Category Archives: Presidential History

March 5 is:

National Cheese Doodle Day

On this day in 1496, King Henry VII of England issued letters to John Cabot and his sons, authorizing them to explore unknown lands.

1616 – Nicolaus Copernicus‘s book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium was banned by the Catholic Church. He dared to think that the Sun , not the Earth, was the center of the known universe. One of his quotes: “To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.”

Boston Massacre, anniversary of the March 5, 1770 death of Crispus Attucks, American Revolutionary leader who led the group whose anti-British defiance precipitated the Boston Massacre. Honored as the first American black man to die for freedom. At the subsequent trial, the soldiers are defended by future U.S. president John Adams. Celebrated as Crispus Attucks Day.

Publication of Federalist Paper #64: The Powers of the Senate written by John Jay in 1788. John Jay wrote several early Papers (#2-5) and came back to write #64. This paper discusses the process of making treaties with foreign countries. Some felt that this power should be given to the House of Representatives. Jay argues that a two year term of office is not sufficient to understand all the issues involved in a treaty. He argues that the power properly belongs to the President with consent of the Congress. From teaparty911.com:

This very important power which relates to war, peace, and commerce has been given by the convention to the president chosen by a select body of electors and the senate appointed by state legislatures. This ensures that men of quality and character and ages thirty years or greater will be making treaties in a manner conducive to the public good and will afford the highest security. Further these men are those that best understand our national interests whether in relation to the several states or foreign nations.

In 1821 James Monroe became the first President to be inaugurated on March 5th; March 4th was on a Sunday.

Birthday of James Merritt Ives (March 5, 1824), American lithographer; partner in the firm of Currier & Ives

1946 – Winston Churchill coined the phrase “Iron Curtain” in his speech at Westminster College, Missouri.

On March 5, 1953, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin died. Josef Stalin became the leader of Soviet Union after Lenin died in 1924, and launched government programs that would make the country more progressive. His attempt to move to the new economy, however, led to the starvation of nearly 10 million people. With many intellectuals and activists not in favor of his leadership, Stalin also launched the “Great Purge”, killing every person who opposed him and his ideals. It is estimated that Stalin was responsible for 23 million deaths, second in murderous dictatorship only to Mao Zedong.

1973 Yankee pitchers Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich announced they had swapped wives, known as the most scandalous trade in baseball history.

March 2 is National Banana Cream Pie Day

Birthday of Samuel Houston (1793), first president of the Republic of Texas.

1799 – Congress standardized US weights & measures. Under the United States Constitution, Article 1 Section 8, Congress shall have power “To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures”.

The U.S. Congress passed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves on March 2, 1807, disallowing the importation of new slaves into the country. It took effect in 1808, the earliest date permitted by the United States Constitution.
This legislation was promoted by President Thomas Jefferson, who called for its enactment in his 1806 State of the Union Address. He had promoted the idea since the 1770s. It reflected the force of the general trend toward abolishing the international slave trade which Virginia, followed by all the other states, had prohibited or restricted.

1819 – Territory of Arkansas was organized.

Texas Independence Day is the anniversary of Texas’ Declaration of Independence from Mexico in 1836.

1853 – Territory of Washington was organized after separating from Oregon Territory

1861 – US created Dakota & Nevada Territories out of the Nebraska & Utah territory

Baseball batter’s box was officially adopted in 1874

Rutherford B Hayes was inaugurated on this day in 1877.  The U.S. presidential election held on Nov. 7, 1876 was one of the most contentious in U. S. History. Democrat Samuel J. Tilden won the popular vote with 4,288,546 and Republican, Rutherford Hayes got 4,034,311. Tilden won 203 electoral votes to Hayes’s 166. The Republicans disputed the votes in three southern states, claiming voter intimidation (specifically they claimed that Negroes had been prevented from going to the polls) by the Democrats in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina. (There was also a controversy regarding the electors from the state of Oregon.) There were 20 electoral votes disputed.  To resolve the dispute, Congress, in January 1877, established an electoral commission made up of five U.S. representatives, five senators, and five Supreme Court justices. Three of the justices were Republicans. The commission awarded Hayes all 20 of the disputed electoral votes. Democratic leaders accepted Hayes’s election in exchange for Republican promises to withdraw federal troops from the South, provide federal funding for internal improvements in the South, and name a prominent Southerner to the president’s cabinet. When the federal troops were withdrawn, the Republican governments in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina collapsed, bringing Reconstruction to a formal end. Under the so-called Compromise of 1877, the national government would no longer intervene in southern affairs. This would permit the imposition of racial segregation and the disfranchisement of black voters.The voters were not pleased with the outcome, referring to the president as RutherFRAUD Hayes. He served just one term.

