02/18/2025
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This Day In History archive

1887 – Ground is broken and construction begins on the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France.

1905 – World’s largest diamond, the 3,106-carat Cullinan, is found in South Africa.

1913 – Jim Thorpe relinquishes his 1912 Olympic medals for playing two seasons of semi-professional baseball before competing in the Olympics.

1918 – Food Administrator Herbert Hoover calls for “wheatless” and “meatless” days to help the United States during World War I.

1920 – Henry Leland’s military engine manufacturing company, the Lincoln Motor Company, reorganizes as an automobile manufacturer. He sells the struggling company to the Ford Motor Company in 1922.

1931 – “Cimarron,” directed by Wesley Ruggles and starring Richard Dix and Iren Dunne, premieres in New York. It becomes the first western to win Best Outstanding Production/Picture.

1939 – Filming begins on film adaptation of “Gone With the Wind.”

1951 – Mel Ott and Jimmie Foxx are elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

1954 – Groundbreaking begins on Disneyland in Anaheim, California.

1960 – High school basketball sensation Danny Heater scores 135 points for Burnsville of Braxton County, West Virginia in a 173-43 rout of Widen High of Clay County. Heater made 53 of 70 field goal attempts and 29 of 41 free throws.

1961 – “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” by Elvis Presley hits #1.

1967 – Chicago Blizzard strikes with a record 23 inches of snow causing 800 buses and 50,000 automobiles to be abandoned.

1970 – “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” the fifth and final studio album by Neil Simon and Art Garfunkel, is released. It wins Grammy Award Album of the Year and Best Engineered Non-Classical Album in 1971.

1979 – “The Dukes of Hazzard” premieres on CBS.

1989 – AT&T reports $1.67 billion loss in 1988. It’s the company’s first loss in 103 years.

1997 – Super Bowl XXXI, Louisiana Superdome, New Orleans: Green Bay Packers beat New England Patriots 35-21. Green Bay kick returner Desmond Howard named Most Valuable Player.

2004 – MyDoom, the most destructive computer worm, is first sighted on computers in North America. It causes $38 billion in damages.

2013 – The United States Sentencing Commission is hacked by Anonymous in response to the suicide of Aaron Swartz.

2020 – Los Angeles Lakers basketball player Kobe Bryant dies in a helicopter crash in foggy conditions in the hills above Calabasas, California.

2022 – Supreme Court Justice Stephen Beyer announces his retirement.

Sonny Jones
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