There are plenty of landmark events that occured on February 14 through the years, but I have to go with my second favorite live recording (after Humble Pie's 'Rockin' the Fillmore').

On February 14, 1970, The Who appeared at Leeds University, England. The show was recorded for the bands forthcoming 'Live At Leeds' album. Since its initial reception, Live at Leeds has been cited by several music critics as the best live rock recording of all time. The University of Leeds refectory has now been named a national landmark in the UK, commemorated with a blue plaque.

The band showed its hard edge as a power trio, elevating, among other tunes, 'Magic Bus' to legendary status. Before this, it had been more of a nice pop-rock song, but Leeds showed how the song should be played. It was a ferociously hard-charging show.

 

I was born. You’re welcome or I’m sorry. Whichever applies.

 

Happy Birthday! @StrawberryCupcake

 

On this day in history, February 14, 270 AD, Valentine beaten, beheaded for defying emperor's marriage ban
Saint Valentine's Day roses and romance contrast sharply with grisly death of martyr devoted to love.


Left, an engraving of St. Valentine (3rd century A.D.) created by Cibera in Christian Century, 1853. Right, a red-themed Valentine's Day dinner table with a wrapped present, filled wine glasses and a single red rose.

Third-century Roman priest Valentinus was brutally beaten and beheaded after marrying couples in defiance of Emperor Claudius II's ban on the sacrament of marriage on this day in history, Feb. 14, 270 A.D.

"When Valentine’s actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death," says History.com.

"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."

 

2005: YouTube is launched. Three former employees of PayPal, Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, frustrated at not being able to share digital videos with one another, open an office above a pizzeria in San Mateo, California, and launch the site that will allow anyone to upload, view, and share videos of cute cats and virtually anything else as well.

 

February 15
1898 - The U.S.S. Maine was destroyed in an explosion killing 260 American seamen. This led to the Spanis American War that originated in Cuba'struggle for freedom from Spain

1820 - America suffragist Susan B. Anthony was born in Adams, Massachusetts

1978 - Boxer Leon.Spinks defeated Muhammad Ali to become heavyweight champion of the world

1965 - Canada officially adopted the Maple Leaf Flag.

 

On February 15, 1898, a massive explosion sank the battleship USS Maine in Cuba’s Havana Harbor, killing more than 260 of the 350-plus American crew members aboard.

An official U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry ruled in March that the ship was blown up by a mine, without directly placing the blame on Spain. Public opinion was running against Spain in support of Cuba's struggle for independence, so much of Congress and a majority of the American public expressed little doubt that Spain was responsible and called for a declaration of war.

With the failure of diplomacy to resolve the Maine issue, coupled with United States indignation over Spain’s brutal suppression of the Cuban rebellion, Congress approved a resolution declaring war with Spain on April 25, 1898, beginning the Spanish-American War.

The war lasted until December 10, 1898, and and resulted in the U.S. acquisition of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.

In 1976, a team of American naval investigators examined available photographs of the wreckage, particularly noting that the twisted metal on the hull's explosion spot was bent outward, showing that the explosion originated from within the ship. They concluded that the Maine explosion was likely caused by a fire that ignited its ammunition stocks, not by a Spanish mine or act of sabotage.

 

Soviet Union Leaves Afghanistan
1989 Soviet military occupation of Afghanistan ends as the last Soviet troops cross the Soviet-Afghan border.

For ten years the Soviet Union was mired in a war in Afghanistan, from 1979 to 1989. So difficult was this war that it is often referred to as Soviet Union's Vietnam.

In 1978 Afghanistan experienced a coup which brought to power a communist regime - the brutality of this regime led to open rebellion by the following year, precipitating the Soviet intervention and their coup in December 1979.

The war proved very costly for the Soviet Union. They lost almost 15,000 troops and its failure to win the war was a contributing factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In America, the government countered the Soviet effort by supporting the efforts of the Mujahideen - a decision that would come back to haunt the US, when many members of the Mujahideen later joined al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

 

1933: Franklin Roosevelt survives an assassination attempt.
Speaking from the back of an open car near Miami, Florida, President-elect Roosevelt is missed by Guiseppe Zangara's bullets, but they bring down five others, including Chicago's mayor, Anton Cermak, who will die 19 days later.

