Today is Saturday, Feb. 29, the 60th day of 2020. There are 306 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Feb. 29, 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a second Neutrality Act as he appealed to American businesses not to increase exports to belligerents.
On this date:
In 1504, Christopher Columbus, stranded in Jamaica during his fourth voyage to the West, used a correctly predicted lunar eclipse to frighten hostile natives into providing food for his crew.
In 1796, President George Washington proclaimed Jay’s Treaty, which settled some outstanding differences with Britain, in effect.
In 1904, bandleader Jimmy Dorsey was born in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania.
In 1916, singer, actress and TV personality Dinah Shore was born Frances Rose Shore in Winchester, Tennessee. (Shore, who claimed March 1, 1917 as her birthdate, died in 1994 just days before she would have turned 78.)
In 1940, “Gone with the Wind” won eight Academy Awards, including best picture of 1939; Hattie McDaniel won for best supporting actress, the first black performer so honored.
In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower announced he would seek a second term of office.
In 1960, the first Playboy Club, featuring waitresses clad in “bunny” outfits, opened in Chicago.
In 1968, at the Grammy Awards, the 5th Dimension’s “Up, Up and Away” won record of the year for 1967, while album of the year honors went to The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”
In 1996, Daniel Green was convicted in Lumberton, North Carolina, of murdering James R. Jordan, the father of basketball star Michael Jordan, during a 1993 roadside holdup. (Green and an accomplice, Larry Martin Demery, were sentenced to life in prison.)
Today’s Birthdays: Actor Joss Ackland is 92. Former astronaut Jack Lousma is 84. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople is 80. Motivational speaker Tony Robbins is 60. Legal affairs blogger Eugene Volokh is 52. Actor Antonio Sabato Jr. is 48. Poet, musician and hip-hop artist Saul Williams is 48. Rapper Ja Rule is 44. Singer-musician Mark Foster (Foster the People) is 36. Former NHL goaltender Cam Ward is 36.
Thought for Today: “Well, it has happened again. The Earth has circled four times around the sun, astronomers have designated this a leap year and anxious bachelors won’t answer their telephones until midnight.” — David O’Reilly, American journalist.
