Today is Tuesday, Feb. 22, the 53rd day of 2005. There are 312 days left in the year.
Today’s highlight in history:
On Feb. 22, 1732, the first president of the United States, George Washington, was born at his parents’ plantation in the Virginia Colony.
On this date:
In 1819, Spain ceded Florida to the United States.
In 1879, Frank Winfield Woolworth opened a five-cent store in Utica, N.Y.
In 1889, President Cleveland signed a bill to admit the Dakotas, Montana and Washington state to the Union.
In 1892, “Lady Windermere’s Fan,” by Oscar Wilde, was first performed, at London’s St. James’s Theater.
In 1924, Calvin Coolidge delivered the first presidential radio broadcast from the White House.
In 1934, the romantic comedy “It Happened One Night,” starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, opened at New York’s Radio City Music Hall.
In 1935, it became illegal for airplanes to fly over the White House.
In 1973, the United States and Communist China agreed to establish liaison offices.
In 1980, the United States Olympic hockey team upset the Soviets at Lake Placid, N.Y., 4-3. (The U.S. team went on to win the gold medal.)
In 1984, a 12-year-old Houston boy known publicly only as “David,” who’d spent most his life in a plastic bubble because he had no immunity to disease, died 15 days after being removed from the bubble for a bone-marrow transplant.
Ten years ago: France accused four American diplomats and a fifth U.S. citizen of spying, and asked them to leave the country. Security forces in Algiers crushed a prison uprising by Islamic extremists, resulting in 96 deaths by official count.
Five years ago: John McCain won Republican primaries in Michigan and his home state of Arizona.
One year ago: Consumer advocate Ralph Nader entered the presidential race as an independent. A Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up on a crowded Jerusalem bus, killing seven passengers. Rebels captured Haiti’s second-largest city, claiming Cap-Haitien as their biggest prize in a two-week-old uprising.
Today’s birthdays: Actor Sir John Mills is 97. Announcer Don Pardo is 87. Actor Paul Dooley is 77. Hollywood “ghost singer” Marni Nixon is 75. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., is 73. Movie director Jonathan Demme is 61. Actor John Ashton is 57. Actress Ellen Greene is 55. Actress Miou-Miou is 55. Actress Julie Walters is 55. Basketball Hall-of-Famer Julius Erving is 55. Actor Kyle MacLachlan is 46. “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin is 43. Actress-comedian Rachel Dratch is 39. Actress Jeri Ryan is 37. Actor Thomas Jane is 36. Actress-singer Lea Salonga is 34. Actor Jose Solano is 34. Tennis player Michael Chang is 33. Actress Drew Barrymore is 30. Actor Daniel E. Smith is 15.
Thought for today: “The crude commercialism of America, its materializing spirit are entirely due to the country having adopted for its natural hero a man who could not tell a lie.” — Oscar Wilde, Irish-born dramatist (1854-1900).