February 14, 2021
247
Today is Monday, Feb. 15, the 46th day of 2021. There are 319 days left in the year. This is Presidents Day.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Feb. 15, 1989, the Soviet Union announced that the last of its troops had left Afghanistan, after more than nine years of military intervention.
On this date:
In 1564, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa.
In 1764, the site of present-day St. Louis was established by Pierre Laclede and Auguste Chouteau.
In 1798, a feud between two members of the U.S. House of Representatives (meeting in Philadelphia) boiled over as Roger Griswold of Connecticut used a cane to attack Vermont’s Matthew Lyon, who defended himself with a set of tongs. (Griswold was enraged over the House’s refusal to expel Lyon for spitting tobacco juice in his face two weeks earlier; after the two men were separated, a motion to expel them both was defeated.)