1897 – U.S. President Cleveland vetoed legislation that would have required a literacy test for immigrants entering the country.

President McKinley signed a bill creating Mt Rainier National Park (5th in US) in 1899.

Birthday of Dr. Seuss (March 2, 1904), aka Theodor Seuss Geisel, writer of 46 children’s books.

The film King Kong opened at New York’s Radio City Music Hall in 1933.

March 2, 1956 – Morocco declared its independence from France.

1965 – The movie, “Sound Of Music,” opened. It featured music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and included songs: My Favorite Things”, “Edelweiss”, “Climb Every Mountain”, and “Do-Re-Mi”. See BenneynLinda.com for more information.

1983 – Compact Discs and players were released for the first time in the United States and other markets. They had previously been available only in Japan.

February 24 is the 55th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 310 days remaining until the end of the year. By Roman custom, February 24 was doubled in a leap year in the Julian calendar.

National Tortilla Chip Day

Feb 24, 1500 was the birthday of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, who once said: “I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.”

1803 – In Marbury v. Madison, the Supreme Court of the United States established the principle of judicial review. Judicial review is the power of the courts to examine the actions of the legislative, executive, and administrative arms of the government and to determine whether such actions are consistent with the Constitution. Actions judged inconsistent are declared unconstitutional and, therefore, null and void.

Arizona was organized as a United States territory on this day in 1863.

Andrew Johnson became the first President of the United States to be impeached by the United States House of Representatives on February 24, 1868. He is later acquitted in the Senate on May 16, 1868. Per Wikipedia:

The impeachment and subsequent trial gained a historical reputation as an act of political expedience, rather than necessity, based on Johnson’s defiance of an unconstitutional piece of legislation and with little regard for the will of the public (which, despite the unpopularity of Johnson, opposed the impeachment). Until the impeachment of Bill Clinton 131 years later (which also ended in an acquittal), it was the only impeachment trial of a President in the history of the United States.

That was before the election and attempted impeachment of Donald Trump, 45th President. He was acquitted both times.

1920 – The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, was founded.

1981 Buckingham Palace announced the engagement of Britain’s Prince Charles to Lady Diana Spencer. They married July 29, 1981; had two sons, William in 1982 and Harry in 1984; divorced in 1996. Diana died in a car crash August 31, 1997. Charles married Camilla Parker Bowles in April 2005. He became King Charles III upon the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth, on Sept 8, 2022.

1989 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini offered a US $3 million bounty for the death of The Satanic Verses author, Salman Rushdie.

February 23 is:

Birthday of Samuel Pepys (February 23, 1633), English writer. The detailed private diary Pepys kept from 1660 until 1669 was one of the most important primary sources for the English Restoration period. It provides a combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of great events such as the Great Plague of London, the Second Dutch War and the Great Fire of London.

Birthday of George Frederic Handel (February 23, 1685), German opera composer, wrote the Messiah, heard every Easter.

Publication of Federalist Paper #60: Concerning the Power of Congress to Regulate the Election of Members written by Alexander Hamilton in 1788. It was suggested that the regulations could be used to promote “some favorite class of men in exclusion of others by confining the places of election to particular districts and rendering it impracticable to the citizens at large to partake in the choice”. Since the house is elected by the people, the senate by the state legislatures, and the electors of the president chosen by the people, “there would be little probability of a common interest to cement these different branches in a predilection for any particular class of electors”.

1836 – The Battle of the Alamo began in San Antonio, Texas.

“This is the last of Earth! I am content!” were the final words spoken by John Quincy Adams , sixth President of the United States. His death on February 23, 1848 was triggered by a cerebral hemorrhage. He collapsed on the floor of the US Capitol Building while he was still serving as the representative of the District of Massachusetts.

1861 – President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrived secretly in Washington, D.C., after the thwarting of an alleged assassination plot in Baltimore, Maryland.

1903 – Cuba leased Guantánamo Bay to the United States “in perpetuity”.

1927 – President Calvin Coolidge signed a bill establishing the Federal Radio Commission (later replaced by the Federal Communications Commission) which was to regulate the use of radio frequencies in the United States.

Iwo Jima Day, anniversary of the raising of the American flag atop Mount Suribachi in 1945

1954 – The first mass innoculation of children against polio with the Salk vaccine began in Pittsburgh.

February 22 is:

National Cook a Sweet Potato Day
National Margarita Day
National Cherry Pie Day

Birthday of George Washington in 1732; first President of the United States, born in Colonial Virginia.
Now commemorated on Presidents’ Day.

