Feb. 20th:
1807 Former U.S. vice president Aaron Burr is arrested in Alabama for treason. Despite later being acquitted, public opinion will force him to live out the remainder of his life in privacy.
1878 Thomas Alva Edison patented a music player (the phonograph) at his lab in Menlo Park, NJ.
1913 The first prize is inserted into a Cracker Jack box.
1942 U.S. President Roosevelt signed an executive order giving the military the authority to relocate and intern Japanese-Americans.
1945 During World War II, about 30,000 U.S. Marines landed on Iwo Jima.
1949 The Bollingen Prize award committee awards Ezra Pound the first Bollingen Prize for poetry, for his collection "The Pisan Cantos."
1953 The State of Georgia approved the first literature censorship board in the U.S. Newspapers were excluded from the new legislation.
1963 The Soviet Union informed President Kennedy it would withdraw "several thousand" of its troops in Cuba.
1985 Mickey Mouse was welcomed to China as part of the 30th anniversary of Disneyland. The touring mouse played 30 cities in 30 days.
1985 Cherry Coke was introduced by the Coca-Cola Company.
1986 The U.S. Senate approved a treaty outlawing genocide. The pact had been submitted 37 years earlier for ratification.
1987 A controversial, anti-smoking ad aired for the first time on television. It featured Yul Brynner who died shortly after of lung cancer.
1997 The United States Tennis Association announces that the National Tennis Center in New York will be named in honor of Arthur Ashe.
1997 Deng Xiaoping of China died at the age of 92. He was the last of China's major revolutionaries.
1999 Dennis Franz received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
2001 The museum at the Oklahoma City National Memorial Center was dedicated.
2002 NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft began using its thermal emission imaging system to map Mars.
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