“Pale Blue Dot” photo of Earth is taken

On Valentine’s Day, 1990, 3.7 billion miles away from the sun, the Voyager 1 spacecraft takes a photograph of Earth. The picture, known as Pale Blue Dot, depicts our planet as a nearly indiscernible speck roughly the size of a pixel.

Launched on September 5, 1977, Voyagers 1 and 2 were charged with exploring the outer reaches of our solar system. It passed by Jupiter in March of 1979 and Saturn the following year. The gaps between the outer planets are so vast that it was another decade before it passed by Neptune and arrived at the spot where it was to take a series of images of the planets, known as the “Family Portrait” of our solar system.

Of the Family Portrait series, Pale Blue Dot was certainly the most memorable. The furthest image ever taken of Earth, it lent its name to popular astronomer Carl Sagan’s 1994 book. Sagan, who advised the Voyager mission and had suggested the photo, wrote the following: “Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

Voyager 1’s journey continues. In 1998, it became the most distant human-made object in space, and on August 25, 2012, it left the furthest reaches of the sun’s magnetic field and solar winds, becoming the first man-made object in interstellar space. 

READ MORE: 6 Fascinating Facts About Space Probe Voyager 1

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Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini calls on Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie, author of “The Satanic Verses”


Year
1989
Month Day
February 14

Salman Rushdie likely understood he would cause a controversy when he published a novel titled The Satanic Verses. The book mocked or at least contained mocking references to the Prophet Muhammad and other aspects of Islam, in addition to and a character clearly based on the Supreme Leader of Iran. On February 14, 1989, that Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued just about the strongest response possible, calling on “all brave Muslims” to kill Rushdie and his publishers.

Although many of the most controversial things said about Islam and Muhammad in the book come from the mouths of disreputable or comic characters, it was undeniably critical and insulting. The title refers to passages said to have been removed from the Qur’an in which the Prophet spoke the words of Satan instead of God, and many were particularly incensed by the depiction of a brothel where the prostitutes shared the names of Muhammad’s wives. Khomeini, who had suddenly deposed a U.S.-backed monarch a decade before, was the leader of a group of clerics who had turned Iran into a theocracy. As such, he was perhaps the most prominent Shi’a authority in the world. Muslims around the world had already condemned The Satanic Verses—it was publicly burnt in Bolton, UK, sparked a deadly riot in Pakistan and was banned entirely in multiple Muslim countries—but Khomeini’s fatwa brought the controversy to new heights.

Booksellers the world over, including many Barnes & Noble stores in the United States, refused to sell The Satanic Verses for fear of retribution. Many that did sell it were bombed. Free speech advocates and anti-religious figures vociferously defended Rushdie, but many Muslim leaders and even moderate Muslim cultural figures outright condemned him or at least stated he had gone too far. Rushdie apologized both to the Ayatollah and to Muslims around the world in 1989 and 1990, but protests and violence continued. The novel’s Japanese translator was stabbed to death in 1991, while its Italian translator was critically wounded by an assailant. Rushdie later said he regretted apologizing.

A fatwa is a judgement issued by a religious scholar and can only be repealed by that same scholar, meaning that the fatwa against Rushdie could never be taken back after the Ayatollah’s death in June of 1989. In 1998, the Iranian government declared it would neither “support nor hinder” Rushdie’s assassination, and private groups inside Iran and elsewhere continue to raise money to put towards the bounty on his head. Though Rushdie has had to hire security teams and has received countless threats since the book’s publication, no assassin has yet come close to killing him. The author, who was knighted in 2007, said that year that he saw the fatwa as “a piece of rhetoric rather than a real threat.” While Rushdie remains unharmed, the backlash to his novel is responsible for dozens of deaths and injuries around the world, one of the deadliest—and possibly the most widespread—instances of conflict between religious fundamentalists and free-speech activists of the 20th century.

