History Today

An American institution got its start on this day in 1792.

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Benedict Arnold gets passed over for a promotion on this day in 1777.

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Pluto was discovered by French astronomers on this day in 1930.

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The Beach Boys hit Good Vibrations was recorded on this day in 1966.

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Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on February 16th. Like it has so many other events, the Covid 19 pandemic has interrupted a planned four-year-long world tour of treasures from King Tut’s tomb. They’ve been an object of fascination since this day in 1923, when British archaeologist Howard Carter first entered the ancient pharaoh’s sealed burial tomb. Inside lay a sarcophagus with three coffins nested inside one another.

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Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on February 15th. The term “fake news” has been thrown around a lot over the past several years, but the concept isn’t necessarily new. On this day in 1898, the Navy battleship USS Maine exploded and sank in Cuba’s Havana Harbor, killing some 260 crew. Almost immediately, so-called yellow journalists published sensational headlines blaming Spain for the tragedy, and within a couple of months, the Spanish-American War had begun.

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It’s said that when Roman emperor Claudius the Cruel banned marriage to encourage more men to join the army, Valentine continued to perform weddings. But the illicit ceremonies were discovered, and he was beheaded on this day in the year 278.

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Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on February 13th. Dresden, Germany, was once known as one of the most beautiful cities in Western Europe, full of artistic and architectural treasures, but today it’s better known as the site of a massive Allied bombardment that took place on this day in 1945, as World War II was coming to a close.

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Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on February 12th. Americans consistently rank our 16th U.S. president, Abraham Lincoln, as the greatest in American history, and on this day in 1809, Honest Abe was born in a log cabin in Hodgenville, Kentucky. Lincoln was elected president at age 51, just before the outbreak of the Civil War. By the time Lincoln was inaugurated, seven Southern states had already seceded from the Union.

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Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on February 11th. Thirty-one years ago today, former South African president, Nobel Prize winner, and revered activist Nelson Mandela, the leader of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, was released after 27 years in prison. Mandela spent 18 of those years at the notoriously brutal Robben Island, where he was forced to do hard labor and could receive only one visitor and two letters each year.

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