law. The small island off the coast of China had been a Japanese colony for 50 years, until handed over to Chinese control in 1945 following Japan's surrender to end WWII. The island's citizens immediately found Chian Kai-Shek's provincial government to be oppressive; protests through the next two years escalated until a man was shot and killed by police on 2/27/47 during an incident sparked by an arrest over contraband cigarettes. On 2/28, a mob gathered at the island's Tobacco Monopoly Bureau (below), seizing and burning stock, while other protesters seized a local radio station and declared a national revolt. Over the next six weeks, the riot-suppressing military killed an unknown number of citizens; estimates range as high as 28,000 killed. The incident led to period of martial law in Taiwan known as the "White Terror"; it was not rescinded until 1987.


On February 28, 1966, NASA Project Gemini astronauts Elliott See and Charlie Bassett (below) are killed attempting to land a training jet in poor weather at the McDonnell Aircraft factory near St. Louis. See and Bassett were visiting the plant to train in the capsule that was to take them into orbit on the Gemini 9 mission. The crash investigation revealed See overshot the runway emerging from heavy cloud cover; while circling around for a second landing attempt, the T-38 Talon jet clipped the roof of one of the plant buildings and crashed. Seventeen McDonnell employees were slightly injured by falling debris. NASA's reshuffling of Project Gemini crew assignments following the loss of See and Bassett put Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin in the capsule for Gemini 12. Without that flight experience, Aldrin likely would not have been assigned to Apollo 11, allowing him to be the second man to walk on the moon.


On February 28, 1959, the Los Angeles Rams trade 8 players and a future draft pick to the Chicago Cardinals for All-Pro running back Ollie Matson. A former All American and two-time medalist at the 1952 Olympics, Matson was the 3rd selection overall in the 1952 draft, won the Rookie of the Year award the following season, and was a 1950's all-decade selection despite missing a year while serving in the Army. The nine-for-one trade was at the time, and remains to this day, the second largest trade for a single player in NFL history, the Rams having given up 11 players for LB/OL Les Richter in 1952. Matson rushed for nearly 900 yards in his first season with LA but his production fell off significantly after that. Still, his 12,799 all purpose yards at the time of his retirement in 1966 was second only to Jim Brown. Matson was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1972. Following his death in 1980, his family donated his brain to medical research; the diagnosis was one of the most severe cases of Stage 4 CTE seen to that point.

 

On March 3, 1776, 200 Continental Marines come ashore and seize the two British forts at Nassau in The Bahamas. It is the first amphibious assault in history by the organization that will later become the United States Marine Corps. Eleven months earlier (two days after Lexington and Concord), British forces had seized a cache of gunpowder in the Virginia Colonies. In February 1776, the Continental Congress authorized privateer Esek Johnson to begin patrolling the Virginia and Carolina coasts with a small fleet. Some historians believe they also secretly ordered Johnson to raid the Bahamas, where it was believed the confiscated gunpowder was taken. This Johnson did, the Marines going ashore and taking the gunpowder in the island's two forts, along with other military supplies.


On March 3, 1938 Aramco's (Arabian-American Oil Company) Dammam No. 7 strikes oil in the Al-Ahsa region of Saudi Arabia, not far from the Persian Gulf. As the name suggests, it was the 7th site drilled by the American-controlled operation, and after 6 dry wells over 4 years, Dammam 7 was a gusher, producing 1,500 barrels within 24 hours of the strike (March 4 photo below). Despite the cultural issues the resulting oil boom caused, as Aramco sent more and more foreign drillers into the region, the strike quickly gave Saudi Arabia financial independence. By the mid-70's, Saudi Arabia was the world's leading oil producer.


On March 3, 1913, Washington D.C. sees its first large organized protest march. On the day before President Woodrow Wilson's inauguation, somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 women descended on the capitol for the Woman Suffrage Procession. Suffragists and their supporters marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, pausing at the Treasury Building to perform a skit, before convening at Memorial Continental Hall for speechifying on behalf of women's right to vote. Crowds gathering to watch were generally unsupportive of the protesters, and capitol police were ineffective at protecting their right to march at first, before cavalry arrived to help keep order.