Today is Wednesday, Feb. 17, the 48th day of 2021. There are 317 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Feb. 17, 1815, the United States and Britain exchanged the instruments of ratification for the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812.
On this date:
In 1801, the U.S. House of Representatives broke an electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, electing Jefferson president; Burr became vice president.
In 1863, the International Red Cross was founded in Geneva.
In 1864, during the Civil War, the Union ship USS Housatonic was rammed and sunk in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, by the Confederate hand-cranked submarine HL Hunley in the first naval attack of its kind; the Hunley also sank.
In 1897, the forerunner of the National PTA, the National Congress of Mothers, convened its first meeting in Washington.
In 1972, President Richard M. Nixon departed the White House with his wife, Pat, on a historic trip to China.
In 1996, world chess champion Garry Kasparov beat IBM supercomputer “Deep Blue,” winning a six-game match in Philadelphia (however, Kasparov lost to Deep Blue in a rematch in 1997).
In 2015, Vice President Joe Biden opened a White House summit on countering extremism and radicalization, saying the United States needed to ensure that immigrants were fully included in the fabric of American society to prevent violent ideologies from taking root at home.
In 2018, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, told a conference in Germany that there was now “incontrovertible” evidence of a Russian plot to disrupt the 2016 U.S. election; the statement stood in stark contrast to Trump’s claim that Russian interference in his election victory was a hoax.
Today’s Birthdays: Football Hall of Famer Jim Brown is 85. Actor Rene Russo is 67. Actor Richard Karn is 65. Actor Lou Diamond Phillips is 59. Basketball Hall of Famer Michael Jordan is 58. Actor-comedian Larry the Cable Guy is 58. Actor Denise Richards is 50. Actor Jason Ritter is 41. TV personality Paris Hilton is 40. Singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran is 30.
