Highlights of world history on this day...
278 A.D. St. Valentine beheaded
On February 14 around the year 278 A.D., Valentine, a holy priest in Rome in the days of Emperor Claudius II, was executed.
Under the rule of Claudius the Cruel, Rome was involved in many unpopular and bloody campaigns.
The emperor had to maintain a strong army, but was having a difficult time getting soldiers to join his military leagues. Claudius believed that Roman men were unwilling to join the army because of their strong attachment to their wives and families.
To get rid of the problem, Claudius banned all marriages and engagements in Rome. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret.
When Valentine's actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death. Valentine was arrested and dragged before the Prefect of Rome, who condemned him to be beaten to death with clubs and to have his head cut off. The sentence was carried out on February 14, on or about the year 270.
Legend also has it that while in jail, St. Valentine left a farewell note for the jailer's daughter, who had become his friend, and signed it "From Your Valentine."
For his great service, Valentine was named a saint after his death.
In truth, the exact origins and identity of St. Valentine are unclear. According to the Catholic Encyclopaedia, "At least three different Saint Valentines, all of them martyrs, are mentioned in the early martyrologies under the date of 14 February."
One was a priest in Rome, the second one was a bishop of Interamna (now Terni, Italy) and the third St. Valentine was a martyr in the Roman province of Africa.
Legends vary on how the martyr's name became connected with romance. The date of his death may have become mingled with the Feast of Lupercalia, a
pagan festival of love. On these occasions, the names of young women were placed in a box, from which they were drawn by the men as chance directed. In 496 AD, Pope Gelasius decided to put an end to the Feast of Lupercalia, and he declared that February
14 be celebrated as St Valentine's Day.
Gradually, February 14 became a date for
exchanging love messages, poems and simple gifts such as flowers.
1929 The St. Valentine's Day Massacre
Four men dressed as police officers enter gangster Bugs Moran's headquarters on North Clark Street in Chicago, line seven of Moran's henchmen against a wall, and shoot them to death. The St. Valentine's
Day Massacre, as it is now called, was the culmination of a gang war between arch rivals Al Capone and Bugs Moran.
George "Bugs" Moran was a career criminal who ran the North Side gang in Chicago during the bootlegging era of the 1920s. He fought bitterly with "Scarface" Al Capone for control of smuggling and
trafficking operations in the Windy City. Throughout the 1920s, both survived several attempted murders.
On one notorious occasion, Moran and his associates drove six cars past a hotel in Cicero, Illionis, where Capone and his associates were having lunch and showered the building with more than 1,000 bullets.
A $50,000 bounty on Capone's head was the final straw for the gangster. He ordered that Moran's gang be destroyed. On February 14, a delivery of bootleg
whiskey was expected at Moran's headquarters. But Moran was late and happened to see police officers entering his establishment. Moran waited outside,
thinking that his gunmen inside were being arrested in a raid. However, the disguised assassins were actually killing the seven men inside.
The murdered men included Moran's best killers, Frank and Pete Gusenberg. Reportedly Frank was still alive when real officers appeared on the scene.
When asked who had shot him, the mortally wounded Gusenberg kept his code of silence, responding, "No one, nobody shot me."
The St. Valentine's Day Massacre actually proved to be the last confrontation for both Capone and Moran. Capone was jailed in 1931 and Moran lost so many important men that he could no longer control his territory. On the seventh anniversary of the massacre, Jack McGurn, one of the Valentine's Day hit men, was killed him in a crowded bowling alley with a burst of machine-gun fire.
McGurn's killer remains unidentified, but was likely Moran, though he was never charged with the murder. Moran was relegated to small-time robberies until he was sent to jail in 1946. He died in
Leavenworth Federal Prison in 1957 of lung cancer.
2000 Tornadoes sweep through southern Georgia On this day in 2000, a series of tornadoes moved through southern Georgia, wreaking havoc and killing 18 people.
The storm system that swept across the south-eastern United States on February 14 was highly unusual. Tornadoes in the United States typically strike on spring afternoons because they are generated by collisions of warm and cold air. Winter
tornadoes are quite rare.
In this case, the tornadoes began to form in the early morning hours of February 14 in Colquitt, Tift, Mitchell and Grady counties in Georgia. These rural counties, located about 200 miles south of Atlanta,
reported at least five major twisters. The most intense was an F3 tornado with winds in excess of 158 miles per hour that struck the town of Camilla. It blasted through a housing development and
destroyed 200 mobile homes.
Despite the fact that the area's warning system worked, the tornadoes caught most people by surprise because they were sleeping at the time the warnings were issued over radio and television. A
siren went off in Mitchell County, but it couldn't be heard in the area that was struck by the tornado. In all, 18 people lost their lives, 200 were seriously injured and more than 350 homes were destroyed. In addition, many pecan orchards were wiped out, contributing to damages in excess of $25 million.
President Bill Clinton and Governor Roy Barnes declared the affected counties disaster areas, qualifying them for federal and state relief funds.
Vice President Al Gore even visited Camilla personally to view the destruction, the worst seen in Georgia since 1944.
1943 Battle of the Kasserine Pass On this day, German General Erwin Rommel and his Africa Korps launch an offensive against an Allied defensive line in Tunisia, North Africa. The Kasserine Pass was the site of the United States' first major battle defeat of the war.
General Erwin Rommel was dispatched to North Africa in February 1942, along with the new Africa Korps, to prevent his Italian Axis partner from losing its territorial gains in the region to the British.
Despite his skill, until this point Rommel had been unable to do much more than manage his own forces' retreats, but the Battle of Kasserine Pass would finally display the "Desert Fox's" strategic genius.
