Today in History, 2/14

1317: Marguerite of France, second wife of Edward I of England dies.
1400: Richard II is starved to death in Pontefract Castle allowing Henry Bolingbroke to seize the throne.1405: Mongol conqueror Timur (aka Tamerlane) dies of what probably was dysentery.
1556: Thomas Cranmer is declared a heretic. He was the Archbishop of Canterbury and Henry VIII's go-to guy for making his case to the Pope to allow Henry to divorce his first wife. But after Henry died and Mary took over, she reunited England with the Catholic Church and had Cranmer executed.1778: The US Flag is formally recognized by a foreign naval vessel for the first time when a French vessel gives the USS Ranger a nine-gun salute.
1779: James Cook is killed by Hawaiians.
1819: Joshua A. Norton is born. He was the self-proclaimed Emperor of the United States and Lord Protector of Mexico.1819: Christopher Sholes is born. He invented the first practical typewriter and the QWERTY keyboard. The funny thing is that QWERTY was designed to slow typists down to prevent that irritating jamming of the type bars. On modern computers it's no longer necessary, but I don't think I'm going to be switching to Dvorak anytime soon.
1803: Chief Justice John Marshall declares that any act of the US Congress which conflicts with the Constitution is void.
1824: Civil War General Winfield Scott is born.
1849: James K. Polk becomes the first serving President of the United Stated to have his photograph taken.

It's Le Tigre!

1859: Oregon is admitted as the 33rd state.
1876: Alexander Graham Bell applies for a patent for the telephone.
1886: The first trainload of oranges leaves Los Angeles via the transcontinental railroad.
1894: Jack Benny is born.

1899: Voting machines are approved by the US Congress for use in federal elections.
1902: Thelma Ritter is born. I remember her as Stella in Rear Window but she was in a ton of other movies too.1912: Arizona is admitted as the 48th state.
1912: In Groton, CT, the first diesel powered submarine is commissioned.
1913: Jimmy Hoffa is born.1916: Edward Platt is born. He played The Chief on Get Smart but he was also Victor Larrabee in North by Northwest and the world-weary beatnik criminal Mr. Tucker in the MST3K episode The Rebel Set.

1921: Hugh Downs is born.
1924: IBM is founded.
1927: Lois Maxwell is born. She played Miss Moneypenny in the James Bond movies. I don't know what Bond's problem was - I always thought she was attractive. 1929: Vic Morrow is born. He was in the classic TV show Combat! and got killed on the set of the Twilight Zone movie.
1929: The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre takes place in a Chicago garage.
1929: Sir Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin.1934: Florence Henderson is born. She played the mom on The Brady Bunch and had her bizarre clown fetish revealed to America in the epic Shakes the Clown.
1942: Andrew Robinson is born. He played Scorpio in Dirty Harry and the, uh, sexually ambiguous Cardassian spy Garak on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.1943: General Erwin Rommel and the Afrika Korps launch an offensive against Allied defenses in Tunisia, kicking off the Battle of the Kasserine Pass.

Sweet! It's an Erwin Rommel rookie card!

1944: Carl Bernstein is born. He's the journalist who, along with Bob Woodward, broke the Watergate story.
1944: Alan Parker is born. He directed Pink Floyd: The Wall and The Road to Wellville.
1948: Teller, of Penn & Teller is born.
1949: the Knesset -the Israeli Parliament- convenes for the first time.
1950: Roger Fisher, guitarist for Heart, is born.
1956: Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev condemns Stalin's crimes in a secret speech to party bigwigs.
1962: First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy takes television viewers on a tour of the White House.
1964: Zach Galligan is born. He played the head idiot in the Gremlins movies, and that's about it.
1968: Jules Asner is born. Her claim to fame is that she's easy on the eyes and people think she's Ed Asner's daughter.1970: Simon Pegg is born. He's the genius who gave us Shaun of the Dead. He also played The Editor in the Doctor Who episode "The Long Game" and is slated to play Scotty in the new Star Trek movies.1974: PG Wodehouse, author of the Bertie Wooster and Jeeves novels dies.
1989: The first of 24 satellites in the Global Positioning System is placed into orbit.
1999: John Ehrlichman, Watergate conspirator dies.

Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up