This Week in History – February 7-13
February 7, 1795 – The 11th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, limiting the powers of the Federal Judiciary over the states by prohibiting Federal lawsuits against individual states.
February 7, 1812 – British novelist Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England. He examined social woes through his works including: David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, and Nicholas Nickleby. In 1843, he wrote A Christmas Carol in just a few weeks, an enormously popular work even today.
February 7, 1818 – Abolitionist Frederick Douglass is born into slavery in Talbot County, MD. After escaping to freedom, he became the most prominent of the black abolitionists and eventually became the first black to hold high political office, as consul-general to the Republic of Haiti.
February 7, 1885 – American social critic and novelist Sinclair Lewis was born in Sauk Center, MN. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930. His works include: Main Street, Babbitt, and It Can’t Happen Here.
February 7, 1938 – After years of being closely watched by Nazi secret police, Lutheran pastor Martin Niemoller is put on trial because of his outspoken opposition to their policies. He was subsequently confined in a concentration camp for seven years, but he survived and went on to hold a leadership role in the World Council of Churches from 1948-1968.
February 8, 1910 – The Boy Scouts of America was founded by William Boyce in Washington, D.C., modeled after the British Boy Scouts.
February 9, 249 – On this date, Roman officials “seized that marvelous aged virgin Apolloinia, broke out all her teeth with blows on her jaws, and piling up a bonfire before the city, threatened to burn her alive if she refused to recite with them their blasphemous sayings. But she asked for a brief delay and without flinching leapt into the fire and was consumed.” (Dionysius).
February 9, 1881 – Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky dies. A devout Russian Orthodox Christian, the author of Crime and Punishment (1866) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880) once wrote “If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth, and that in reality the truth were outside of Christ, then I should prefer to remain with Christ rather than with the truth.
February 10, 60 – The Apostle Paul is shipwrecked at Malta.
February 10, 1763 – In the treaty ending the French and Indian War, France transfers to Britain the territory that later became Minnesota.
February 10, 1967 – The 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, clarifying the procedures for presidential succession in the event of the disability of a sitting president.
February 10, 1973 – During murderous cannibal Idi Amin’s brutal dictatorship, Christians are shot in a stadium in Kabale, Uganda, as he tried to turn the country into a Muslim state. About 400,000 Christians died, disappeared, or fled the country during his 8-year reign.
February 11, 660 B.C. – Celebrated in Japan as the founding date of the Japanese nation, which occurred with the accession to the throne of the first Emperor, Jimmu.
February 11, 55 – Tiberius Claudius Caesar Britannicus, heir to the Roman Emperorship, dies under mysterious circumstances in Rome. This clears the way for Nero to become Emperor.
February 11, 1809 – American inventor Robert Fulton patents the steamboat.
February 11, 1847 – American inventor Thomas Edison was born in Milan, OH. Throughout his lifetime he acquired over 1,200 patents including the incandescent bulb, phonograph, and movie camera. Best known for his quote, “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”
February 11, 1888 – The Town and Country Club is founded in St. Paul. First located on the shores of Lake Como, in 1891 the club would move to its present location near the Marshall Avenue Bridge. A golf course, originally tomato cans sunk in a pasture, is set up in 1893, and it is now the second oldest course in the country.
February 11, 1891 – The Duluth, Missabe and Northern Railroad is established by the Merritt brothers to carry iron ore from the Mesabi Range to Lake Superior ports.
February 11, 1943 – U.S. General Eisenhower selected to command the allied armies in Europe.
February 11, 2011 – In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak “resigned” amid an Obama-backed military coup in league with terrorist group sponsor Muslim Brotherhood calling for his ouster. Mubarak had ruled Egypt for nearly 30 years. His successor, Mohamed Morsi, who ushered in “political Islam” and was elected amid reports of election fraud, was the victim of another Obama-backed coup in July, placing the army, not the people, in power. Simultaneously, the government began enacting laws to limit freedoms of assembly and expression. In 2019, it passed “constitutional” amendments to consolidate authoritarian rule, undermine the judiciary’s dwindling independence, and expand the military’s power to intervene in political life.
February 11, 2020 – Snow falls in the hot desert city of Baghdad, Iraq, for only the second time in a century. Global warming?
February 11, 2021 – President Joe Biden rescinds the national emergency order used by Donald Trump to fund the border wall with Mexico, facilitating the uncontrolled invasion of illegals into the U.S.
February 12, 1809 – Abraham Lincoln, the 16th U.S. President, was born near Hodgenville, KY. He led the nation through the tumultuous Civil War, freed the slaves, composed the Gettysburg Address, and established Thanksgiving.
February 12, 1895 – Minnesota is the first state to declare Abraham Lincoln’s birthday a legal holiday.
February 12, 1909 – National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) forms.
February 12, 1939 – More than 3,000 people (two-thirds of them children) escape death or serious injury when they rush out of the Amphitheatre in Duluth seconds before the steel-and-wood roof of the expansive sports arena collapses under the weight of snow during an intermission in the annual Duluth police department and Virginia (Minn.) fire department hockey game. The swift evacuation is credited to the fact that many spectators are in the front lobby at the time, as well as to the presence of most of the city’s police officers and the calmness of organist Leland McEwen, who remains at his post playing soothing music until the last moment.
February 12, 1988 – Famed restaurateur Gim Joe Huie dies in Duluth. Born in Guangdong province, China, in 1892, Huie first came to the city in 1909 and made it his American home while returning to the land of his birth for extended stays until the Communist government established control there in the late 1940s. In 1951 he opened Joe Huie’s Cafe, on Lake Avenue in Duluth, which for twenty-two years offered authentic Asian food at reasonable prices in a companionable atmosphere.
February 12, 1999 – The impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton in the U.S. Senate ended. With the whole world watching via television, Senators, during the final roll call, voted “guilty” or “not guilty.” Despite having been caught lying both to Congress and to the American people on national TV, for Article 1 (charging Clinton with perjury), the Democrat-controlled Senate voted not guilty. On Article 2 (charging Clinton with obstruction of justice) they split evenly, 50 for and 50 against. With the necessary two-thirds majority not achieved, Clinton was thus acquitted on both charges and served out the remainder of his term of office.
February 12, 1999 – Scientists warn about harmful impacts on health from genetically modified (GM) food.
February 13, 1635 – Boston Latin School, the first public (government-run, taxpayer-funded), school in America was established in Boston, MA.
February 13, 1892 – American artist Grant Wood was born near Anamosa, IA, best known for his painting American Gothic featuring a farm couple.
February 13, 1909 – President Theodore Roosevelt establishes Superior National Forest.
February 13, 1945 – During World War II in Europe, British and American planes began massive bombing raids on Dresden, Germany. A four-day firestorm erupted that was visible for 200 miles and engulfed the city, killing an estimated 35,000 Germans.
February 13, 2021 – After doing little else for 4 years than trying to remove a duly-elected president, congressional Democrats fail again in a second Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump, who is acquitted of inciting an “insurrection.”
February 13, 2021 – Archaeologists announce discovery of oldest known beer factory in Abydos, Egypt, from early Dynastic period 3150 B.C.-2613 B.C.