Judy Blume, popular young-adult author, is born


Year
1938
Month Day
February 12

On February 12, 1938, best-selling author Judy Blume, known for her children’s books and young-adult novels, including “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing” and “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” is born in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Blume’s books have been beloved by several generations of readers; however, the explicit subject matter of some of her novels for adolescents has made them a target for censors.

Blume, born Judy Sussman, was raised in New Jersey and attended New York University, graduating in 1961 with a degree in teaching. She married while still a college student and had two children by the time she was in her mid-20s. In 1969, Blume published her first children’s book, “The One in the Middle Is the Green Kangaroo.” More fiction for grade-school-age readers followed, including “Freckle Juice” (1971), “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing” (1972), “Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great” (1972) and “Blubber” (1974). In 1970, Blume published the young-adult novel “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.” She went on to write other novels for adolescents, including “Then Again, Maybe I Won’t” (1971), “Deenie” (1973) and “Forever” (1975). Blume’s books, which realistically address such topics as menstruation, bullying, divorce, sexuality, friendships, family and body image, gained legions of young fans; however, their content frequently led them to be banned by school libraries. After her work was the target of an organized book-banning campaign in the 1980s, Blume became an anti-censorship activist.

In addition to writing for young readers, Blume has penned novels for adults, including “Wifey” (1978), “Smart Women” (1983), “Summer Sisters” (1998) and “In the Unlikely Event” (2015), all of which were best-sellers. 

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NFL star Michael Vick pleads guilty in dogfighting case

Year
2007
Month Day
August 27

On August 27, 2007, Michael Vick, a star quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons, formally pleads guilty before a Richmond, Virginia, judge to a federal felony charge related to running a dogfighting ring. That December, the 27-year-old Vick, once the highest-paid player in the NFL, was sentenced to 23 months in federal prison.

In April 2007, law-enforcement officials raided a 15-acre property owned by Vick in rural Surry County, Virginia, and discovered dozens of pit bulls, some of them neglected, along with evidence of illegal dogfighting activities. That July, Vick and three other men, Purnell Peace, Quanis Phillips and Tony Taylor, were charged with engaging in competitive dogfighting, obtaining and training pit bulls for fighting, and carrying out the enterprise across state lines. All four men pled not guilty to the charges. However, Vick’s three co-defendants later changed their pleas to guilty and agreed to testify that the quarterback had participated in the execution of a number of dogs and had bankrolled the gambling and operating funds for the venture, known as Bad Newz Kennels, which had reportedly been in existence for about five years. Animal-rights organizations as well as the general public expressed outrage against Vick and the barbaric details of the case—dogs that underperformed in fights were put to death by such means as drowning, electrocution and hanging.

On August 27, Vick, the Falcons’ starting quarterback since 2002, pled guilty to one count of “conspiracy to travel in interstate commerce in aid of unlawful activities and to sponsor a dog in an animal fighting venture.” Vick, who in 2004 signed a record 10-year, $130 million contract with the Falcons, was suspended indefinitely without pay by the NFL and lost his lucrative endorsement deals.

In December 2007, a judge sentenced Vick to 23 months in federal prison. Because the judge believed the football player had refused to accept responsibility for his actions (Vick failed a drug test after his August 2007 guilty plea and also flunked a lie-detector test about his role in the executions of underperforming dogs), the sentence was stiffer than the 12 months to 18 months suggested by federal guidelines. In July 2008, while in prison, Vick filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. That November, he pled guilty in Virginia to state dogfighting charges and received a three-year suspended sentence.

In May 2009, Vick was released from prison in Leavenworth, Kansas. That July, he was conditionally reinstated by the NFL and the following month signed a two-year deal with the Philadelphia Eagles. While his public image remained tarnished, Vick went on to make a strong comeback on the football field. He retired from professional football in 2017. 

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Green River serial killer pleads guilty to 49th murder


Year
2011
Month Day
February 18

On February 18, 2011, in a Kent, Washington, courtroom, Gary Leon Ridgway pleads guilty to the 1982 aggravated, first-degree murder of his 49th victim, 20-year-old Rebecca Marrero. Marrero’s remains were found in December 2010, decades after her murder, in a ravine near Auburn, Washington. After entering his guilty plea, the 62-year-old Ridgway received his 49th life sentence without the possibility of parole and returned to the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, where he was already serving 48 consecutive life sentences, one for each of the other women he killed.