In the Battle of El Alamein in August 1942, British General Bernard Montgomery pushed Rommel out of Egypt and into Tunisia, behind the Mareth Line, a
defensive fortification built by Vichy French forces.
After taking several months to regroup, Rommel decided on a bold move. Rommel set his sites of Tunis, Tunisia's capital and a key strategic goal for both Allied and Axis forces. Rommel determined that the weakest point in the Allied defensive line was at the Kasserine Pass, a 2-mile-wide gap in Tunisia's Dorsal Mountains, which was defended by American troops. His first strike was repulsed, but with tank reinforcements, Rommel broke through on February
20, inflicting devastating casualties on the U.S. forces. The Americans withdrew from their position, leaving behind most of their equipment. More than 1,000 American soldiers were killed by Rommel's offensive, and hundreds were taken prisoner. The United States had finally tasted defeat in battle.
1929 Penicillin discovered Sir Alexander Fleming was a young bacteriologist when an accidental discovery led to one of the great developments of modern medicine on this day in 1929. Having left a plate of staphylococcus bacteria uncovered, Fleming noticed that a mould that had
fallen on the culture had killed many of the bacteria.
He identified the mould as penicillium notatum, similar to the kind found on bread. On February 14, 1929, Fleming introduced his mould by-product called penicillin to cure bacterial infections.
1938 Hedda Hopper’s first column appears in the L.A. Times On this day in 1938, the former silent film actress Hedda Hopper pens the first installment of what
would become her tremendously influential gossip column in the Los Angeles Times.
Born Elda Furry in 1890, she was the fifth of nine children of Quaker parents living in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. She left school after the eighth grade and worked as a chorus girl on Broadway, where she
met her future husband, actor DeWolf Hopper. Elda was Hopper’s fifth wife; his four previous wives had been named Ella, Nella, Ida and Edna. After her husband reportedly called her by the wrong name,
Elda decided to change her own name to Hedda Hopper, a change she maintained even after the couple’s divorce in 1922.
Hedda appeared in MGM’s first production, Virtuous Wives, in 1915 and went on to act in more than 100 films over the next two decades. In 1936, several years after an unsuccessful bid for the Los Angeles City Council, Hopper parlayed her knowledge of the movie industry and Hollywood society into a radio show. A syndicate later offered to carry a print column that would compete with that of Hearst’s resident gossipmonger, Louella Parsons. The result, dubbed “Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood,” debuted in February 1938, kicking off a juicy 28-year run. In 1939, the column turned into a radio program.
The 1940s and 1950s were a golden age for Hollywood gossip columnists, and Hopper and Parsons (who famously carried on a bitter decade-long feud) received sizeable salaries--Hopper’s was
estimated at close to $200,000--and tons of gifts from studios hoping for favourable coverage of their movies and actors. In one telling statement, Hopper
referred to her own lavish home as “the house that fear built.” In addition to her titillating coverage of Hollywood’s latest pregnancy or breakup, Hopper was famous for her fashion sense, most notably her flamboyant hats. She also became increasingly political over the years, voicing her conservative opinions, praising Republican candidates such as
Barry Goldwater and attacking the actor Charles Chaplin for his leftist views.
1962 Kennedy authorizes U.S. advisors to fire in self-defence President John F. Kennedy authorized U.S. military advisors in Vietnam to return fire if fired upon. At a news conference, he said, "The training missions we have [in South Vietnam] have been instructed that if they are fired upon, they are of course to fire back, but we have not sent combat troops in [the] generally understood sense of the word." In effect, Kennedy was acknowledging that U.S. forces were
involved in the fighting, but he wished to downplay any appearance of increased American involvement in the war. The next day former Vice President Nixon expressed hopes that President Kennedy
would "step up the build-up and under no
circumstances curtail it because of possible criticism."
1988 Olympic speed skater Jansen falls after sister dies On February 14, 1988, U.S. speed skater Dan Jansen, a favourite to win the gold medal in the 500-meter
race at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, fells during competition, only hours after learning his sister had died of cancer. Jansen suffered disappointment after disappointment in the Olympics, earning him a reputation as "the heartbreak kid," before he finally captured an Olympic gold medal in 1994.
Daniel Erwin Jansen was born June 17, 1965, in West Allis, Wisconsin. He put on his first pair of skates at age four and soon was excelling at competitive speed
skating. At his first Olympics, in 1984 in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, he finished 16th in the 500 meters but came within a fraction of a second of taking home the bronze medal in the 1000 meters. Four years
later, at the 1988 Olympics in Calgary, Canada, Jansen, who had won the World Sprint Championship a week earlier, was a gold-medal favorite in the 500 meters. However, on February 14, the day of the race, he learned that his 27-year-old sister Jane, who had been instrumental in his speed skating career, had died of leukemia. Jansen's family encouraged him to continue with his plan to compete later that day. However, seconds into the race, Jansen slipped and fell. Several days later, he competed in the 1000-meter race and after a record-breaking start, fell again. At the 1992 Olympics in Albertville, France, Jansen again went home disappointed, finishing fourth in the 500 meters and 26th in the 1000 meters. Despite his Olympic heartbreak, he remained a top competitor and was the first man to break 36 seconds in the 500 meters.
In 1994, he won a second World Sprint Championship. At that year's Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, though, Jansen finished a disappointing eighth in the 500 meters and thought his chances of ever winning an Olympic medal were over. However, on February 18, Jansen finished the 1000 meters 1:12:43, good for the gold medal and the world record. In what became a memorable Olympic moment, Jansen took a victory lap around the ice carrying his young daughter Jane, named for his late sister.
