On this date...

Henry Highland Garnet

In 1733,  James Oglethorpe and 114 colonists founded the colony of Georgia. This was the 13th and last colony of the original States and was named in honor of King George II.

In 1776, in his General Orders, Washington expresses astonishment that regimental officers have discharged men without authority. Washington warns that any colonel or commanding officer who repeats this will be arrested and tried.

In 1776, John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, wrote from Philadelphia. Hancock informs Washington that Congress is sending $250,000 for the army’s use and assures him that reinforcements and resources are moving.

In 1793, Congress passed the first fugitive slave law, requiring all states, including those that forbade slavery, to forcibly return enslaved people who had escaped from other states to their original owners.

In 1795, the first US state university opened, the University of North Carolina, in Chapel Hill.

In 1825, the Creek Indian treaty was signed as tribal chiefs agreed to turn over all their land in Georgia to the government and migrate west by September 1, 1826.

In 1833, James Madison became president of the American Colonization Society, whose goal was to resettle freed slaves in Africa.

In 1839, the Aroostook (or "Pork & Beans) War: Boundary dispute between Maine & New Brunswick occurred.

In 1855, Michigan State University was established.

In 1865, Henry Highland Garnet, born enslaved, became the first Black man to give a sermon in the US Capitol when he delivered his anti-slavery speech "Let the Monster Perish."

In 1870, Women in the Utah Territory gained the right to vote.

In 1873, the U.S. Congress passed legislation removing the silver dollar from the list of coins authorized for minting; this move weakened "bimetallism" and pushed the United States toward the gold standard (which happened formally in 1900). The country left the gold standard domestically in 1933 and then internationally in 1971.

In 1877, the first news dispatch by telephone was between Boston and Salem, Massachusetts.

In 1906, George M. Cohan's musical "George Washington" premiered in New York City.

In 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded.

In 1914, groundbreaking took place for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

In 1917, the Austrian submarine U-35 bombs and sinks the American schooner Lyman M. Law in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Cagliari, Sardinia. The Lyman M. Law, captained by S.W. McDonough, had embarked on its final journey from Stockton, Maine, with a crew of 10 on January 6, 1917, carrying a cargo of 60,000 bundles of lemon-box staves.

In 1955, President Eisenhower sent the 1st US advisors to South Vietnam.

In 1962, a bus boycott started in Macon, Georgia

In 1970, Joseph Searles III shattered a deeply entrenched color barrier by becoming the first Black member of the New York Stock Exchange.

In 1973, the release of U.S. POWs began in Hanoi as part of the Paris Peace Settlement. The return of U.S. POWs began when North Vietnam released 142 of 591 U.S. prisoners at Hanoi’s Gia Lam Airport. Part of what was called Operation Homecoming, the first 20 POWs arrived at a hero’s welcome at Travis Air Force Base in California on February 14.

In 1997, Fred Goldman said he would settle for a signed murder confession from O.J. Simpson in place of his $20.5 million judgment.

In 1999, President Bill Clinton was acquitted on impeachment charges.

In 2004, Defying a California law, San Francisco officials began performing weddings for same-sex couples

In 2008, Hollywood’s longest work stoppage since 1988 ended on February 12, 2008, when members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) voted by a margin of more than 90 percent to go back to work after a walkout that began the previous November 5.

In 2014, the former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin was found guilty on corruption charges and sentenced to ten years in prison.

In 2019, Mexico’s most notorious drug lord, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, was convicted in New York of running an industrial-scale drug smuggling operation, murder, and money laundering. (Guzman is currently serving a life sentence at the federal supermax prison facility in Florence, Colorado.)