History of feb 14

1778 - The Stars and Stripes was carried to a foreign port, in France, for the first time. It was aboard the American ship Ranger. 

1803 - Moses Coates received a patent for the apple parer. 

1849 - The first photograph of a U.S. President, while in office, was taken by Matthew Brady in New York City. President James Polk was the subject of the picture. 

1859 - Oregon became the 33rd member of the Union. 

1876 - Alexander Graham Bell filed an application for a patent for the telephone. It was officially issued on March 7, 1876. 

1889 - In Los Angeles, CA, oranges began their first trip to the east. 

1895 - Oscar Wilde's final play, "The Importance of Being Earnest," opened at the St. James' Theatre in London. 

1899 - The U.S. Congress approved voting machines for use in federal elections. 

1900 - Russia imposed tighter imperial control over Finland in response to an international petition for Finland's freedom. 

1900 - In South Africa, British Gen. Roberts invaded Orange Free State with 20,000 troops. 

1903 - The U.S. Department of Commerce and Labor was established. 

1912 - The first diesel engine submarine was commissioned in Groton, CT. 

1912 - Arizona was admitted as the 48th U.S. state. 

1920 - The League of Women Voters was founded in Chicago. The first president of the organization was Maude Wood Park. 

1929 - The "St. Valentine's Day Massacre" took place in Chicago, IL. Seven gangsters who were rivals of Al Capone were killed. 

1932 - The U.S. won the first bobsled competition at the Winter Olympic Games at Lake Placid, NY. 

1940 - The first porpoise born in captivity arrived at Marineland in Florida. 

1945 - Peru, Paraguay, Chile and Ecuador joined the United Nations. 

1946 - ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was unveiled. The device, built at the University of Pennsylvania, was the world's first general purpose electronic computer. 

1954 - The TV show "Letter to Loretta" changed its name to "The Loretta Young Show." The show premiered on September 20, 1953. 

1957 - Lionel Hampton’s only major musical work, "King David," made its debut at New York’s Town Hall. 

1961 - Lawrencium, element 103, was first produced in Berkely, CA. 

1962 - U.S. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy gave a tour of the White House on television. 

1966 - Rick Mount of Lebanon, IN, became the first high school, male athlete to be pictured on the cover of "Sports Illustrated". 

1966 - Wilt Chamberlain of the Philadelphia 76ers set a National Basketball Association (NBA) record as he reached a career high of 20,884 points after seven seasons. 

1968 - The fourth Madison Square Gardens opened. 

1979 - Twenty-year-old rookie, Don Maloney, of the New York Rangers, scored his first goal in the National Hockey League. It came on his first NHL shot. 

1979 - Adolph Dubs, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, was kidnapped in Kabul by Muslim extremists. He was killed in a shootout between his abductors and police. 

1980 - Walter Cronkite announced his retirement from the "CBS Evening News." 

1983 - A 6-year-old boy became the first person to receive a heart and liver transplants in the same operation. 

1985 - Cable News Network (CNN) reporter Jeremy Levin was freed. He had been being held in Lebanon by extremists. 

1989 - Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini called on Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie because of his novel "The Satanic Verses." 

1989 - The first satellite of the Global Positioning System was placed into orbit around Earth. 

1989 - Union Carbide agreed to pay $470 million to the government of India. The court-ordered settlement was a result of the 1984 Bhopal gas leak disaster. 

1997 - Astronauts on the space shuttle Discovery began a series of spacewalks that were required to overhaul the Hubble Space Telescope. 

1998 - U.S. authorities officially announced that Eric Rudolph was a suspect in a bombing of an abortion clinic in Alabama. 

2002 - The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Shays-Meehan bill. The bill, if passed by the U.S. Senate, would ban millions of unregulated money that goes to the national political parties. 

2002 - Sylvester Stallone filed a lawsuit against Kenneth Starr. The suit alleged that Starr had given bad advice about selling Planet Hollywood stock. 

2003 - In Madrid, Spain, a ceramic plate with a bullfighting motif painted by Pablo Picasso in 1949 was stolen from an art show. The plate was on sale for $12,400. 

2005 - The video-sharing website YouTube was activated.