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

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

* 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 conducted a televised tour of the White House

* 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 Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie, author of "The Satanic Verses," a novel condemned as blasphemous.

* 2002, launching his defense against war crimes charges, former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic justified his actions as a "struggle against terrorism" and said he was a victim of twisted facts and "terrible fabrication." ALSO: The House voted to ban unregulated contributions to national political parties

* 2006, attorney Harry Whittington, the man accidentally shot by Vice President Dick Cheney, suffered a mild heart attack when a shotgun pellet traveled to his heart, but he later recovered. ALSO:
Iran said it had resumed uranium enrichment; Russia and France immediately called on Iran to halt its work