February 14: What Happened on This Day in History (Elementary Level)?

(Page last edited 10/12/2017)

1. 1778 - The United States Flag is formally recognized by a foreign naval vessel for the first time, when French Admiral Toussaint-Guillaume Picquet de la Motte renders a nine gun salute to USS Ranger, commanded by John Paul Jones.
2. 1859 - Oregon is admitted as the 33rd U.S. state.
3. 1912 - Arizona is admitted as the 48th U.S. state.
4. 1961 - Discovery of the chemical elements: Element 103, Lawrencium, is first synthesized at the University of California.
5. 2000 - The spacecraft NEAR Shoemaker enters orbit around asteroid 433 Eros, the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid.
6. Famous Birthdays: Georg Friedrich Kauffmann (German composer and organist), Frederick Douglass (American author and activist), Christopher Latham Sholes (American inventor, invented the typewriter), Charles Thomson Rees Wilson (Scottish physicist and meteorologist, Nobel Prize laureate), Herbert A. Hauptman (American mathematician, Nobel Prize laureate)

For famous birthdays and other daily events in history, visit our Daily Dose Activities.

Click Here for Yesterday in History: February 13

Click Here for Tomorrow in History: February 15

For more history resources on Internet 4 Classrooms, visit our Social Studies and History index. For Pre K-8th Grade Level History and Social Studies Resources, visit our Grade Level Index.