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Teen gunman kills 17, injures 17 at Parkland, Florida high school


Year
2018
Month Day
February 14

On February 14, 2018, an expelled student entered Parkland, Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and opened fire, killing 17 people and wounding 17 others, in what became the deadliest shooting at a high school in United States history.

Dressed in a maroon shirt adorned with the school logo, Nikolas Cruz exited his Uber outside the campus at 2:19 p.m. He approached the school wearing a backpack filled with magazines and carrying a black duffel packed with his legally purchased AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.

School staff had been warned after Cruz’s expulsion for “disciplinary reasons” in 2017 that the troubled teen was a risk to student safety. So when a staff member saw him outside, he radioed a “Code Red” to initiate a lockdown of the school. It was too late.

Cruz entered the high school’s Freshman Building, on campus—which was mostly filled with freshman students—at 2:21 p.m. and unpacked his rifle in a stairwell. According to NBC Miami, freshman Chris McKenna, 15, spotted Cruz there and received a chilling warning from the gunman. “You better get out of here. Things are going to start getting messy.” McKenna ran outside, where he spotted Aaron Feis, a coach and school security monitor who took him to the baseball field 500 feet away and turned back to “check it out.”

Cruz exited the stairwell into a first-floor hallway, firing a stream of bullets down the corridor, shattering windows and shooting through doors. In just under two minutes, he murdered 11 people and injured 13 others. He then headed up the stairs. He was on the second floor for less than a minute, firing but hitting no one, before going to the third floor where he killed his last six victims, and injured four more in the final 45 seconds of the attack.

Terrified students ran for their lives. Others remained holed up, hiding in classrooms, closets and bathrooms, desperate to reach their parents. Many began broadcasting the horror on social media through video and live posts.

According to the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Cruz left the hallways and went to the faculty lounge, where he set up a bipod—like a tripod on which to rest the gun—reloaded his weapon and began firing, like a sniper, at the fleeing students outside. Only hurricane impact-resistant glass in the windows kept the death toll from growing.

In all, Cruz’s attack lasted less than four minutes and left 17 dead. At 2:28 p.m., just seven minutes after entering the building, he ditched the rifle in another stairwell and left the school, attempting to blend in with the crowd of escaping students. The gunman successfully left the campus, running to a Walmart at 2:50 p.m, stopping at a Subway restaurant to get a drink and eventually heading to McDonalds. He was apprehended shortly thereafter after being spotted by a Broward County police officer.

“He looked like a typical high school student, and for a quick moment I thought, ‘Could this be the person who I need to stop?’” said Officer Michael Leonard in an interview after arresting Cruz.

Broward Sheriff’s deputy school resource officer Scot Peterson, who was assigned to the school that day, would later be accused of retreating during the shooting while victims were still under attack. Peterson was arrested in June 2019 and faced charges of neglect of a child, culpable negligence and perjury.

The devastation felt by the Florida community—once considered the safest city in the state—was immeasurable. Previous school shootings throughout the country had prompted Stoneman Douglas (and other schools) to practice active shooter drills, and the school had employed an armed officer on campus. But it hadn’t been enough to stop the carnage. Chants for “No More Guns!” broke out at candlelight vigils and over a thousand people showed up to funerals in the days after.

Student survivors took to social media to make their anger known, giving interviews and becoming activists for gun safety legislation. One student, David Hogg, went from school newspaper reporter to activist when his plea to legislators in a CNN interview went viral.

Please, take action,” he begged lawmakers.

On March 24, less than six weeks after their lives were shattered by violence, students helped organize the March for Our Lives, a demonstration in support of gun violence prevention. Students across the country were encouraged to stage walkouts, and a rally was held in Washington, D.C. There, anti-gun violence protesters from around the country—some survivors of school shootings, and others whose daily lives were affected by gun violence—celebrities, and other activists, spoke to a crowd of thousands, demanding legislative change.