In the 1980s, residents of Washington State were terrorized by the so-called Green River Killer, whose first five victims’ bodies were discovered in or near the Green River in King County (whose largest city is Seattle) in the summer of 1982. The strangled bodies of more victims soon appeared around King County; all were women, most of them young and many of them prostitutes, runaways and drug users. Ridgway, a thrice-married truck painter from Auburn, became a suspect after one of the victims was spotted getting into his truck. However, when questioned by police, he denied any knowledge of the slayings and passed a 1984 polygraph test. In 2001, he was finally arrested after DNA evidence (a technology not available when he began committing his crimes) connected him to some of the killings.

In a controversial 2003 plea deal, Ridgway admitted to the murders of 48 women between 1982 and 1998, and prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty against him if he cooperated with police in locating the remains of dozens of his victims. Ridgway reportedly claimed to have murdered more than 60 women in King County, although authorities at the time could only find sufficient evidence to link him to the 48 slayings. (Ridgway’s plea deal was limited to murders in King County; if, in the future, he is linked to unsolved killings in other counties or states, he could be eligible for the death penalty.)

Ridgway told authorities he began to think of murdering prostitutes as his career, and did it “because he hated them, didn’t want to pay them for sex, and because he knew he could kill as many as he wanted without getting caught,” according to The Seattle Times. The serial killer said he picked up women off the street, strangled them in his home or truck, and meticulously hid their bodies near natural landmarks (such as trees or fallen logs) in an attempt to keep track of them.

At the time of his 49th conviction, Ridgway had been linked to more murders than any other convicted serial killer in U.S. history. 

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Central Park jogger attack shocks New York City

Year
1989
Month Day
April 19

On April 19, 1989, a 28-year-old female investment banker is severely beaten and sexually assaulted while jogging in New York City’s Central Park. Five teenagers from Harlem were (wrongly) convicted of the crime, which shocked New Yorkers for its randomness and viciousness and became emblematic of the perceived lawlessness of the city at the time. The case was also racially divisive, as the teens were black and Hispanic and the victim was white.

READ MORE: Central Park Five: Crime, Coverage & Settlement

The “Central Park jogger,” as she became known in the media, was discovered by passerby in a muddy ravine, her skull smashed and near death, hours after she went for a jog in the park around 9 p.m. After being rescued, she spent nearly two weeks in a coma, but surprised doctors by eventually recovering from most of her injuries. However, she remembered nothing about the near-fatal attack or the events leading up to it.

Police quickly charged five male teens with the crime; four made videotaped confessions, while implicating a fifth suspect. 

The teens soon claimed their confessions had been coerced by the police; regardless, the five were convicted in two separate trials in 1990, and received prison sentences ranging from five to 15 years. Then, in 2002, a convicted murderer and serial rapist, already behind bars, came forward to confess he had attacked the Central Park jogger when he was 17 and had acted alone. DNA evidence later confirmed his rape claim. In December 2002, the convictions of the five men originally charged in the case were overturned. The men later filed multi-million dollar lawsuits against New York City, which were settled for $41 million in 2014.

In 2003, the Central Park jogger, Trisha Meili, publicly revealed her identity by publishing a book about her ordeal. In the years after the attack, she became a motivational speaker and advocate for victims of sexual assault and brain injury.

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Laura Ingalls Wilder, chronicler of American frontier life, dies


Year
1957
Month Day
February 10

On February 10, 1957, Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the best-selling “Little House” series of children’s novels based on her childhood on the American frontier, dies at age 90 in Mansfield, Missouri.

Laura Elizabeth Ingalls was born in a log cabin near Pepin, Wisconsin, on February 7, 1867, the second of Charles and Caroline Quiner Ingalls’ four daughters. As a child, she lived with her family in Indian Territory in Kansas, as well as in farming communities in Minnesota and Iowa. In the late 1870s, the Ingalls moved to Dakota Territory, settling in present-day De Smet, South Dakota. Laura Ingalls worked as a school teacher in the area, starting in her teens, and in 1885, married Almanzo Wilder, a local homesteader 10 years her senior. In 1886, the couple had a daughter; their only other child, a son, died shortly after his birth in 1889.

