Jason Collins, first openly gay athlete to play in NBA, makes U.S. sports history

On February 23, 2014, Brooklyn Nets center Jason Collins becomes the first openly gay athlete to play in a game in the United States’ four major professional leagues. The 35-year-old journeyman plays 10 scoreless minutes, recording two rebounds and five fouls in the Nets’ 108-102 victory over the Los Angeles Lakers.

In May 2013, Collins revealed he is gay in a first-person essay in Sports Illustrated. “I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m Black. And I’m gay,” he wrote. “I didn’t set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport. But since I am, I’m happy to start the conversation.”

READ MORE: LGBT History

Before his revelation, the seven-foot, 255-pound big man was primarily known as a solid defender and rebounder and the identical twin brother of NBA veteran Jarron Collins. 

Collins, unsigned through the first half of the 2013-14 season, got an opportunity with the Nets after Brooklyn made a trade to open a roster spot. He had played with the Nets for the first seven years of his NBA career. 

“The decision to sign Jason was a basketball decision,” Nets general manager Billy King said in a statement. “We needed to increase our depth inside, and with his experience and size, we felt he was the right choice for a 10-day contract.”

The reception for Collins, who played collegiately at Stanford, was mostly positive. Outspoken TV commentator and Hall of Famer Charles Barkley told the New York Daily News’ Mike Lupica: “This is a good day in terms of breaking another barrier, but we gotta get to the point where people stop worrying about this.”

Collins appeared in 22 games for the Nets in 2014, the final season of his 13-year career. 

In 2021, Las Vegas Raiders defensive lineman Carl Nassib became the first active NFL player to announce he is gay. No active NHL or Major League Baseball Player has  announced he is gay.

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Ahmaud Arbery is murdered while out jogging

Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, is shot dead by a white father and son while out for a jog in a suburb of Brunswick, Georgia on February 23, 2020. 

On May 7, following the release of a video of the killing that spurred national attention from the media, civil rights groups, lawmakers, celebrities and, eventually, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Gregory and Travis McMichael were arrested on charges of murder and aggravated assault. William Bray, who filmed the shooting on his phone, was also arrested and charged with felony murder and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.

In June, the three men were indicted by a grand jury on all nine counts, including malice murder, four counts felony murder, two counts aggregated assault, false imprisonment and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.

Arbery, a former high school football player, reportedly jogged around the neighborhoods of Brunswick frequently, according to The New York Times. Gregory McMichael, a retired police officer and investigator for the local district attorney’s office, told police he saw Arbery running that day, and thought he looked like a suspect in a series of local break-ins. The father and son hopped in their white pickup truck, armed with a .357 Magnum and a shotgun, and pursued Arbery. Bryan also gave chase, the newspaper reports, and filmed the video that shows a struggle between Arbery and Travis McMichael, who fired three shots.

The video, released on May 5, 2020 by a lawyer for Arbery’s family, sparked outrage that no arrests had been made more than two months after the killing. The McMichaels claimed self defense and the first two prosecutors in the case recused themselves.

The shooting happened shortly before the deaths of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor by police during a failed no-knock raid in Louisville, Kentucky. All these incidents sparked widespread protests against police violence and racial injustice in the United States and around the globe. 

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It’s a tie for Song of the Year at the 20th annual Grammy Awards


Year
1978
Month Day
February 23

Music fans might expect that the songs up for Best Song consideration at the 1977 Grammy Awards included songs that have stood the test of time, like Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish,” Elvis Costello’s “Allison,” Tom Petty’s “American Girl” or Bob Marley’s “Jammin’”. In actuality, the Academy of 1978 considered a slate of songs from 1977 that included only one timeless classic (“Hotel California”). And, in the end, Grammy voters that year made history by failing even to settle on a winner. On February 23, 1978, both Barbra Streisand’s “Love Theme from A Star Is Born (Evergreen)” and Debby Boone’s “You Light Up My Life” were awarded the Best Song Grammy—the first tie in that category in Grammy history.

The award for “You Light Up My Life” was not actually an award for Debby Boone. The Best Song category is an award for songwriters, and though “You Light Up My Life” propelled Boone to the Best New Artist award that year, she did not write the song herself. A songwriter named Joe Brooks picked up his Best Song Grammy for a song originally recorded by an obscure session singer for use in the soundtrack of a movie he also directed, also called You Light Up My Life. Debby Boone’s record label found the song and had her record it after the movie had already been made. It went on to spend an astonishing 10 weeks at the top of the pop charts in the autumn of 1977. “You Light Up My Life” was Debby Boone’s only pop hit and led to her only Grammy nomination

“Love Theme from A Star Is Born (Evergreen)” was co-written by Streisand and Paul Williams, both multiple Grammy winners—Streisand has won 13 Grammys while Paul Williams has won two. Like “You Light Up My Life,” “Evergreen” was also from a movie that failed to have anywhere near the impact its theme song did. For Barbra Streisand, the tie that night made her the answer to an excellent trivia question: Who is the only person to tie for both a Grammy Award and an Oscar? In 1968, she was the co-winner in the Best Actress category for her performance in Funny Girl. (Katherine Hepburn was the co-winner for her role in The Lion in Winter.)

