Today in History.....February 14

On this day in …

* 1778, the American ship Ranger carried the recently adopted Star and Stripes to a foreign port for the first time as it arrived in France

* 1849, James Polk became the first U.S. president to be photographed while in office. The photographer was Mathew Brady, who later became famous for his Civil War pictures.

* 1876, A. G. Bell & Elisha Gray apply separately for telephone patents. Supreme Court eventually rules Bell rightful inventor

* 1886, the West Coast citrus industry was born. The first trainload of oranges left Los Angeles for eastern markets

* 1896, Theodore Herzl publishes "Der Judenstaat"

* 1899, Congress approved, and President McKinley signed, legislation authorizing states to use voting machines for federal elections

* 1903, the Department of Commerce and Labor was established. (It was divided into separate departments of Commerce and Labor in
1913.)

* 1919, United Parcel Service (UPS) forms

* 1924, IBM Corporation founded by Thomas Watson

* 1929, the "St. Valentine's Day Massacre" took place in a Chicago garage as seven rivals of Al Capone's gang were gunned down

* 1962, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy conducts White House tour on TV

* 1979, Adolph Dubs, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, was kidnapped in Kabul by practitioners of that "religion of peace" and killed in a shootout between his abductors and police

* 1989, Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini called on practitioners of that "religion of peace" to kill Salman Rushdie, author of "The Satanic Verses," a novel condemned as blasphemous

* 2001, a "Palestinian" practitioner of that "religion of peace"
crashed a bus into Israeli soldiers and civilians standing at a bus stop in Azur, Israel, killing eight. (The driver, Khalil Abu Olbeh, was later sentenced to eight life terms.)