In 1894, after several years of drought in South Dakota, the Wilders traveled by covered wagon to Mansfield, Missouri, in the Ozarks, where they established a farm. Years later, Laura Ingalls Wilder began contributing essays to local newspapers. In 1932, Wilder, then in her 60s, published her first novel, “Little House in the Big Woods,” an autobiographical account of pioneer life in Wisconsin. The book became a success, and she went on to publish seven more novels based on her experiences growing up on the American frontier in the 1870s and 1880s. These books, including “Little House on the Prairie” (1935), “On the Banks of Plum Creek” (1937) and “The Long Winter” (1940), chronicled the joys and hardships (including illnesses, crop failures, blizzards, fires and grasshopper plagues) that Wilder and her family experienced. A ninth novel, “The First Four Years,” (1971) was published posthumously, as were several other books based on Wilder’s journals and letters. Wilder’s daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, an author and journalist, is believed to have helped edit her mother’s books, although the exact extent of her collaboration is unknown.

The “Little House” books have been translated into dozens of languages and continue to be read by legions of fans. The books also inspired a hit TV series, “Little House on the Prairie,” which originally aired from 1974 to 1982 and starred Melissa Gilbert as the plucky Laura and Michael Landon as her father Charles.

After Laura Ingalls Wilder died in 1957, her longtime Missouri home, Rocky Ridge Farm, became a museum.

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JetBlue flight attendant quits job via escape slide

Year
2010
Month Day
August 09

On August 9, 2010, JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater quits his job in dramatic style by sliding down his plane’s emergency-escape chute while the aircraft is stopped near the terminal gate at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. Slater, who claimed his actions were prompted by the behavior of a rude passenger, quickly became a media sensation and national folk hero.

At the time of the incident, the 38-year-old Slater was a steward on Flight 1052 from Pittsburgh to New York City. He contended that when the flight landed a passenger became abusive toward him during an argument over luggage. Although other passengers on the flight later disputed Slater’s account of the passenger’s behavior, what happened next was clear: The flight attendant got on the plane’s public address system, cursed at the passenger and said, “I’ve been in this business for twenty years. And that’s it. I’ve had it. I’m done.” Afterward, he took two beers from the beverage cart, deployed the emergency exit and started down the slide. Realizing he’d left his bags on the aircraft, he scrambled back up the slide to retrieve them before fleeing down the chute again. After leaving the airport terminal, he drove to his home in Queens, New York.

Slater, the son of a pilot and a flight attendant, was soon taken into police custody. After posting $2,500 bail, he walked out of jail the next night an instant celebrity and even a folk hero to stressed-out, overworked Americans. Experiencing his 15 minutes of fame, Slater appeared on national talk shows, was honored with Facebook fan pages and received offers to do reality TV programs and endorse a variety of products.

In October 2010, Slater, facing charges of reckless endangerment, criminal mischief and criminal trespassing, agreed to plead guilty to two counts of attempted criminal mischief and was spared jail time. As part of the deal, he agreed to undergo regular mental health and substance abuse counseling sessions for a year. Additionally, he was required to pay JetBlue $10,000 in restitution to replace the emergency chute. The Queens district attorney, Richard Brown, said of the famous flight attendant: “My own view of the situation was that Mr. Slater was humiliated by what he perceived as degrading working conditions, and he had a level of rage at that time that was exacerbated perhaps by alcohol consumption and maybe by other contributing stress factors.” Brown also said that he felt Slater “recognized the seriousness of his actions.”

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Battle of Pea Ridge (Elkhorn Tavern), Arkansas


Year
1862
Month Day
March 07

On March 7, 1862, Union forces under General Samuel Curtis clash with the army of General Earl Van Dorn at the Battle of Pea Ridge (also called the Battle of Elkhorn Tavern),in northwest Arkansas. The following day, the battle ended in defeat for the Confederates.

