Featured Collections: February

772 Adrian I begins his reign as Catholic Pope

1653 New Amsterdam becomes a city (later renamed New York)

1944 World War II: United States troops capture the Marshall Islands.

1866 Mary Baker Eddy cures her injuries by opening a bible

1963 Soviet lunar probe failure

1952 Queen Elizabeth II succeeds King George VI to the British throne and proclaimed Queen of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms including Canada, Australia and New Zealand

1973 US Senate creates Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities

1948 5th Winter Olympic games close at St Moritz, Switzerland

1861 Tennessee votes against secession (US Civil War)

1870 YWCA (Young Women's Christian Association) forms (NYC)

1970 Japan becomes 4th nation to put a satellite (Osumi) in orbit

1912 China adopts Gregorian calendar

1925 US Congress makes Supreme Court appeal more difficult

1949 1st session of Knesset (Jerusalem Israel)

1972 Sound recordings are granted U.S. federal copyright protection for the first time.

1840 American Charles Wilkes discovers Shackleton Ice Shelf, Antarctica

1973 US National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger meets Chinese leader Mao Zedong, where the latter jokingly offers to send 10 million Chinese women to the United States

1979 Snow falls in Sahara Desert

1985 Canned & bottled Cherry Coke introduced by Coca-Cola

1809 US Supreme Court rules federal government power greater than any state

1946 Anti-British demonstrations in Egypt

1989 UK physicist Stephen Hawking calls Star Wars a "deliberate fraud"

1954 1st mass inoculation against polio with Salk vaccine (Pittsburgh)

1857 1st perforated US postage stamps delivered to government

1793 1st US cabinet meeting, held at George Washington's home

1863 Abraham Lincoln signs National Currency Act, establishes single national US currency

1883 Oscar Hammerstein patents 1st cigar-rolling machine

1826 M Biela, an Austrian officer, discovers Biela's Comet

1940 12th Academy Awards: "Gone with the Wind" wins eight Oscars