Three weeks later, Florida Governor Rick Scott, a supporter of the NRA, responded. He signed a bill imposing a 21-year-old legal age requirement for gun purchases and a three-day waiting period on all gun transactions. The law also controversially permitted the arming of some school employees.

Nikolas Cruz was charged with 17 counts of first-degree murder and 17 counts of attempted murder. 

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Captain Cook killed in Hawaii


Year
1779
Month Day
February 14

On February 14, 1779, Captain James Cook, the great English explorer and navigator, is killed by natives of Hawaii during his third visit to the Pacific island group.

In 1768, Cook, a surveyor in the Royal Navy, was commissioned a lieutenant in command of the HMS Endeavour and led an expedition that took scientists to Tahiti to chart the course of the planet Venus. In 1771, he returned to England, having explored the coast of New Zealand and Australia and circumnavigated the globe. 

Beginning in 1772, he commanded a major mission to the South Pacific and during the next three years explored the Antarctic region, charted the New Hebrides, and discovered New Caledonia. In 1776, Cook sailed from England again as commander of the HMS Resolution and Discovery, and in January 1778 he made his first visit to the Hawaiian Islands. He may have been the first European to ever visit the island group, which he named the Sandwich Islands in honor of one of his patrons, John Montague, the Earl of Sandwich.

Cook and his crew were welcomed by the Hawaiians, who were fascinated by the Europeans’ ships and their use of iron. Cook provisioned his ships by trading the metal, and his sailors traded iron nails for sex. The ships then made a brief stop at Ni’ihau and headed north to look for the western end of a northwest passage from the North Atlantic to the Pacific. Almost one year later, Cook’s two ships returned to the Hawaiian Islands and found a safe harbor in Hawaii’s Kealakekua Bay.

It is suspected that the Hawaiians attached religious significance to the first stay of the Europeans on their islands. In Cook’s second visit, there was no question of this phenomenon. Kealakekua Bay was considered the sacred harbor of Lono, the fertility god of the Hawaiians, and at the time of Cook’s arrival the locals were engaged in a festival dedicated to Lono. Cook and his compatriots were welcomed as gods and for the next month exploited the Hawaiians’ good will. After one of the crewmen died, exposing the Europeans as mere mortals, relations became strained. On February 4, 1779, the British ships sailed from Kealakekua Bay, but rough seas damaged the foremast of the Resolution, and after only a week at sea the expedition was forced to return to Hawaii.

The Hawaiians greeted Cook and his men by hurling rocks; they then stole a small cutter vessel from the Discovery. Negotiations with King Kalaniopuu for the return of the cutter collapsed after a lesser Hawaiian chief was shot to death and a mob of Hawaiians descended on Cook’s party. 

The captain and his men fired on the angry Hawaiians, but they were soon overwhelmed, and only a few managed to escape to the safety of the Resolution. Captain Cook himself was killed by the mob. A few days later, the Englishmen retaliated by firing their cannons and muskets at the shore, killing some 30 Hawaiians. The Resolution and Discovery eventually returned to England.

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St. Valentine beheaded


Year
270
Month Day
February 14

On February 14, around the year 270 A.D., Valentine, a holy priest in Rome in the days of Emperor Claudius II, was executed.

Under the rule of Claudius the Cruel, Rome was involved in many unpopular and bloody campaigns. The emperor had to maintain a strong army, but was having a difficult time getting soldiers to join his military leagues. Claudius believed that Roman men were unwilling to join the army because of their strong attachment to their wives and families.

To get rid of the problem, Claudius banned all marriages and engagements in Rome. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret.

When Valentine’s actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death. Valentine was arrested and dragged before the Prefect of Rome, who condemned him to be beaten to death with clubs and to have his head cut off. The sentence was carried out on February 14, on or about the year 270.

READ MORE: Who Was the Real St. Valentine?

Legend also has it that while in jail, St. Valentine left a farewell note for the jailer’s daughter, who had become his friend, and signed it “From Your Valentine.”

