On This Day: February 23

This is the 54th day of the year.

Fact of the Day: curling

Curling is a game similar to lawn bowls but played on ice. Two teams of four players (lead, second, third, and skip) participate in a curling match. Each player slides round stones, concave on the bottom and with a handle on the top, across the ice of a rink or a natural ice field toward the tee, or button, which is a fixed mark in the center of a circle (the house) marked with concentric bands. The object of the game is for each side to get its stones closest to the center. The game dates to early 16th century Scotland. Beatles' fans remember the scene in the Alps in the movie "A Hard Day's Night," where the group plays a rousing game of curling.

Holidays

Feast day of St. Polycarp of Smyrna, St. Dositheus, St. Milburga, St. Alexander Akimites, St. Boisil, and St. Willigis.

Brunei: National Day.

Guyana: Republic Day.

Russia: Defenders of the Fatherland Day / Army and Navy Day.

Events

1540 - Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado began his unsuccessful search for the fabled Seven Cities of Gold in the American Southwest.

1836 - The siege of the Alamo began in San Antonio, Texas, led by Mexican General Santa Anna.

1839 - William F. Harnden organized the nation's first express courier service, operating between Boston and New York City.

1861 - President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrived secretly in Washington to take office after an assassination plot was foiled in Baltimore.

1863 - Lake Victoria, in Africa, was proclaimed to be the source of the River Nile by British explorers John Speke and J. A. Grant.

1870 - Mississippi was readmitted to the Union.

1886 - The electrolytic process for manufacture of aluminum was invented by Charles M. Hall.

1893 - Rudolf Diesel received a patent in Germany for the engine that bears his name.

1898 - Writer Emile Zola was imprisoned in France for his letter "J'accuse" in which he accuses the French government of anti-semitism and the wrongful imprisonment of army captain Alfred Dreyfus.

1905 - The Rotary Club was founded in Chicago, Illinois by Attorney Paul Harris.

1919 - Benito Mussolini founded the Italian Fascist Party.

1927 - President Calvin Coolidge signed a bill creating the Federal Radio Commission, the forerunner of the Federal Communications Commission.

1945 - During World War II, the U.S. Marines captured Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima, Japan, where they raised the American flag.

1954 - The first mass inoculation of children against polio with the polio vaccine, created by Jonas Salk, began, in Pittsburgh.

1974 - The Symbionese Liberation Army demanded $4 million more for the release of Patty Hearst.

1997 - Roslin, Scotland scientists announce that an adult sheep named Dolly had been successfully cloned.

2006 - The one billionth song was downloaded from the iTunes Music Store.

Births

1633 - Samuel Pepys, English civil servant and diarist.

1685 - George Frederick Handel, German composer.

1787 - Emma Willard, American educator, textbooks author.

1868 - W.E.B. Du Bois (William Edward Burghardt Du Bois), American historian, sociologist, and civil rights leader, founder of what became the NAACP.

1939 - Peter Fonda, American actor.

1944 - Johnny Winter (born John Dawson Winter III), American blues guitarist, singer, and producer.

Deaths

1848 - John Quincy Adams, diplomat, politician, and President of the United States.

1965 - English-born Stan Laurel, famous as part of the comedy team Laurel and Hardy.