Facebook launches


Year
2004
Month Day
February 04

On February 4, 2004, a Harvard sophomore named Mark Zuckerberg launches The Facebook, a social media website he had built in order to connect Harvard students with one another. By the next day, over a thousand people had registered, and that was only the beginning. Now known simply as Facebook, the site quickly ballooned into one of the most significant social media companies in history. Today, Facebook is one of the most valuable companies in the world, with over 2 billion monthly active users.

The origins of Facebook have been highly scrutinized (including in the critically acclaimed 2010 film The Social Network), but the exact source of the idea remains unclear. What is obvious is that Zuckerberg had twin gifts for coding and causing a stir, both of which served him well at Harvard. The previous year, he had become a campus celebrity by creating FaceMash, a website where students could vote on which of two randomly-selected Harvard women was more attractive, and quickly running afoul of both the administration and several women’s groups. FaceMash was short-lived but wildly popular, leading Zuckerberg to consider the value of creating a campus-wide social network.

Over the course of his sophomore year, Zuckerberg built what would become Facebook. When it launched on February 4, he and his roommates were glued to their screens, watching as an estimated 1,200-1,500 of their fellow students signed up for their site within its first 24 hours of existence. From there, Facebook expanded rapidly, moving to other Boston-area schools and the rest of the Ivy League that spring. By the end of the year, the site had 1 million users, angel investor Peter Thiel had invested $500,000, and Zuckerberg had left Harvard to run Facebook from its new headquarters in California.

From there, Facebook spread across the world, becoming not only an incredibly valuable company but also one of the most important institutions of the early 21st Century. The go-to social media site for a generation of internet users (and one which was readily adopted by older users as it transformed from exclusive to universal), Facebook was one of the major forces that brought the internet into the highly-participatory phase full of user-generated content sometimes referred to as “Web 2.0.” It has also remained controversial. In addition to accusations that it allows false news and fake accounts to proliferate, Facebook has drawn criticism both for selling its users’ data and for failing to adequately protect it. Nonetheless, Facebook continues to dominate the social media market, generating by far the most ad revenue and maintaining over half of the total market share.

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Civil rights icon Rosa Parks is born


Year
1913
Month Day
February 04

Rosa Louise McCauley—known to history by her married name, Rosa Parks—is born in Tuskegee, Alabama on February 4, 1913. A lifelong Civil Rights activist, Parks’ name has become synonymous with her refusal to give up her seat to a white man on a segregated bus in 1955, a defining moment of the civil rights movement.

Parks was born and raised during the Jim Crow Era, a time of ubiquitous and strictly-enforced racial segregation in the South. As a young girl, she watched white students ride to school on a bus while she had to walk. “The bus was among the first ways I realized there was a black world and a white world,” she later recalled. After moving to Montgomery, she married Raymond Parks, a barber who was heavily involved in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and became involved with the nascent Civil Rights struggle. In 1943, due largely to her being the only woman at the meeting, she was elected Secretary of the NAACP’s Montgomery chapter. In this role, Parks dealt with the local media, corresponded with other NAACP chapters and processed the many reports of injustice which the organization received.

READ MORE: Before the Bus, Rosa Parks Was a Sexual Assault Investigator

It was partially because of her contributions to the movement and standing in the community that local leaders chose to rally behind Parks when, on December 1st, 1955, she refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus. Parks, like several other women that year, was arrested and fined for violating Jim Crow laws, but it was her action that set the Montgomery Bus Boycott into motion. Civil Rights activists in Montgomery, including the young Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been waiting for the appropriate moment to challenge the city’s segregated transit system. They succeeded in organizing the African American community of Montgomery to boycott the buses for over a year, until a court ruling officially desegregated them on December 20, 1956. The boycott and the triumph of its organizers received nationwide coverage and have gone down as one of the major early victories of the Civil Rights Movement.

READ MORE: Rosa Parks’ Life After the Bus Was No Easy Ride

Parks remained a civil rights advocate for the rest of her life. She moved to Detroit not long after the boycott, but returned to Alabama for the Selma-to-Montgomery Marches and made appearances around the country. For years, she served in the office of Rep. John Conyers, a pioneering congressman from Detroit, acting as a liaison between his office and the community while advocating for housing and economic justice. When Parks died in 2005, she became the first American who was not an elected official to lie in state in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. A recipient of numerous medals and honors, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Parks continues to hold a hallowed place in the pantheon of American leaders.