For his great service, Valentine was named a saint after his death.

In truth, the exact origins and identity of St. Valentine are unclear. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “At least three different Saint Valentines, all of them martyrs, are mentioned in the early martyrologies under the date of 14 February.” One was a priest in Rome, the second one was a bishop of Interamna (now Terni, Italy) and the third St. Valentine was a martyr in the Roman province of Africa.

Legends vary on how the martyr’s name became connected with romance. The date of his death may have become mingled with the Feast of Lupercalia, a pagan festival of love. On these occasions, the names of young women were placed in a box, from which they were drawn by the men as chance directed. In 496 A.D., Pope Gelasius decided to put an end to the Feast of Lupercalia, and he declared that February 14 be celebrated as St Valentine’s Day.

Gradually, February 14 became a date for exchanging love messages, poems and simple gifts such as flowers.

READ MORE: 6 Surprising Facts About St. Valentine

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Olympic speed skater Dan Jansen falls after sister dies


Year
1988
Month Day
February 14

On February 14, 1988, U.S. speed skater Dan Jansen, a favorite to win the gold medal in the 500-meter race at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, falls during competition, only hours after learning his sister had died of cancer. Jansen suffered disappointment after disappointment in the Olympics, earning him a reputation as “the heartbreak kid,” before he finally captured an Olympic gold medal in 1994.

Daniel Erwin Jansen was born June 17, 1965, in West Allis, Wisconsin. He put on his first pair of skates at age four and soon was excelling at competitive speed skating. At his first Olympics, in 1984 in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, he finished 16th in the 500 meters but came within a fraction of a second of taking home the bronze medal in the 1000 meters. Four years later, at the 1988 Olympics in Calgary, Canada, Jansen, who had won the World Sprint Championship a week earlier, was a gold-medal favorite in the 500 meters. However, on February 14, the day of the race, he learned that his 27-year-old sister Jane, who had been instrumental in his speed skating career, had died of leukemia. Jansen’s family encouraged him to continue with his plan to compete later that day. However, seconds into the race, Jansen slipped and fell. Several days later, he competed in the 1000-meter race and after a record-breaking start, fell again. At the 1992 Olympics in Albertville, France, Jansen again went home disappointed, finishing fourth in the 500 meters and 26th in the 1000 meters. Despite his Olympic heartbreak, he remained a top competitor and was the first man to break 36 seconds in the 500 meters. In 1994, he won a second World Sprint Championship. At that year’s Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, though, Jansen finished a disappointing eighth in the 500 meters and thought his chances of ever winning an Olympic medal were over. However, on February 18, Jansen finished the 1000 meters 1:12:43, good for the gold medal and the world record. In what became a memorable Olympic moment, Jansen took a victory lap around the ice carrying his young daughter Jane, named for his late sister.

Later that year, Jansen announced his retirement from competitive speed skating. He went on to establish the Dan Jansen Foundation, which funds leukemia research and other activities, and currently works as a sports commentator and motivational speaker.

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Theodore Roosevelt’s wife and mother die


Year
1884
Month Day
February 14

Future President Theodore Roosevelt’s wife and mother die, only hours apart, on February 14, 1884. 

Roosevelt was at work in the New York state legislature attempting to get a government reform bill passed when he was summoned home by his family. He returned home to find his mother, Mittie, had succumbed to typhoid fever. On the same day, his wife of four years, Alice Lee, died of Bright’s disease, a severe kidney ailment. Only two days before her death, Alice Lee had given birth to the couple’s daughter, Alice.

The double tragedy devastated Roosevelt. He ordered those around him not to mention his wife’s name. Burdened by grief, he abandoned politics, left the infant Alice with his sister Bamie, and, at the end of 1884, struck out for the Dakota territories, where he lived as a rancher and worked as a sheriff for two years. When not engrossed in raising cattle or acting as the local lawman, Roosevelt found time to indulge his passion for reading and writing history. After a blizzard wiped out his prized herd of cattle in 1885, Roosevelt decided to return to eastern society. Once back in New York in 1886, he again took up politics and took over raising his precocious daughter, Alice, who later became a national celebrity.