Pea Ridge was part of a larger campaign for control of Missouri. Seven months earlier, the Confederates defeated a Union force at Wilson’s Creek, some 70 miles northeast of Pea Ridge. General Henry Halleck, the Federal commander in Missouri, now organized an expedition to drive the Confederates from southwestern Missouri. In February 1862, Yankee General Samuel Curtis led the 12,000-man army toward Springfield, Missouri. Confederate General Sterling Price retreated from the city with 8,000 troops in the face of the Union advance. Price withdrew into Arkansas, and Curtis followed him.

Price hooked up with another Rebel force led by General Ben McCulloch, and their combined army was placed under the leadership of General Earl Van Dorn, recently appointed commander of Confederates forces in the trans-Mississippi area. Van Dorn joined Price and McCulloch on March 2, 1862, and ordered an advance on Curtis’ army. Curtis received word of the approaching Confederates and concentrated his force around Elkhorn Tavern. Van Dorn sent part of his army on a march around the Yankees. On March 7, McCulloch slammed into the rear of the Union force, but Curtis anticipated the move and turned his men towards the attack. McCulloch was killed during the battle, and the Confederate attack withered. Meanwhile, the other part of Van Dorn’s army attacked the front of Curtis’ command. Through bitter fighting the Union troops held their ground.

Curtis, suspecting that the Confederates were low on ammunition, attacked the divided Rebel army the following morning. Van Dorn realized he was in danger and ordered a retreat, ending the battle. The Yankees suffered some 1,380 men killed, wounded, or captured out of 10,000 engaged; the Confederates suffered a loss of about 2,000 out of 14,000 engaged. The Union won a decisive victory that also helped them clear the upper Mississippi Valley region on the way to securing control of the Mississippi River by mid-1863.

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Union and Confederate forces clash at Battle of Darbytown Road

Year
1864
Month Day
October 07

A Confederate attempt to regain ground that had been lost around Richmond, Virginia, is thwarted when Union troops turn back General Robert E. Lee’s assault at the Battle of Darbytown and New Market Roads. 

In the summer of 1864, the campaign between Lee and Union General Ulysses S. Grant ground to a halt at Petersburg, 25 miles south of Richmond. The two great armies settled into trenches for a siege, and the lines soon extended all the way back to Richmond. Grant periodically attacked portions of the Rebel defenses but was not successful. On September 29, Union forces captured part of Richmond’s outer defense at the Battle of New Market Heights. AlthoughRichmond was still safely in Confederate hands, Lee was concerned about the new position of the Yankee troops.

Lee sent two divisions under generals Charles Field and Robert Hoke to move around the end of the Union line. Lee hoped that the Federal flank could be turned and the Confederates could regain the defensive works lost the week before. On the morning of October 7, the Confederates moved down Darbytown Road and around the Union right flank and attacked 1,700 cavalrymen. The assault sent the Yankees into a quick retreat. The Confederates captured eight cannons and drove the Union troops into the breastworks of General Alfred Terry. Alerted to the advancing Confederates, Terry summoned reinforcements to his position. 

By the time the Confederates worked their way through the thick foliage, they faced a strong Union force. Lee ordered an attack anyway. Brigades advanced one at a time, and the Yankee artillery tore the lines apart. By the afternoon, the Confederates withdrew to their original position. They lost 700 men while the Yankees lost only 400, and no ground was gained. Lee did not make another attempt to regain the ground and focused instead on setting up defenses closer to Richmond.

READ MORE: Petersburg Campaign 

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U.S. figure skating team killed in plane crash


Year
1961
Month Day
February 15

On February 15, 1961, the entire 18-member U.S. figure skating team is killed in a plane crash in Berg-Kampenhout, Belgium. The team was on its way to the 1961 World Figure Skating Championships in Prague, Czechoslovakia.

