Throwback Thursday 2/23!

Here's what happened on February 23rd!

  • In honor of the Academy Awards this weekend... we've added a biography of Katherine JohnsonJohnson, mathematician who worked for NASA, is featured in the movie Hidden Figures
    (Biography for Beginners)
  • 1847:  In the Mexican-American War Battle of Buena Vista, Zachary Taylor defeated the largest enemy army (20,000 men) Americans had ever faced in a single engagement, despite being greatly outnumbered. The future president (taking office in 1849) became a national hero overnight!
    (World Biography, American History) 
  • 1848: Sixth President of the United States John Quincy Adams passed away.
    (American History)
  • 1868: African American writer, scholar, and civil rights leader W.E.B. Du Bois was born in Great Barrington, Massacusetts. Du Bois was one of the most important leaders of the movement for African-American equality and was a founder of the NAACP.
    (Shapers of Society, Biography for Beginners, Defining Moments)
  • 1915: Paul Tibbets, Jr., was born in Quincy, Illinois. Tibbets, a U.S. Air Force general, was the pilot of the Enola Gay. The Enola Gay is the plane that dropped the uranium atomic bomb over the city of Hiroshima, Japan, in World War II. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for this mission.
    (World Biography)
  • 1944: Leo Hendrik Baekeland passed away from a cerebral hemorrhage. The inventor and pioneer in the development of plastics created the first piece of plastic in 1907, which he called Bakelite. “I was trying to make something really hard, but then I thought I should make something really soft instead, that could be molded into different shapes. That was how I came up with the first plastic. I called it Bakelite.”
  • (Shapers of Society, World Biography)
  • 1998: Osama bin Laden issued his second “fatwa” in which he urged devout Muslims to wage war against the United States and Israel. The second was issued through a London-based Arabic newspaper. You can read it here in Defining Moments.
    (Defining Moments Online)