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Children receive first polio vaccine


Year
1954
Month Day
February 23

On February 23, 1954, a group of children from Arsenal Elementary School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, receive the first injections of the new polio vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk.

Though not as devastating as the plague or influenza, poliomyelitis was a highly contagious disease that emerged in terrifying outbreaks and seemed impossible to stop. Attacking the nerve cells and sometimes the central nervous system, polio caused muscle deterioration, paralysis and even death. Even as medicine vastly improved in the first half of the 20th century in the Western world, polio still struck, affecting mostly children but sometimes adults as well. The most famous victim of a 1921 outbreak in America was future President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then a young politician. The disease spread quickly, leaving his legs permanently paralyzed.

In the late 1940s, the March of Dimes, a grassroots organization founded with President Roosevelt’s help to find a way to defend against polio, enlisted Dr. Jonas Salk, head of the Virus Research Lab at the University of Pittsburgh. Salk found that polio had as many as 125 strains of three basic types, and that an effective vaccine needed to combat all three. By growing samples of the polio virus and then deactivating, or “killing” them by adding a chemical called formalin, Salk developed his vaccine, which was able to immunize without infecting the patient.

After mass inoculations began in 1954, everyone marveled at the high success rate–some 60-70 percent–until the vaccine caused a sudden outbreak of some 200 cases. After it was determined that the cases were all caused by one faulty batch of the vaccine, production standards were improved, and by August 1955 some 4 million shots had been given. Cases of polio in the U.S. dropped from 14,647 in 1955 to 5,894 in 1956, and by 1959 some 90 other countries were using Salk’s vaccine.   

A later version of the polio vaccine, developed by Albert Sabin, used a weakened form of the live virus and was swallowed instead of injected. It was licensed in 1962 and soon became more popular than Salk’s vaccine, as it was cheaper to make and easier for people to take. There is still no cure for polio once it has been contracted, but the use of vaccines has virtually eliminated polio in the United States. According to the World Health Organization, polio cases have been reduced by 99 percent and survives only among the world’s poorest and most marginalized communities. WHO hopes to eradicate the disease by providing every child with the vaccine.  

READ MORE: 8 Things You May Not Know About Jonas Salk

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U.S. flag raised on Iwo Jima


Year
1945
Month Day
February 23

During the bloody Battle for Iwo Jima, U.S. Marines from the 3rd Platoon, E Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Regiment of the 5th Division take the crest of Mount Suribachi, the island’s highest peak and most strategic position, and raise the U.S. flag. Marine photographer Louis Lowery was with them and recorded the event. Americans fighting for control of Suribachi’s slopes cheered the raising of the flag, and several hours later more Marines headed up to the crest with a larger flag. Joe Rosenthal, a photographer with the Associated Press, met them along the way and recorded the raising of the second flag along with a Marine still photographer and a motion-picture cameraman.

Rosenthal took three photographs atop Suribachi. The first, which showed five Marines and one Navy corpsman struggling to hoist the heavy flag pole, became the most reproduced photograph in history and won him a Pulitzer Prize. The accompanying motion-picture footage attests to the fact that the picture was not posed. Of the other two photos, the second was similar to the first but less affecting, and the third was a group picture of 18 Marines smiling and waving for the camera. Many of these men, including three of the six Marines seen raising the flag in the famous Rosenthal photo, were killed before the conclusion of the Battle for Iwo Jima in late March.

In early 1945, U.S. military command sought to gain control of the island of Iwo Jima in advance of the projected aerial campaign against the Japanese home islands. Iwo Jima, a tiny volcanic island located in the Pacific about 700 miles southeast of Japan, was to be a base for fighter aircraft and an emergency-landing site for bombers. On February 19, 1945, after three days of heavy naval and aerial bombardment, the first wave of U.S. Marines stormed onto Iwo Jima’s inhospitable shores.

The Japanese garrison on the island numbered 22,000 heavily entrenched men. Their commander, General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, had been expecting an Allied invasion for months and used the time wisely to construct an intricate and deadly system of underground tunnels, fortifications, and artillery that withstood the initial Allied bombardment. By the evening of the first day, despite incessant mortar fire, 30,000 U.S. Marines commanded by General Holland Smith managed to establish a solid beachhead.

During the next few days, the Marines advanced inch by inch under heavy fire from Japanese artillery and suffered suicidal charges from the Japanese infantry. Many of the Japanese defenders were never seen and remained underground manning artillery until they were blown apart by a grenade or rocket, or incinerated by a flame thrower.