READ MORE: Rosa Parks: Her Life and Legacy

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Viet Cong officer is shot in the head, iconic photo taken


Year
1968
Month Day
February 02

Saigon, South Vietnam was a chaotic and bloody place in the winter of 1968. On January 30, North Vietnamese forces struck suddenly and with shocking force at targets throughout the South, taking the South Vietnamese and their American allies by surprise and turning the tide of a war that President Lyndon Johnson had assured his people they were close to winning. As the reeling South Vietnamese army worked to re-establish order in their capital, an American photographer captured an image that would come to symbolize the brutality of the conflict.

The Tet Offensive directly countered the American narrative that the North was incapable of mobilizing in large numbers and was on the retreat. Conventional and guerrilla warriors struck targets and areas that had been considered to be safely under U.S./Southern control. As the Viet Cong overran Saigon in the first hours of the Tet Offensive, a fighter named Nguyễn Văn Lém was part of a death squad that targeted the National Police and their families. According to the South Vietnamese military, Lém’s squad had just killed 34 people associated with the police, at least 24 of whom were civilians, when he was captured on February 1st.

Lém, who had worn civilian clothes as he carried out his alleged war crimes, was brought to Brigadier General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan. Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams saw the prisoner being escorted to the general and decided to take a few pictures. “I prepared to make that picture—the threat, the interrogation,” Adams recalled. “But it didn’t happen. The man just pulled a pistol out of his holster, raised it to the VC’s head and shot him in the temple.”

Adams captured the exact moment when the bullet from Loan’s Smith & Wesson entered Lém’s head at point-blank range. The image, which very much appeared to depict the summary execution of an unarmed civilian by a South Vietnamese military official, ran in newspapers around the world, causing a sensation. The story behind the photo was much more complex, but the shot came to encapsulate Americans’ darkest fears about the war: that it was a haphazard, amoral bloodletting in which the United States’ cruelty rivaled that of its enemies.

Indeed, while Lém was not the innocent victim he appeared to be, it was later concluded that his execution had been a war crime. It was far from the only one committed by American and South Vietnamese forces—just a few months later, on March 16, American troops killed somewhere between 347 and 504 civilians in what came to be known as the My Lai Massacre. “Saigon Execution,” as Adams titled his photo, became a symbol of all that was wrong with American involvement in the war and won the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography for 1969. Four years later, another AP photographer would win the prize for a similar photo, “Terror of War,” which depicted terrified children fleeing after the South Vietnamese air force mistakenly attacked their village with napalm.

READ MORE: Vietnam War Timeline

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BCPS Hosts Annual Ed Talk Community Forum Saturday, November 2, 2019, at Fort Lauderdale High School

Ed Talk 2019/20 logo

Broward County Public Schools (BCPS) engages stakeholders in a variety of ways – including community and public forums – that solicit input and provide feedback to address needs, concerns and priorities. Ed Talk is designed to inform and involve community members in discussing educational strategies and next steps. Each year, students, parents, teachers, staff, business leaders, elected officials and community members join the conversation focused on helping students reach their fullest potential.

WHAT: Annual Ed Talk – Community Forum

WHEN: Saturday, November 2, 2019 Networking Breakfast, 8 a.m. Program, 9 a.m. – noon

WHERE: Fort Lauderdale High School 1600 NE 4th Avenue Fort Lauderdale, FL 33305

This year, Ed Talk participants will engage in conversations around the recent development of the new 2024 Strategic Plan, guided by the three strategic goals – High-Quality Instruction, Safe and Supportive Environment, and Effective Communication. The event is free and open to the public. Free parking is available and breakfast is provided for participants. For more information and registration, visit browardschools.com/edtalk or call 754-321-2300.

MEDIA ARE INVITED TO COVER THIS EVENT

 

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ABOUT BROWARD COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS

“Committed to educating all students to reach their highest potential.”

Broward County Public Schools (BCPS) is the sixth-largest school district in the nation and the second-largest in the state of Florida. BCPS is Florida’s first fully accredited school system since 1962. BCPS has nearly 270,000 students and approximately 175,000 adult students in 241 schools, centers and technical colleges, and 89 charter schools. BCPS serves a diverse student population, with students representing 204 different countries and 191 different languages. To connect with BCPS, visit browardschools.com, follow us on Twitter @browardschools, on Facebook at facebook.com/browardschools.com and download the free BCPS mobile app.