 

On This Day In History
February 15, 1950
USSR and PRC sign mutual defense treaty

The Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, the two largest communist nations in the world, announce the signing of a mutual defense and assistance treaty.

The negotiations for the treaty were conducted in Moscow between PRC leaders Mao Zedong and Zhou En-lai, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky. The treaty’s terms called for the Soviets to provide a $300 million credit to the PRC. It also mandated that the Soviet Union return to the Chinese the control of a major railroad and the cities of Port Arthur and Dairen in Manchuria, all of which had been seized by Russian forces near the end of World War II. The mutual defense section of the agreement primarily concerned any future aggression by Japan and “any other state directly or indirectly associated” with Japan. Zhou En-lai proudly declared that the linking of the two communist nations created a force that was “impossible to defeat.”

U.S. commentators viewed the treaty as proof positive that communism was a monolithic movement, being directed primarily from the Kremlin in Moscow. An article in the New York Times referred to the PRC as a Soviet “satellite.” As events made clear, however, the treaty was not exactly a concrete bond between communist countries. By the late-1950s, fissures were already beginning to appear in the Soviet-PRC alliance. Publicly, the Chinese charged that the Soviets were compromising the principles of Marxism-Leninism by adopting an attitude of “peaceful coexistence” with the capitalist nations of the West. By the early-1960s, Mao Zedong was openly declaring that the Soviet Union was actually allying itself with the United States against the Chinese revolution.

 

15th February

1933 - U.S. President-elect Roosevelt escaped an assassination attempt in Miami. Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak was killed in the attack.

1942 - During World War II, Singapore surrendered to the Japanese.

 

February 16

1959 - Fidel Castro defeated Fulgencio Batista to become dictator of Cuba.

1949 - The first Knesset(Assemby) opened in Jerusalem

1945 - American.paratroopers landed on Corregador Island in Worl War II. Two.weeks later we recaptured it from the Japanes.

1937 'DuPont chemist Wallace Hume Caruthers invented nylon

1965 - The Beatles topped the British rock chartswith Pease, Please Me"

1959 - John McEnroe was born in West Germany. That ball was in.

1935 - Sonny Bono was born

 

On Februry 16, 1968, the first 911 call was placed by Rankin Fite, the Speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives, in Haleyville, Alabama to the Haleyville Police Department.

Whie it is not know what individual person originally suggested 911 as the number, the number itself came from AT&T, the corporation that controlled nearly all phone lines in the U.S. AT&T suggested the number 911 because it was easy to remember and, crucially, had not yet been designated as an area code or other code, which would make the transition easier.

Nome, Alaska adopted the system a week later. Still, it would be years before the system was widespread and decades before it was uniform.

Rep Fite making the call:

 

1923: King Tut's tomb unsealed in Egypt
British archaeologist Howard Carter unseals a doorway at the back of a tomb buried under the sands of Thebes, Egypt, and after more than 3,000 years, the pharaoh Tutankhamun has a visitor.

 

Event of Interest
1959 Fidel Castro becomes the 16th Prime Minister of Cuba after overthrowing Fulgencio Batista.


Fidel Castro
Biography: Castro led the Cuban Revolution and in 1959 established the first communist state in the Western Hemisphere. As either prime minister or president, he governed Cuba from 1959 until he transferred power to his brother Raul Castro in 2008.

He became politically active while studying at the University of Havana. He first attempted to overthrow the right-wing government of Fulgencio Batista in 1953 but failed and spent a year in prison. After his release he formed the 26th of July Movement with Raul Castro and Che Guevara; they returned to Cuba and launched the Cuban Revolution, overthrowing Batista in 1959.