Publication of Federalist Paper #59: Concerning the Power of Congress to Regulate the Election of Members written by Alexander Hamilton in 1788. In Chapter 59, the new Constitution provided that the time, place, and manner of electing United States senators and representatives should be regulated by the state legislatures, but that the Congress could alter such regulations, “except as to places of choosing senators.”
“Every government ought to contain in itself the means of its own preservation.” If the power of regulating elections for the national government were left entirely in the hands of state legislatures, the latter would have the union entirely at their mercy.

Birthday of Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892), American poet and playwright; authored:

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!

1821 Spain sold eastern Florida to United States for $5 million. Under Spanish rule, Florida was divided by the natural separation of the Suwanee River into West Florida and East Florida. See further information about West Florida

February 22, 1862 – Jefferson Davis officially became President of the Confederate States of America.

In Utica, New York, Frank Woolworth opened the first of many of 5¢ and 10¢ Woolworth stores in February, 1878. The original store failed and closed in May 1878.

1924 – U.S. President Calvin Coolidge became the first President to deliver a radio broadcast from the White House.

The inaugural Daytona 500 race was held in Daytona Beach, Fla. on this date in 1959.

2006 “Insurgents” (aka barbaric terrorists), affiliated with Al-Qaida, destroyed the golden dome of one of Iraq’s holiest Shiite shrines, the Askariya Mosque in Samarra, Iraq, setting off a spasm of sectarian violence. In 2007 another al-Askari Mosque bombing destroyed the mosque’s two remaining ten-story minarets.

February 12 is the 43rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar.

National Plum Pudding Day
National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day

1554 – Lady Jane Grey, who had claimed the throne of England for nine days, was beheaded after being charged with treason.

Birthday of Cotton Mather (February 12, 1663 in Boston, Mass.), a socially and politically influential New England Puritan minister, prolific author and pamphleteer; he is often remembered for his role in the Salem witch trials.

1733 – Englishman James Oglethorpe founded Georgia , the 13th colony of the original thirteen Colonies, and its first city at Savannah.

Publication of Federalist Paper #53: The House of Representatives written by James Madison in 1788. Continuing to define the House of Representatives, Madison asserts that a one-year term is not long enough for members to learn about foreign affairs and the workings of other states. Another factor at that time was the distance needed by members to travel to the site of the federal government. Madison also addressed the issue of possible fraud within the election – that a one-year term would hardly be long enough for fraud to be discovered, investigated, and resolved within one year.

Publication of Federalist Paper #54: The Apportionment of Members Among the States written by James Madison in 1788. This paper addresses the number of representatives granted each State. The states strongly disagreed on the question of whether slaves were persons or property. If southern States counted all slaves, their representation in Congress would increase but so would their share of the government’s tax load. Northern States would argue if slaves are property, they should be counted in estimates of taxation which are founded on property but excluded from representation based on census. The Founders reached a compromise by establishing the 3/5 rule for slaves. The Compromise was accepted in order to get the southern states to ratify the Constitution.

Birthday of Charles Robert Darwin ((February 12, 1809), English naturalist and geologist best known for his contributions to evolutionary theory. Author of “On the Origin of the Species“.

Birthday of Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809), sixteenth President of the United States. On this date in 1892, President Lincoln’s birthday was declared to be a national holiday in the U.S. (Now celebrated on Presidents’ Day, Feb 17th, 2020) And on February 12, 1915, the cornerstone of the Lincoln Memorial was laid in Washington, DC.

1999 – President Bill Clinton was acquitted by the United States Senate in his impeachment trial.

February 4 is the 35th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar.

National Homemade Soup Day

National Stuffed Mushroom Day

On February 4, 1789 George Washington was unanimously elected as the first President of the United States by the U.S. Electoral College.

In 1794 the French legislature abolished slavery throughout all territories of the French Republic. Slavery was reestablished in the French West Indies in 1802.

1846 – The first Mormon pioneers made their exodus from Nauvoo, Illinois, westward towards Utah Territory. In late 1839, Mormons bought the small town of Commerce and in April 1840 it was renamed Nauvoo by Joseph Smith, who led the Latter Day Saints, to escape religious persecution in Missouri.

After Joseph Smith’s death in 1844, continuing violence from surrounding non-Mormons forced most Latter-Day Saints to leave Nauvoo. Most of these refugees, led by Brigham Young, eventually emigrated to the Great Salt Lake Valley.

American Civil War (1861): In Montgomery, Alabama, delegates from six break-away U.S. states met and formed the Confederate States of America.

Birthday of Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902), American aviator who flew solo across the Atlantic in 1927.

World War II: The Yalta Conference between the “Big Three” (Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin) opened at the Livadia Palace in the Crimea on February 4, 1945. Roosevelt died two months later.

1992 – A coup d’état was led by Hugo Chávez against Venezuelan President Carlos Andrés Pérez.

Facebook, a mainstream online social networking site, was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004.