February 12
Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic goes on trial at The Hague, Netherlands, on charges of genocide and war crimes in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo. Milosevic served as his own attorney for much of the prolonged trial, which ended without a verdict when the so-called “Butcher of the Balkans” was found dead at age 64 from an apparent heart attack in his prison cell March 11, 2006. – 2002.
February 13
The earliest military action to be revered with a Medal of Honor award is performed by Colonel Bernard J.D. Irwin, an assistant army surgeon serving in the first major U.S.-Apache conflict. Near Apache Pass, in southeastern Arizona, Irwin, an Irish-born doctor, volunteered to go to the rescue of Second Lieutenant George N. Bascom, who was trapped with 60 men of the U.S. Seventh Infantry by the Chiricahua Apaches. Irwin and 14 men, initially without horses, began the 100-mile trek to Bascom’s forces by riding on mules. After fighting and capturing Apaches along the way and recovering stolen horses and cattle, they reached Bascom’s forces February 14 and proved instrumental in breaking the siege. – 1861.
Some 12,000 Hollywood writers return to work following a three-month strike against television and motion picture studios. They won compensation for their TV and movie work that gets streamed on the Internet. – 2008.
February 14
Four men dressed as police officers enter gangster Bugs Moran’s headquarters on North Clark Street in Chicago, line seven of Moran’s henchmen against a wall, and shoot them to death. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, as it is now called, was the culmination of a gang war between arch rivals Al Capone and Bugs Moran. – 1929.
An expelled student enters Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. and opens fire and kills 17 individuals and wounds 17 others, in what became the deadliest shooting at a high school in United States history. Student survivors took to social media to make their anger known, which went viral. – 2018.
February 15
The entire 18-member U.S. figure skating team is killed in a plane crash in Berg-Kampenhout, Belgium. The team was on its way to the 1961 World Figure Skating Championships in Prague, Czechoslovakia. – 1961.
A disgruntled employee fatally shoots five individuals and wounds five officers in Aurora at the Henry Pratt Company warehouse. – 2019.
February 16
The first official “911” call is placed in the United States by Rep. Rankin Fite, the Speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives, in the town of Haleyville, Ala.. The 911 emergency number was a relatively recent invention and was still not standard across the United States for many years after its adoption by Congress. By 1987, 50% of the nation was using the system. – 1968
Beginning of a 17-week general strike of 12,000 New York furriers, in which Jewish workers formed a coalition with Greek and African American workers and became the first union to win a five-day, 40-hour week. – 1926.
February 17
Approximately 900 persons drown when a passenger ferry, the Neptune, overturns near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The ferry was dangerously overloaded, and carried no lifeboats or emergency gear. – 1993.
February 18
A man ignites a gasoline-filled container inside a subway train in Daegu, South Korea. The blaze engulfs the six-car train, before spreading to another train that had pulled into the station a few minutes later. In all, 198 persons were killed and nearly 150 others were injured. – 2003.
A relatively obscure website called WikiLeaks publishes a leaked diplomatic cable detailing discussions between American diplomats and Icelandic government officials. The leak had 750,000 sensitive documents sent to WikiLeaks by Chelsea Manning. Manning and WikiLeaks released multiple accounts and even videos of U.S. airstrikes that killed civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the information they disclosed led watchdogs to estimate that American armed forces were responsible for over 10,000 more civilian deaths than they had officially acknowledged. – 2010.