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“Nipplegate” controversy at the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show


Year
2004
Month Day
February 01

A singular event occurred during the halftime show of the Super Bowl on February 1, 2004. While performing a duet with Janet Jackson, Justin Timberlake briefly exposed one of her breasts in what was later described as a “wardrobe malfunction.” The performance was airing live all around the world—an estimated 143.6 million people tuned in for all or some of the broadcast —and coincided with the rise of digital video recording and internet technology, as well as a national discussion about technology’s impact on children. As such, “Nipplegate” became one of the most-viewed, most-searched-for, and most-talked-about moments in the history of the internet.

Jackson and Timberlake, along with Jessica Simpson, P. Diddy, Nelly and Kid Rock, performed a lavishly-produced medley of songs. Halftime shows were traditionally conservative affairs, featuring marching bands and family-friendly music, but this changed in the 1990s. Jackson’s brother, the iconic pop star Michael Jackson, had played the halftime show in 1993, proving to the NFL and television executives that high-powered pop performances could dramatically increase ratings and ad revenue.

During the final song, “Rock Your Body,” Timberlake and Jackson danced suggestively. They claimed that the show was supposed to culminate in Timberlake ripping off Jackson’s bodice to reveal her red lace bra as he sang the final line, which included the lyric, “Bet I’ll have you naked by the end of this song.” Instead, the bra fell away with the rest of the bustier, and the prophecy of the lyrics was fulfilled.

Jackson immediately moved to cover herself up, and CBS immediately cut away; her breast was exposed on television for less than a second. Many speculated, and continue to assert, that either Timberlake, Timberlake and Jackson acting together, or the event’s producers themselves had exposed her breast on purpose as a publicity stunt.

The Federal Communications Commission received 540,000 complaints about the incident, 65,000 of which came from a single organization, the Parents Television Council. Coming as it did at a time when the right-wing “family values” movement was still a major presence in American culture, and amid a growing paranoia that the internet and mass media were exposing children to inappropriate content, “Nipplegate” caused a sensation that lasted months. Viacom, CBS’ parent company, received the maximum fine the FCC could issue for such offenses, and paid $3.5 million to settle indecency complaints about the broadcast.

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Atlantic Technical College and Technical High School Named National Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education

October 22, 2019

National Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education

Congratulations to Atlantic Technical College and Technical High School for being named a National Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education. The honor was awarded based on overall academic excellence or for success in closing achievement gaps among student subgroups.  

Of the 362 public and private schools in the nation to receive a 2019 National Blue Ribbon award, Atlantic Technical is one of only 11 schools in the state and the only school from Broward County Public Schools recognized.

“We recognize and honor your important work in preparing students for successful careers and meaningful lives,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to honorees. “As a National Blue Ribbon School, your school demonstrates what is possible when committed educators hold all students and staff to high standards and create vibrant, innovative cultures of teaching and learning.” 

Every year, the U.S. Department of Education seeks out and celebrates great American schools demonstrating that all students can achieve at high levels. The National Blue Ribbon School award affirms the hard work of students, educators, families and communities in creating safe and welcoming schools where students master challenging content.  

In November 2019, this year’s National Blue Ribbon Schools will be honored during an awards ceremony in Washington, D.C.

 

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ABOUT BROWARD COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS

“Committed to educating all students to reach their highest potential.”

Broward County Public Schools (BCPS) is the sixth-largest school district in the nation and the second-largest in the state of Florida. BCPS is Florida’s first fully accredited school system since 1962. BCPS has nearly 270,000 students and approximately 175,000 adult students in 241 schools, centers and technical colleges, and 89 charter schools. BCPS serves a diverse student population, with students representing 204 different countries and 191 different languages. To connect with BCPS, visit browardschools.com, follow us on Twitter @browardschools, on Facebook at facebook.com/browardschools.com and download the free BCPS mobile app.

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BCPS Awarded Four New Grants with a Combined Total of $2.275 Million to Support School Safety and Security

October 21, 2019

Broward County Public Schools (BCPS) remains focused on providing secure learning environments for students and is honored to be awarded four new grants from the U.S. Department of Justice to support and enhance ongoing safety efforts. These grants, with a combined total of more than $2.275 million, center on violence prevention and intervention, mental health services, emergency communications and threat assessments. Following are highlights of the grant awards.

