TVC E – Today is Monday, February 29 and it is the 60th day of 2016. There are 306 days left in the year. This is Leap Day.
Today’s Highlight in History:
1916: Singer, actress and TV personality Dinah Shore was born Frances Rose Shore in Winchester, Tennessee.
1504: Christopher Columbus, stranded in Jamaica during his fourth voyage to the West, used a correctly predicted lunar eclipse to frighten hostile natives into providing food for his crew.
1796: President George Washington proclaimed Jay’s Treaty, which settled some outstanding differences with Britain, in effect.
1892: The United States and Britain agreed to submit to arbitration their dispute over seal-hunting rights in the Bering Sea.
1904: President Theodore Roosevelt appointed a seven-member commission to facilitate completion of the Panama Canal.
1936: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a second Neutrality Act as he appealed to American businesses not to increase exports to belligerents.
1940: “Gone with the Wind” won eight Academy Awards, including best picture of 1939; Hattie McDaniel won for best supporting actress, the first black performer so honored.
1956: President Dwight D. Eisenhower announced he would seek a second term of office. Serial killer Aileen Wuornos was born in Rochester, Michigan (she was executed by the state of Florida in 2002).
1960: The first Playboy Club, featuring waitresses clad in “bunny” outfits, opened in Chicago. Serial killer Richard Ramirez was born in El Paso, Texas (he died in 2013 while awaiting execution in California).
1980: Former Israeli foreign minister Yigal Allon, who had played an important role in the Jewish state’s fight for independence, died at age 61.
1984: Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau announced he was stepping down after more than 15 combined years in power.
1996: Daniel Green was convicted in Lumberton, North Carolina, of murdering James R. Jordan, the father of basketball star Michael Jordan, during a 1993 roadside holdup.
2008: Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama accused rival Hillary Rodham Clinton of trying to “play on people’s fears to scare up votes” with a TV ad showing sleeping children and asking who would be more qualified to answer a national security emergency call at 3 a.m.
2012: Violent weather packing tornadoes continued to ravage the Midwest and South, resulting in some 15 deaths. Davy Jones, 66, the heartthrob singer who helped propel the made-for-TV rock band The Monkees to the top of the pop charts, died in Stuart, Florida.
Quote for Today: Trouble is a part of your life – if you don’t share it, you don’t give the person who loves you a chance to love you enough.” – Dinah Shore