1945: Allied forces in World War II began a three-day bombing raid on Dresden, Germany, killing as many as 25,000 people and triggering a firestorm that swept through the city center.
1935: A jury found Bruno Richard Hauptmann guilty of first-degree murder in the kidnap-slaying of Charles A. Lindbergh Jr.
1996: The rock musical “Rent,” by Jonathan Larson, premiered off-Broadway.
2016: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died at age79.
Feb. 14
1779: English explorer James Cook was killed on the island of Hawai’i during a melee following Cook’s attempt to kidnap Hawaiian monarch Kalaniʻōpuʻu.
1929: The “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” took place in a Chicago garage as seven rivals of Al Capone’s gang were gunned down.
1984: 6-year-old Stormie Jones became the world’s first heart-liver transplant recipient.
Feb. 15
1898: The battleship USS Maine mysteriously exploded in Havana Harbor, killing more than 260 crew members and bringing the United States closer to war with Spain.
1879: President Rutherford B. Hayes signed a law allowing female attorneys to argue cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.
1933: President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt escaped an assassination attempt in Miami that mortally wounded Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak.
1950: Walt Disney’s animated film “Cinderella” premiered in Boston.
Feb. 16
1959: Fidel Castro became premier of Cuba a month and a-half after the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista.
1862: the Civil War Battle of Fort Donelson in Tennessee ended as some 12,000 Confederate soldiers surrendered; Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s victory earned him the moniker “Unconditional Surrender Grant.”
1923: The burial chamber of King Tutankhamen’s recently unearthed tomb was unsealed in Egypt by English archaeologist Howard Carter.
Feb. 17
1801: The U.S. House of Representatives broke an electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, electing Jefferson president; Burr became vice president.
1815: The United States and Britain exchanged the instruments of ratification for the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812.
1863: The International Red Cross was founded in Geneva.
1864: During the Civil War, the Union ship USS Housatonic was rammed and sunk in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, by the Confederate hand-cranked submarine HL Hunley in the first naval attack of its kind; the Hunley also sank.
Feb. 18
1564: Michelangelo died in Rome.
1885: Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” was published in the U.S. for the first time (after being published in Britain and Canada).
1983: 13 people were shot to death at a gambling club in Seattle’s Chinatown in what became known as the Wah Mee Massacre. (Two men were convicted of the killings and were sentenced to life in prison; a third was found guilty of robbery and assault.)
2001: Veteran FBI agent Robert Philip Hanssen was arrested, accused of spying for Russia.
Feb. 19
1473: Astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus was born in Torun, Poland.
1807: Former Vice President Aaron Burr, accused of treason, was arrested in the Mississippi Territory, in present-day Alabama.
1945: Operation Detachment began during World War II as some 30,000 U.S. Marines began landing on Iwo Jima.