  • U.S. Department of Justice – STOP School Violence Prevention and Mental Health Training Program – $500,000

    The STOP School Violence Act is designed to improve school security by providing students and teachers with the tools they need to recognize, quickly respond and to prevent acts of violence. This grant will fund age-appropriate targeted training and youth awareness programs for elementary school programs. Violence prevention curriculum will be presented to primary students from youth ambassadors at local secondary schools in a peer-to-peer training model. Violence prevention techniques will be perpetuated through prosocial clubs that encourage youth leadership in raising awareness and expanding education to prevent self-harm and harm to others.

  • U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention: Comprehensive School-Based Approach to Youth Violence and Victimization – $775,000

    This grant funding (provided over three years) will support BCPS and community stakeholders’ efforts to provide universal prevention, intervention and accountability services to K-12 students Districtwide to combat youth violence and victimization, including cyberbullying.

  •  U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services: School Violence Prevention Program – $500,000

    This grant funding supports a two-year program, which aims to enhance the District’s emergency communications capabilities by installing fixed duress buttons at all District schools. Grant funds will be used to acquire, cable/install and service fixed duress buttons mounted at key locations on school campuses.

  •  U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs STOP School Violence: Technology and Threat Assessment Solutions for Safer Schools – $500,000

    This grant funding will be used to train threat assessment/intervention teams on the centralized digital threat assessment monitoring system. Earlier this year, the District approved the new system, which will improve the District’s ability to capture information about threats and analyze the type of threats occurring across the District. The grant will support training, an instructional facilitator to conduct the training, and a Clerk Specialist IV to gather the necessary documentation.

 

Additional information attached.

 

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ABOUT BROWARD COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS

“Committed to educating all students to reach their highest potential.”

Broward County Public Schools (BCPS) is the sixth-largest school district in the nation and the second-largest in the state of Florida. BCPS is Florida’s first fully accredited school system since 1962. BCPS has nearly 270,000 students and approximately 175,000 adult students in 241schools, centers and technical colleges, and 89 charter schools. BCPS serves a diverse student population, with students representing 204 different countries and 191 different languages. To connect with BCPS, visit browardschools.com, visit browardschools.com, follow us on Twitter @browardschools, on Facebook at facebook.com/browardschools.com and download the free BCPS mobile app.

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WikiLeaks publishes the first documents leaked by Chelsea Manning


Year
2010
Month Day
February 18

On February 18, 2010, a relatively obscure website called WikiLeaks publishes a leaked diplomatic cable detailing discussions between American diplomats and Icelandic government officials. The leak of “Reikjavik13” barely registered with the public, but it was the first of what turned out to be nearly 750,000 sensitive documents sent to WikiLeaks by Chelsea Manning. Manning is now considered one of the most prolific and significant whistleblowers in American history, as her leaks shed light on atrocities committed by American armed forces, painted a far grimmer picture of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and greatly embarrassed the United States’ diplomatic establishment.

Manning, an intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army, was deployed to Iraq in October of 2009. Her job gave her access to all manner of classified and sensitive information from various organs of state. On January 5th, 2010, she began downloading massive amounts of material, starting with 400,000 documents pertaining to the Iraq War. Manning put the information on a CD marked “Lady Gaga” in order to smuggle it home and upload it to her personal computer. On leave in the United States, she shopped the information to both The New York Times and The Washington Post but neither took an interest. She began sending material to WikiLeaks in early February, but again got no response.

Then, on February 18, Manning sent WikiLeaks the cable known as “Reykjavik13.” The site published it within hours. Manning later said that she felt the cable depicted the U.S. government “bullying” the government of Iceland, and hoped that the leak would put pressure on the U.S. to lend economic assistance. The incident would have been a tiny historical footnote if not for the leaks that followed. Throughout the spring of 2010, WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of documents leaked by Manning, oftentimes via The New York Times, Der Spiegel and The Guardian

The diplomatic cables contained frank discussions of policy and American descriptions of foreign leaders, many of whom found cause to be offended, but other leaks revealed shocking truths about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Manning and WikiLeaks released multiple accounts and even videos of U.S. airstrikes that killed civilians, and the information they disclosed led watchdogs to estimate that American armed forces were responsible for over 10,000 more civilian deaths than they had officially acknowledged. As a whole, the leaks showed that the wars were not only going much worse than the government led the populace to believe, but that the scope of the humanitarian disaster was larger as well.

