Today in History — Feb. 14
Today is Wednesday, Feb. 14, the 45th day of 2024. There are 321 days left in the year. This is Valentine’s Day.
On this day in 1967, Aretha Franklin recorded her cover of Otis Redding’s Respect at Atlantic Records in New York.
In 1876, inventors Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray applied separately for patents related to the telephone. (The U.S. Supreme Court eventually ruled Bell the rightful inventor.)
Arizona became the 48th state of the Union on this day in 1912 as President William Howard Taft signed a proclamation.
Labor leader Jimmy Hoffa, college football coach Woody Hayes, and sports broadcaster Mel Allen were all born on this day in 1913.
In 1924, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co. of New York was formally renamed International Business Machines Corp., or IBM.
The infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre took place in a Chicago garage on this day in 1929, as seven rivals of Al Capone’s gang were gunned down.
During World War II on this day in 1945, British and Canadian forces reached the Rhine River in Germany.
In 1984, 6-year-old Stormie Jones became the world’s first heart-liver transplant recipient when the surgery was performed at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.
Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini called on Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses, a novel condemned as blasphemous, on this day in 1989.
A fire broke out at a farm prison in Honduras on this day in 2012, killing 361 inmates.
In 2013, double-amputee Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius shot and killed his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, at his home in Pretoria, South Africa; he was later convicted of murder and served nearly nine years of a sentence of 13 years and five months before being released from prison in January 2024.
In 2017, a former store clerk, Pedro Hernandez, was convicted in New York of murder in one of the nation’s most haunting missing-child cases, nearly 38 years after 6-year-old Etan Patz disappeared while on the way to a school bus stop.
In 2018, a gunman identified as a former student opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School near Fort Lauderdale, Fla., killing 17 people in the nation’s deadliest school shooting since the attack in Newtown, Conn., more than five years earlier. (Nikolas Cruz pleaded guilty to murder in October 2021 and was sentenced in November 2022 to life in prison without the possibility of parole.)
Notable birthdays on this day include former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (82), jazz musician Maceo Parker (81), journalist Carl Bernstein (80), former Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H. (77), and TV personality Pat O’Brien (76).
As we mark another Valentine’s Day, let’s remember the significant events that have occurred on this day throughout history. From groundbreaking patents and statehood to tragic events and birthdays of notable figures, Feb. 14 is a date filled with various historical milestones.