After stints in the Spanish-American War and as governor of New York, Roosevelt won a spot as William McKinley’s vice-presidential running mate in 1896. When McKinley died at the beginning of his second term in 1901, Roosevelt moved into the White House, where he and his family would spend the next eight years.

Alice grew to admire and respect her father yet, according to her memoirs and friends, she harbored resentment toward him for having abandoned her as a baby. Not long after he married his second wife, Edith, in 1886, Alice found herself competing not only with her father’s political cronies and new wife for his attention, but also with her five half-siblings who arrived in quick succession. The high-spirited Alice perhaps took to scandalous behavior in retaliation.

The Roosevelt era coincided with a repressive time in women’s history, but the outspoken and independent Alice flouted acceptable behavior and reveled in the spotlight as first daughter. Alice’s activities as a young adult, such as smoking and staying out late with boys, irked her father, who nevertheless indulged her. In one instance when she repeatedly burst into a White House meeting, Roosevelt shrugged apologetically, I can either run the country or I can control Alice, but I cannot possibly do both.

After Roosevelt left office, Alice maintained a high profile in Washington society. She was banned from visiting the Taft White House after a voodoo doll of Mrs. Taft was found buried (by Alice) in the front lawn. President Wilson also banned her from White House society in retaliation for her making a lewd comment about him in public. Wilson was not her only target—she once remarked that her friend, Warren Harding’s vice president Calvin Coolidge, looked as though he’s been weaned on a pickle.

READ MORE: 7 Little-Known Legacies of Teddy Roosevelt

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First trainload of oranges leaves Los Angeles


Year
1886
Month Day
February 14

Destined to become one of the state’s major exports, the first trainload of oranges grown by Southern California farmers leaves Los Angeles via the transcontinental railroad.

The Spanish had established Los Angeles, one of the oldest cities in the Far West, in 1781 to help colonize the region. For several decades, the city was the largest center of population in Mexican California. Mexican settlement and development of California, however, proceeded very slowly, and Los Angeles developed little real economic or political power during this period. By the time the U.S. took control of California in 1848, Los Angeles still only had just over 1,610 inhabitants.

READ MORE: 10 Ways the Transcontinental Railroad Changed America

As Anglo-Americans began to assert their control over California, they gradually broke up the large Hispanic ranches and replaced them with a more diversified farming economy. With irrigation, southern California proved an ideal environment for growing many crops, particularly valuable fruits like oranges. During the 1870s and 1880s, state railroad lines linking Los Angeles into the new system of transcontinental railways created additional moneymaking opportunities. Settlers, tourists, and health seekers all boarded trains to travel to the Pacific, where the sunny climate and beautiful scenery promised a new and better life.

READ MORE: Los Angeles: A History

The healthful new California lifestyle became closely associated in the public mind with the sweet fruits that grew so abundantly in the orchards around Los Angeles. Taking advantage of the rapid transportation capabilities of the transcontinental lines, Los Angeles area orchard owners began shipping their oranges to the East in 1886. As the city grew, it subdivided many nearby orchards and pushed the orange growers out into regions like Orange County. There, the orange growers steadily increased the size of their orchards to the point where local supplies of water for irrigation were inadequate. Determined to sustain their agricultural and real estate booms, Los Angeles residents undertook a massive program of hydraulic engineering in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Engineers took water from the distant mountains to transform the arid southern California ecosystem into a green agricultural and residential paradise.

The resulting growth was astonishing. In 1880, just before the first trainload of oranges departed, Los Angeles had 11,183 inhabitants. A decade later, the population had ballooned to 102,479. By 1920, there would be more than half a million residents. Los Angeles was already well on its way to becoming the largest urban center in the American West.