Manning was arrested in May of 2010 and was eventually sentenced to 35 years in military prison, which many called an extremely harsh sentence for a whistleblower. President Barack Obama stopped short of pardoning her but commuted her sentence in January of 2017, just three days before leaving office. She received international acclaim from free speech and anti-war activists, and is now known as a one of the most significant whistleblowers in U.S. history.

READ MORE: The United States Began Protecting Whistleblowers in 1777

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Martin Luther King, Jr.’s home is bombed


Year
1956
Month Day
January 30

On January 30, 1956, an unidentified white supremacist terrorist bombed the Montgomery home of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. No one was harmed, but the explosion outraged the community and was a major test of King’s steadfast commitment to non-violence.

King was relatively new to Montgomery, Alabama but had quickly involved himself in the civil rights struggle there. He was a leading organizer of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which began in December of 1955 after activist Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated city bus to a white passenger. The boycott brought King national recognition, but also made him a target of white supremacists. He was speaking at a nearby church on the evening of January 30 when a man pulled up in a car, walked up to King’s house, and tossed an explosive onto the porch. The bomb went off, damaging the house, but did not harm King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, who was inside with the couple’s seven-month-old daughter Yolanda.

News of the bombing spread quickly, and an angry crowd soon gathered outside King’s home. A matter of minutes after his home had been bombed, standing feet away from the site of the explosion, King preached non-violence. “I want you to love our enemies,” he told his supporters. “Be good to them, love them, and let them know you love them.” It was a prime example of King’s deeply-held belief in nonviolence, as what could have been a riot instead became a powerful display of the highest ideals of the Civil Rights Movement.

King added that “if I am stopped this movement will not stop,” a sentiment he repeated throughout his life. Later that same year, while the boycott was still in effect, someone fired a shotgun at the Kings’ home, and they continued to receive death threats and intimidation—including a threatening letter from the Federal Bureau of Investigation—until King was assassinated in 1968. The bombing was only one chapter in a long history of violence against Civil Rights leaders and African Americans that continues to this day. Bombings, shootings and arson at African American churches remain shockingly common in the United States—a massacre committed by a white supremacist at a church in Charleston, South Carolina claimed nine lives in 2015, and in 2019 the son of a local sheriff’s deputy was arrested and charged with a string of arson attacks on African-American churches in Louisiana.

READ MORE: Why Martin Luther King’s Family Believes James Earl Ray Was Not His Killer

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BCPS Chapter of the 5000 Role Models of Excellence Project Attends the Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Conference

October 21, 2019

BCPS Chapter of the 5000 Role Models of Excellence Project Attends the Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Conferen

The Broward County Public Schools (BCPS), 5000 Role Models of Excellence Project chapter traveled to Washington, D.C. to attend the 2019 Congressional Black Caucus (CBCF) Annual Legislative Conference (ALC), September 12–15.

Through the 5000 Role Models of Excellence Project, 50 students from Hallandale High School, Hollywood Hills High School and Miramar High School attended the ALC and participated in panel discussions focused on education; the social status of African American men and boys; and disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline. They also received  first-hand experience on how to influence change in education policy while attending forums with some of the nation’s most influential legislators, celebrities and leaders.

The 5000 Role Models of Excellence Project aims to provide minority male students from grades three through 12 with positive role models and experiences that empower them to make good choices and encourage healthy living, responsibility, respect and achievement. The young men participate in various cultural and educational experiences such as visits to college campuses, etiquette workshops, and job and career training. The Project aims to improve academic performance, reduced truancy, referrals and suspensions, and increase pathways to success through mentoring and diverse experiences. 

The CBCF ALC is the leading policy conference on issues impacting African Americans. Thought leaders, legislators and concerned citizens engage on economic development, civil and social justice, public health, and education issues. For more information on the BCPS chapter of the 5000 Role Models of Excellence Project, visit https://bit.ly/31trWAh.

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ABOUT BROWARD COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS

“Committed to educating all students to reach their highest potential.”

Broward County Public Schools (BCPS) is the sixth-largest school district in the nation and the second-largest in the state of Florida. BCPS is Florida’s first fully accredited school system since 1962. BCPS has nearly 270,000 students and approximately 175,000 adult students in 241 schools, centers and technical colleges, and 89 charter schools. BCPS serves a diverse student population, with students representing 204 different countries and 191 different languages. To connect with BCPS, visit browardschools.com, follow us on Twitter @browardschools, on Facebook at facebook.com/browardschools.com and download the free BCPS mobile app.

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