Today is Tuesday, Feb. 25, the 56th day of 2020. There are 310 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Feb. 25, 1964, Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) became world heavyweight boxing champion as he defeated Sonny Liston in Miami Beach.
On this date:
In 1793, President George Washington held the first Cabinet meeting on record at his Mount Vernon home; attending were Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of War Henry Knox and Attorney General Edmund Randolph.
In 1836, inventor Samuel Colt patented his revolver.
In 1862, Nashville, Tennessee, became the first Confederate state capital to be occupied by the North during the Civil War.
In 1901, United States Steel Corp. was incorporated by J.P. Morgan.
In 1913, the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving Congress the power to levy and collect income taxes, was declared in effect by Secretary of State Philander Chase Knox.
In 1954, Gamal Abdel Nasser became Egypt’s prime minister after the country’s president, Mohammed Naguib, was effectively ousted in a coup.
In 1964, Eastern Airlines Flight 304, a DC-8, crashed shortly after taking off from New Orleans International Airport, killing all 58 on board.
In 1986, President Ferdinand Marcos fled the Philippines after 20 years of rule in the wake of a tainted election; Corazon Aquino assumed the presidency.
In 1991, during the Persian Gulf War, 28 Americans were killed when an Iraqi Scud missile hit a U.S. barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
In 1994, American-born Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein opened fire with an automatic rifle inside the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the West Bank, killing 29 Muslims before he was beaten to death by worshippers. At the Winter Olympics in Norway, Oksana Baiul (ahk-SAH’-nah by-OOL’) of Ukraine won the gold medal in ladies’ figure skating while Nancy Kerrigan won the silver and Chen Lu of China the bronze; Tonya Harding came in eighth.
In 2007, “The Departed” won best picture at the Academy Awards; its director, Martin Scorsese, won an Oscar on his sixth nomination.
In 2018, China’s official news agency said the country’s ruling Communist Party had proposed scrapping term limits for China’s president, appearing to lay the groundwork for Xi Jinping to rule as president beyond 2023. (China’s rubber-stamp lawmakers approved that change on March 11.)