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The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre


Year
1929
Month Day
February 14

Four men dressed as police officers enter gangster Bugs Moran’s headquarters on North Clark Street in Chicago, line seven of Moran’s henchmen against a wall, and shoot them to death. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, as it is now called, was the culmination of a gang war between arch rivals Al Capone and Bugs Moran.

George “Bugs” Moran was a career criminal who ran the North Side gang in Chicago during the bootlegging era of the 1920s. He fought bitterly with “Scarface” Al Capone for control of smuggling and trafficking operations in the Windy City. Throughout the 1920s, both survived several attempted murders. On one notorious occasion, Moran and his associates drove six cars past a hotel in Cicero, Illinois, where Capone and his associates were having lunch and showered the building with more than 1,000 bullets.

A $50,000 bounty on Capone’s head was the final straw for the gangster. He ordered that Moran’s gang be destroyed. On February 14, a delivery of bootleg whiskey was expected at Moran’s headquarters. But Moran was late and happened to see police officers entering his establishment. Moran waited outside, thinking that his gunmen inside were being arrested in a raid. However, the disguised assassins were actually killing the seven men inside.

The murdered men included Moran’s best killers, Frank and Pete Gusenberg. Reportedly Frank was still alive when real officers appeared on the scene. When asked who had shot him, the mortally wounded Gusenberg kept his code of silence, responding, “No one, nobody shot me.”

The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre actually proved to be the last confrontation for both Capone and Moran. Capone was jailed in 1931 and Moran lost so many important men that he could no longer control his territory. On the seventh anniversary of the massacre, Jack McGurn, one of the Valentine’s Day hit men,was killed him in a crowded bowling alley with a burst of machine-gun fire.

McGurn’s killer remains unidentified, but was likely Moran, though he was never charged with the murder. Moran was relegated to small-time robberies until he was sent to jail in 1946. He died in Leavenworth Federal Prison in 1957 of lung cancer.

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Sandinistas agree to free elections


Year
1989
Month Day
February 14

At a meeting of the presidents of Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and El Salvador, the leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua agrees to free a number of political prisoners and hold free elections within a year; in return, Honduras promises to close bases being used by anti-Sandinista rebels. Within a year, elections in Nicaragua resulted in the defeat of the Sandinistas, removing what officials during the administration of President Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) referred to as a “beachhead of communism” in the Western Hemisphere.

Nicaragua had been a Cold War battlefield ever since the Sandinista regime came to power in 1979, following the overthrow of long-time dictator Anastacio Somoza. Almost immediately, U.S. officials criticized the new government, claiming that it was leftist—possibly Marxist—in its orientation. As relations between the United States and Nicaragua worsened, and Nicaragua moved toward a closer relationship with the communist bloc, the Reagan administration took action to bring down the Sandinista government. The foundation of this effort was economic and military aid totaling nearly one billion dollars by 1988 to the so-called Contras—anti-Sandinista rebels operating from Honduras and Costa Rica. By the late 1980s, concerns about regional stability and the widening Contra war effort spurred other Central American governments to work toward a solution to the Nicaraguan conflict. The February 1989 agreement was the culmination of that work, with Nicaragua promising free elections within a year in exchange for Honduran promises to close the Contra bases within its borders.

Contra leaders were quick to criticize the agreement, but it was obvious that their days were numbered. The Sandinista government declared that the agreement symbolized the failure of the U.S. effort to bring it down through force. Officials of the new administration of President George Bush in the United States adopted a wait-and-see attitude towards events in the region. Ronald Reagan and other officials who served during his tenure, however, were quick to take credit for the outcome of the meeting—despite the fact that they had not participated in it. They claimed that the U.S. pressure during the previous eight years, particularly support of the Contras, had forced the Sandinistas to agree to elections. When the Sandinistas-who were heavily favored to win the election—went down to a shocking electoral defeat in February 1990, Reaganites claimed total victory.

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