Among those killed in the crash was 16-year-old Laurence Owen, who had won the U.S. Figure Skating Championship in the ladies’ division the previous month. She was featured on the February 13, 1961, cover of Sports Illustrated, which called her the “most exciting U.S. skater.” Bradley Long, the 1961 U.S. men’s champion, also perished in the crash, as did Maribel Owen (Laurence’s sister) and Dudley Richards, the 1961 U.S. pairs champions, and Diane Sherbloom and Larry Pierce, the 1961 U.S. ice dancing champions. Also killed was 49-year-old Maribel Vinson-Owen, a nine-time U.S. ladies’ champion and 1932 Olympic bronze medalist, who coached scores of skaters, including her daughters Maribel and Laurence. Vinson-Owen also coached Frank Carroll, who went on to coach the 2010 men’s Olympic gold medalist Evan Lysacek and nine-time U.S. champion Michelle Kwan.

In addition to the skaters, 16 people accompanying them, including family, friends, coaches and officials, were killed. The other 38 passengers and crew aboard Sabena Flight 548, which left New York on the night of February 14, also died when the plane went down around 10 a.m. in clear weather while attempting to make a scheduled stopover landing at the Belgian National Airport in Brussels. One person on the ground, a farmer working in the field where the Boeing 707 crashed in Berg-Kampenhout, several miles from the airport, was killed by some shrapnel. Investigators were unable to determine the exact cause of the crash, although mechanical difficulties were suspected.

The tragedy devastated the U.S. figure skating program and meant the loss of the country’s top skating talent. Prior to the crash, the U.S. had won the men’s gold medal at every Olympics since 1948 (when Dick Button became the first American man to do so), while U.S. women had claimed Olympic gold in 1956 and 1960. After the crash, an American woman (Peggy Fleming) would not capture Olympic gold until 1968, while a U.S. man (Scott Hamilton) would not do so until 1984.

The incident was the worst air disaster involving a U.S. sports team until November 1970, when 37 players on the Marshall University football team were killed in a plane crash in West Virginia.

Shortly after the 1961 crash, the U.S. Figure Skating Memorial Fund was established; to date, it has provided financial assistance to thousands of elite American skaters. In 2011, the 50th anniversary of the tragedy, the 18 members of the 1961 figure skating team, along with the 16 people traveling with them to Prague, were inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

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Barack Obama’s “Dreams from My Father” is published

Year
1995
Month Day
July 18

On July 18, 1995, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, a memoir by a little-known law professor named Barack Obama, is published. Obama wrote the book before entering politics; 13 years after it was published, he was elected America’s 44th president.

Dreams from My Father tells the story of Obama’s family—he was born in Hawaii in 1961 to a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya. The book is also, as Obama writes in the introduction, “a boy’s search for his father, and through that a search for a workable meaning for his life as a black American.” Obama describes his adolescence in Hawaii, where he was raised by his white grandparents; his post-college years as a community organizer in Chicago; and a visit he made to Kenya as a young man to meet his African relatives following the 1982 death of his father, who he had seen only once after his parent’s divorce when he was 2.

After being elected the first black president of the influential Harvard Law Review in 1990 while in his second year of law school, Obama was contacted by a literary agent who eventually got him a reported $40,000 advance to write what became Dreams from My Father. When the book was published in 1995, Obama was a law professor at the University of Chicago and had not yet stepped into the national spotlight. The book received favorable reviews; however, it sold a modest 8,000 to 9,000 hardcover copies and went out of print within several years.

The year after the book’s publication, Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate, his first foray into politics. In March 2004, he shot to national prominence by winning the U.S. Senate Democratic primary in Illinois. The publicity generated by his victory prompted a publisher to reissue Dreams from My Father in the summer of 2004. Boosted by his well-received keynote address at the Democratic National Convention that July, and his landslide election to the U.S. Senate in November of the same year, Dreams from My Father became a best-seller. Reviewers praised the book for its eloquence and candor.

In October 2006, Obama, then a U.S. senator, published his second book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming America. Like his first book, The Audacity of Hope became a best-seller, and Obama drew crowds at book signings as speculation mounted over whether he would seek the presidency. In February 2007, Obama announced he would run for the White House. When asked about Dreams from My Father while on the campaign trail in 2008, he told The New York Times “he was not even thinking about political consequences when he wrote the memoir. In fact, he said, one editor warned him back then that his references to drug use could come back to haunt him—if he were ever nominated for the Supreme Court.”

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