On this date...

Judge RIchard Peters

In 1779, five hunters from Vincennes traveling in a boat were captured by George Rogers Clark and his band of Patriots. After questioning the hunters, Clark found that his small army had not yet been detected and that the people of Vincennes, Indiana, were still sympathetic to the Americans.

In 1792, President George Washington signed legislation that reestablished the United States Post Office as a cabinet department led by the postmaster general, guaranted inexpensive delivery of all newspapers, stipulated the right to privacy, and granted Congress the authority to expand postal service to new areas of the nation.

In 1809, the Supreme Court ruled that the power of the federal government is greater than that of any individual state. It was the case of United States vs. Peters, Case 9 U.S. 115, and it would change the relationship and power structure between the states and the Federal government forever by ruling that a state legislature could not annul a ruling of a federal court.

In 1839, On this day in 1839, the U.S. Congress made dueling in Washington, D.C., a felony punishable by up to 10 years of hard labor. The tipping point for the bill came in 1838: Kentucky Rep. William Graves and Maine Rep. Jonathan Cilley dueled, which led to Cilley's death at the hand of Graves.

1856 The steam packet-ship John Rutledge, en route from Liverpool to New York, hits an iceberg and sinks with the loss of 120 passengers and 19 crew; only one survivor (Thomas Nye of New Bedford)

In 1862, William Wallace Lincoln, the 11-year-old son of President Abraham Lincoln and First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, died at the White House from what was believed to be typhoid fever.

In 1864, at the Battle of Olustee, the largest conflict fought in Florida during the Civil War, a Confederate force under General Joseph Finegan decisively defeated an army commanded by General Truman Seymour. The victory kept the Confederates in control of Florida’s interior for the rest of the war.

In 1872, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City opened to the public.

In 1905, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, upheld, 7-2, compulsory vaccination laws intended to protect the public’s health.

In 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt signed an immigration act that excluded “idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, epileptics, insane persons,” among others, from being admitted to the United States.

In 1929, the U.S. Congress formally accepted the deeds of cession of eastern Samoa, forming American Samoa.

In 1939, six and a half months before Adolf Hitler invaded Poland, New York City’s Madison Square Garden hosted a rally to celebrate the rise of Nazism in Germany. Inside, more than 20,000 attendees raised Nazi salutes toward a 30-foot-tall portrait of George Washington flanked by swastikas. Outside, police and some 100,000 protesters gathered.

In 1942, Lt. Edward O’Hare takes off from the aircraft carrier Lexington in a raid against the Japanese position at Rabaul—and minutes later becomes America’s first WWII flying ace, shooting down five enemy bombers.

In 1944, during World War II, U.S. bombers began raiding German aircraft manufacturing centers in a series of attacks that became known as "Big Week."

In 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth. He orbited it 3 times.

In 1965, America’s Ranger 8 spacecraft crashed into the moon’s surface, as planned, after sending back thousands of pictures of the lunar surface.

In 1971, In a terrifying technical snafu, radio and TV transmissions go dead after the National Emergency Warning Center accidentally messages that a nuclear attack had begun.

In 1974, Reg Murphy, an editor of The Atlanta Constitution, was kidnapped after being lured from his home near the city. William A.H. Williams told the newspaperman that he had 300,000 gallons of heating oil to donate to the poor. The 33-year-old Williams abducted Murphy, who was well known for his anti-Vietnam War stance, at gunpoint.

In 1998, 15-year-old Tara Lipinski won the gold medal in women’s figure skating at the Olympic Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, and became the youngest gold medalist in her sport.

In 2003, A fire at a rock concert in a West Warwick, Rhode Island, nightclub killed 100 people and seriously injured almost 200 more on February 20, 2003. It was the deadliest such fire in the United States since 165 people were killed at the Beverly Hill Supper Club in Southgate, Kentucky, in 1977.