On This Day: February 14

This is the 45th day of the year.

Fact of the Day: Valentine

A Valentine as a sweetheart, lover, or special friend was first written about c 1450. Originally, it meant such a person chosen, drawn by lot, or otherwise determined for the upcoming year. Valentine as a card (c 1553) was at first a folded paper inscribed with the name of the person chosen or drawn as a valentine. By 1610, the word also referred to a gift given to the special person. The use of the word to mean "a written or printed letter or card with decoration, verse, etc. of an amorous nature" sent or given on St. Valentine's Day began around 1824. The word can be written with an initial capital or without.

Holidays

St. Valentine's Day.

Feast day of St John the Baptist of the Conception, St Antoninus of Sorrento, St Maro, St Abraham of Carrhae, St Adolf of Osnabrück, St Auxentius, Saints Cyril and Methodius (some accounts say July 7), and St Conran.

Bulgaria: Viticulturists' Day / Trifon Zarezan.

Events

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

1859 - Oregon was admitted to the Union as the 33rd state.

1870 - Esther Morris became the world's first female justice of the peace.

1876 - Rival inventors Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell both applied for patents for the telephone.

1899 - President William McKinley signed legislation authorizing states to use voting machines for federal elections.

1912 - Arizona became the 48th state of the Union.

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

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

1924 - Thomas Watson founded International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).

1929 - The St. Valentine's Day Massacre took place in a Chicago garage when Al Capone's employees gunned down seven members of the George "Bugs" Moran North Siders gang.

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

1946 - The world's first all-electronic computer was unveiled at the University of Pennsylvania, ENIAC.

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

2003 - Dolly the sheep, the first cloned mammal, was euthanized by veterinarians after being found to be suffering from progressive lung disease.

Births

1819 - Christopher Sholes, American, typewriter inventor.

1847 - Anna Howard Shaw, American, influential leader of the women's suffrage movement.

1859 - George Ferris, American engineer, inventor of the Ferris wheel.

1894 - Jack Benny (Benjamin Kubelsky), American comedian of vaudeville, radio, and television.

1913 - Jimmy Hoffa, American labor leader.

1921 - Hugh Downs, American TV host.

1948 - Teller, (born Raymond Joseph Teller), American magician, best known as the smaller, silent half of the comedy magic duo Penn & Teller.

Deaths

1400 - Richard II, King of England.

1779 - Captain James Cook, English explorer, navigator, and cartographer who achieved the first European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands, as well as the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand.

1831 - Vicente Guerrero, Mexican revolutionary hero.

1975 - Sir Julian Huxley, English biologist and writer.

1989 - James Bond, a leading American ornithologist whose name was appropriated by writer Ian Fleming for his fictional spy James Bond.