On This Day: February 20 (original) (raw)
Updated February 20, 2014, 6:06 pm
On Feb. 20, 1962, astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth as he flew aboard the Friendship 7 Mercury capsule.
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On Feb. 20, 1902, Ansel Adams, the photographer noted for his landscapes of the American West, was born. Following his death on April 22, 1984, his obituary appeared in The Times.
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| 1792 | President George Washington signed an act creating the U.S. Post Office. |
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| 1809 | The Supreme Court ruled that the power of the federal government is greater than that of any individual state. |
| 1839 | Congress prohibited dueling in the District of Columbia. |
| 1862 | William Wallace Lincoln, the 11-year-old son of President Abraham Lincoln and first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, died at the White House, apparently of typhoid fever. |
| 1895 | Abolitionist Frederick Douglass died. |
| 1938 | British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden resigned in protest over Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's decision to negotiate with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. |
| 1944 | During World War II, U.S. bombers began raiding German aircraft manufacturing centers in a series of attacks that became known as "Big Week." |
| 1965 | The Ranger 8 spacecraft crashed on the moon after sending back thousands of pictures of the lunar surface. |
| 1998 | American Tara Lipinski became at age 15 the youngest gold medalist in Winter Olympics history when she won the ladies' figure skating title at Nagano, Japan. |
| 2003 | Fire broke out during a rock concert at a nightclub in West Warwick, R.I., killing 100 people and injuring about 200 others. |
Historic Birthdays
Ansel Adams 2/20/1902 - 4/22/1984 American photographer.Go to obituary »
| 92 | Mary Garden 2/20/1874 - 1/3/1967 Scottish-bn. American opera singer |
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| 60 | Georges Bernanos 2/20/1888 - 7/5/1948 French novelist and polemical writer |
| 53 | Jimmy Yancey 2/20/1898 - 9/17/1951 American blues pianist |
| 93 | Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney 2/20/1899 - 12/13/1992 American businessman |
| 81 | Rene Dubos 2/20/1901 - 2/20/1982 French-born American microbiologist, environmentalist and author |
| 73 | Louis Kahn 2/20/1901 - 3/17/1974 American architect |
| 76 | Aleksey Kosygin 2/20/1904 - 12/18/1980 Russian statesman and premier of the Soviet Union (1964-80) |
| 82 | Konstantin Sergeyev 2/20/1910 - 4/1/1992 Russian ballet dancer, director, and choreographer |