While Japanese kamikaze flyers slammed into the Allied naval fleet around Iwo Jima, the Marines on the island continued their bloody advance across the island, responding to Kuribayashi’s lethal defenses with remarkable endurance. On February 23, the crest of 550-foot Mount Suribachi was taken, and the next day the slopes of the extinct volcano were secured.

By March 3, U.S. forces controlled all three airfields on the island, and on March 26 the last Japanese defenders on Iwo Jima were wiped out. Only 200 of the original 22,000 Japanese defenders were captured alive. More than 6,000 Americans died taking Iwo Jima, and some 17,000 were wounded.

READ MORE: The Battle of Iwo Jima, Revisited

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Eric Heiden speed skates into Olympic history


Year
1980
Month Day
February 23

On February 23, 1980, speed skater Eric Heiden wins the 10,000-meter race at the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, setting a world record with his time and winning an unprecedented fifth gold medal at the games.

Heiden had been training as a speed skater since the age of 14. At the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria, Heiden, then 17, came in seventh in the 1500-meter race and 19th in the 5000 meters. He then won the world speed skating championships in 1977, 1978 and 1979 and became a hero in the Netherlands and Norway, where the sport is popular, while remaining less well-known at home in the United States.

Heiden instantly became famous in his homeland, however, after his remarkable performance at the 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid. On February 15, Heiden won his first gold medal, in the 500 meters. Over the next nine days, this victory was followed by four more first-place finishes, in the 1000 meters, 1500 meters, 5000 meters and 10,000 meters. On February, 23 the 21-year-old skating phenom broke a world record in the 10,000 meters, with a time of 14:28:13. Amazingly, the night before his fifth victory, Heiden stayed up late cheering on the U.S. men’s ice hockey team as they defeated the Soviet Union in a massive upset. He overslept the next day and rushed to the rink for his race after eating just a few slices of bread for breakfast.

Before Heiden, no other athlete in Olympic history had ever won five individual gold medals. American swimmer Mark Spitz took home seven golds in 1972, but three of them were for team relay events. At the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps won four individual gold medals, two relay team golds and one individual bronze and one team bronze.

After retiring from speed skating, Heiden, who largely shunned the spotlight and endorsement deals, became a professional bike racer and an orthopedic surgeon.

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Woody Guthrie writes “This Land Is Your Land”


Year
1940
Month Day
February 23

Folk singer Woody Guthrie writes one of his best-known songs, “This Land is Your Land.”

Born in Okemah, Oklahoma, in 1912, Guthrie lived and wrote of the American West, a place of hard-working people and harsh environments rather than romantic cowboys and explorers. Though he was a son of a successful politician and businessman, during his early teens his mother fell ill and the family split apart. For several years, Guthrie spent his summers working as a migrant agricultural laborer. When he was 15, he left home to travel the country by freight train. Among his meager possessions were a guitar and harmonica. Guthrie discovered an eager audience among the hobos and migrant workers for the country-folk songs he had learned in Oklahoma.

In 1937, he traveled to California where he hoped to become a successful western singer. He appeared on several West Coast radio shows, mostly performing traditional folk songs. Soon, though, he began to perform his own pieces based on his experiences living among the vast armies of the poor and dispossessed created by the Great Depression. While in California he also came into contact with the Communist Party and became increasingly sympathetic to its causes. Many of his songs reflected a strong commitment to the common working people, and he became something of a musical spokesman for populist sentiments.

“This Land Is Your Land,” which Guthrie wrote while living in New York City, reflected not only Guthrie’s support for the common folk, but also his deep love for his country. The verse celebrated the beauty and grandeur of America while the chorus drove home the populist sentiment that the nation belonged to all the people, not merely the rich and powerful. Probably the most famous of his more than 1,000 songs, “This Land Is Your Land” was also one of his last. Later that year Guthrie moved to New York where his career was soon after interrupted by World War II. After serving in the Merchant Marines, he returned to New York, where he continued to perform and record his old material, but he never matched his earlier prolific output.

Guthrie’s career was cut short in 1954, when he was struck with Huntington’s Disease, a degenerative illness of the nervous system that had killed his mother. His later years were spent in a New York hospital where he received visitors like the adoring young Bob Dylan, who copied much of his early style from Guthrie. Guthrie died in 1967, having lived long enough to see his music inspire a whole new generation and “This Land is Your Land” become a rallying song for the civil rights movement.

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W.E.B. Du Bois is born


Year
1868
Month Day
February 23

On February 23, 1868, William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois is born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. A brilliant scholar, Du Bois was an influential proponent of civil rights.

