ABSCAM operation revealed

On February 2, 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is signed, ending the Mexican-American War in favor of the United States. The Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo added an additional 525,000 square miles to United States territory, including the area that would become the states of Texas, California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona, as well […]

Novelist James Joyce is born this day in Dublin, Ireland, the eldest of 10 children. His father, a cheerful ne’er-do-well, will eventually go bankrupt. Joyce attended Catholic school and University College in Dublin. A brilliant scholar, he learned Dano-Norwegian in order to read the plays of Henrik Ibsen in the original. In college, he began […]

On February 2, 1897, Black inventor and businessman Alfred Cralle patents the first ice cream scoop. His popular creation is part of a surge in patents by Black inventors after the end of the Civil War. While working as a porter at the Markell Brothers drugstore in Pittsburgh, Alfred Cralle noticed his fellow employees struggling […]

Police discover the body of film director William Desmond Taylor in his Los Angeles bungalow. Lieutenant Tom Ziegler responded to a call about a “natural death” at the Alvarado Street home of Taylor. When he arrived they found actors, actresses and studio executives rummaging through the director’s belongings. He also found Taylor lying on the […]

In response to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s proposal that President Harry S. Truman travel to Russia for a conference, Secretary of State Dean Acheson brusquely rejects the idea as a “political maneuver.” This rather curious exchange was further evidence of the diplomatic sparring between the United States and the Soviet Union that was so characteristic […]

The first U.S. Air Force plane is lost in South Vietnam. The C-123 aircraft crashed while spraying defoliant on a Viet Cong ambush site. The aircraft was part of Operation Ranch Hand, a technological area-denial technique designed to expose the roads and trails used by the Viet Cong. U.S. personnel dumped an estimated 19 million […]

The exposé sparked demands for new standards of care.

On February 2, 1979, Sid Vicious, former bassist for the notorious Sex Pistols—and the living embodiment of everything punk rock stood for and against—dies of a heroin overdose in a Greenwich Village apartment. His death likely came as a surprise to very few. To the New York City Police Department and Medical Examiner’s Office, he […]

On February 2, 2014, Philip Seymour Hoffman, considered one of the most talented and versatile actors of his generation, dies of a drug overdose at age 46 in New York City. During his career, the prolific performer appeared in more than 50 movies, including Capote, Doubt and The Hunger Games series, and earned a reputation […]