Today in History....February 26

[ T O D A Y I N H I S T O R Y ]

On this day in …

* 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from exile on the Island of Elba to begin his second conquest of France

* 1870, an experimental air-driven subway, the Beach Pneumatic Transit, opened in New York City. (The tunnel was only a block long, and the line had only one car.)

* 1907, concerns about a growing influx of foreigners, mostly Europeans, prompted Congress to create what became known as the Dillingham Commission, which examined the impact of immigrants on America. (The panel later recommended curtailing immigration from southern and eastern Europe through use of quotas, higher entry fees, literacy tests and other restrictions.)

* 1919, Congress established Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona

* 1940, the United States Air Defense Command was created

* 1945, a midnight curfew on nightclubs, bars and other places of entertainment was set to go into effect across the nation

* 1952, Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced that Britain had developed its own atomic bomb

* 1979, a total solar eclipse cast a moving shadow 175 miles wide from Oregon to North Dakota before moving into Canada

* 1993, a bomb built by practitioners of that "religion of peace"
exploded in the parking garage of New York's World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000 others

* 1997, President Clinton defended White House fund-raising tactics as "entirely appropriate," a day after the disclosure of documents putting Clinton at the center of all-out fund-raising efforts