Du Bois’ childhood was happy, but during adolescence he became aware of a “vast veil” separating him from his white classmates. He devoted most of his life to studying the position of blacks in America from a sociological point of view. He took his doctorate at Harvard but was unable to get a job at a major university, despite his impressive academic achievements and the publication of his doctoral thesis, about the slave trade to the United States in the mid-1800s. He taught at Wilberforce College in Ohio, then spent a year at the University of Pennsylvania, where he wrote his first major book, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899). The book was the first sociological case study of a black community.

Du Bois came to national attention with the publication of The Souls of Black Folks (1903). The book explored the thesis that the “central problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.” One controversial essay attacked the widely respected Booker T. Washington, founder of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, which trained blacks in agricultural and industrial skills. Du Bois accused Washington of selling out blacks by advocating silence in civil rights issues in return for vocational training opportunities for blacks.

In 1909, Du Bois helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He edited the association’s journal, The Crisis, from 1910 to 1934, reaching an audience of more than 100,000 readers. But he resigned after an ideological rift with the group. In 1935, he published Black Reconstruction, a Marxist interpretation of the post-Civil War era. At Atlanta University, where he later taught, he founded a review of race and culture called Phylon in 1940 and the same year published Dusk at Dawn, in which he examined his own career as a case study of race dynamics. He rejoined the NAACP from 1944 to 1948 but broke with the group permanently after a bitter dispute. He joined the Communist Party in 1961 and moved to Ghana, where he became a citizen in 1963, the year of his death.

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Convicted murderer gets spared from death when gallows malfunction


Year
1885
Month Day
February 23

On February 23, 1885, a 19-year-old man named John Lee is sent to the gallows in Exeter, England, for the murder of Ellen Keyse, a rich older woman for whom he had worked. Although he insisted he was innocent, Lee had been convicted and sentenced to death by hanging. However, after the noose was put around his neck and the lever that would release the floor beneath his feet was pulled, something malfunctioned and Lee was not dropped. 

Strangely, the equipment had been tested and found to be in working order. In fact, weights used in a test run plunged to the ground as expected.The hanging was attempted two more times, but when Lee stood on the trap door, and the lever was pulled, nothing happened. He was then sent back to prison. 

On November 15, 1884, Keyse was found dead in a pantry next to Lee’s room. Her head was severely battered and her throat cut. There was no direct evidence of Lee’s guilt; the case was made solely on circumstantial evidence. The alleged motive was Lee’s resentment at Keyse’s mean treatment.

The authorities, mystified at the gallows’ inexplicable malfunction, decided to ascribe it to an act of God. Lee was removed from death row, his sentence commuted, and he spent the next 22 years in prison. After he was released, he emigrated to America. The cause of Lee’s remarkable reprieve was never discovered.

Condemned prisoners no longer have a chance at such reprieves. Even when there are mishaps in carrying out an execution (in one case, an executioner failed to properly find a vein for a lethal injection), authorities follow through until the prisoner has been put to death.

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Abraham Lincoln arrives in Washington, D.C.


Year
1861
Month Day
February 23

On February 23, 1861, President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrives in Washington, D.C., amid secrecy and tight security. With seven states having already seceded from the Union since Lincoln’s election, the threat of civil war hung in the air.

Allen Pinkerton, head of a private detective agency, had uncovered a plot to assassinate Lincoln when he passed through Baltimore on his way to the capital. Lincoln and his advisors disagreed about how to respond to the threat. Some, including Pinkerton, wanted Lincoln to slip secretly into Washington, which would mean skipping an address to the Pennsylvania legislature in Harrisburg. Lincoln did not want to appear cowardly, but felt the threats were serious.

Lincoln agreed to the covert arrival. With Pinkerton and Ward Hill Lamon, his former law partner, Lincoln slipped out of the hotel in Harrisburg on the evening of February 22. He wore a soft felt hat instead of his customary stovepipe hat, and draped an overcoat over his shoulders and hunched slightly to disguise his height. The group boarded a sleeper car and arrived in Baltimore in the middle of the night. They slipped undetected from the Calvert Street station to Camden station across town. There, they boarded another train and arrived without incident in Washington at6 a.m. On the platform, the party was surprised when a voice boomed, “Abe, you can’t play that on me.” It was Congressman Elihu B. Washburne, a friend of Lincoln’s from Illinois. Washburne escorted Lincoln to the Willard Hotel.

A myth arose that Lincoln had dressed as a woman to avoid detection, but this was not the case. He did draw considerable criticism in the press for his unceremonious arrival. Northern diarist George Templeton Strong commented that if convincing evidence of a plot did not surface, “the surreptitious nocturnal dodging…will be used to damage his moral position and throw ridicule on his Administration.” Lincoln later regretted the caper and commented to a friend: “I did not then, nor do I now believe I should have been assassinated had I gone through Baltimore…” Regardless of how he had arrived, Lincoln was safely in Washington, ready to assume the difficult task ahead.

READ MORE: The Grisly Murder Trial That Helped Raise Abraham Lincoln’s National Profile

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