Cuba thus became the first communist state in the Western Hemisphere. The United States reacted strongly to his presence, attempting to assassinate him hundreds of times, as well as trying to overthrow him in 1961 at the Bay of Pigs invasion. In response Castro formed an alliance with the Soviet Union, which deployed nuclear weapons in Cuba as a countermeasure, leading to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. This is generally regarded as the closest moment at which the Cold War turned into a nuclear war.


Fulgencio Batista
Biography: Fulgencio Batista was a Cuban military officer and politician who served as the elected President of Cuba from 1940 to 1944, and then as its U.S.-backed authoritarian ruler from 1952 to 1959, before being overthrown during the Cuban Revolution. Batista initially rose to power as a part of the "sergeants' revolt" in 1933 and used his position in the military to garner political influence.

Batista's first term as President was marked by progressive social reforms and a strengthening of Cuba's relationship with the U.S. However, his second term in power, which began with a coup in 1952, was marked by corruption, censorship of the press, and a growth in disparity between rich and poor. His regime's brutality and corruption were factors that led to the Cuban Revolution.

Batista was ousted from power by Fidel Castro's revolutionary forces on January 1, 1959, and fled to the Dominican Republic, and later to Portugal. He lived the rest of his life in exile, dying in Spain in 1973.

 

On This Day In History
February 16, 1951
Joseph Stalin attacks the United Nations

In a statement focusing on the situation in Korea, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin charges that the United Nations has become “a weapon of aggressive war.” He also suggested that although a world war was not inevitable “at the present time,” “warmongers” in the West might trigger such a conflict.

Stalin’s comments in response to queries from the Soviet newspaper Pravda were his first public statements about the nearly year-old conflict in Korea, in which the United States, South Korea, and other member nations of the United Nations were arrayed against forces of North Korea and communist China. Coming just over two weeks after the U.N. General Assembly’s resolution condemning China as an aggressor, Stalin’s statement turned the tables by declaring that the United Nations was “burying its moral prestige and dooming itself to disintegration.” He warned that Western “warmongers,” through their aggressive posture in Korea, would “manage to entangle the popular masses in lies, deceive them, and drag them into a new world war.” In any event, he confidently predicted that Chinese forces in Korea would be victorious because the armies opposing them lacked morale and dedication to the war.

Despite the rather blistering tone of Stalin’s words, Western observers were not unduly alarmed. Stalin’s attacks on Western “aggression” were familiar, and some officials in Washington took comfort in the premier’s assertion that a world war was not inevitable “at the present time.” Indeed, there was some feeling that Stalin’s denouncement of the United Nations’ actions was actually a veiled call for negotiations through the auspices of that body. Stalin’s comments, and the intense scrutiny they were subjected to in the West, were more evidence that in the Cold War, the “war of words” was almost as significant as any actual fighting.

 

On this day in history, I was 2 days old.

 

February 17

1979 -Vietnam was invaded by China. They say it was about Vietnam having closer ties to the Soviet Union than China

1963 - Michael Jordan was born.

1936 - The legendary football player Jim Brown was born. At the University of Syracuse he also excelled at lacrosse(his favorite), track and basketball.

1992 Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to 15 consecutively lofe sentences. He was later killed by a fellow inmate
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1904 - Italian composer Giacoma zpuccini"s opera "Madama Butterfly" premiered in Milan. It is one of the most frequently performed operas.

1864 - In the American Civil War the Confederate " Hunley: became the first submarine to sink another ship, the U,S,S, Housatonic off Charelston, South Carolina.

1801 - Following a tie in the electoral college the U,S. House of Representatives elected Thomas Jefferson.

 

On February 17, 1975, AC/DC released their debut album 'High Voltage' only in Australia. The album featured a cover of 'Baby, Please Don't Go' a blues song first recorded by Big Joe Williams and 'She's Got Balls' which was written about singer Bon Scott's ex-wife Irene - the first AC/DC song for which he wrote lyrics.

The album sold well enough because AC/DC were already stars in their home country, but unknown to the rest of the world. The album gives an early glimpse at the thundering sound they would develpop - the AC/DC we all know now.

The following year, the band would issue their first international record, also titled 'High Voltage' but with different songs (except for 2 holdovers), including a title cut.