On February 25, 1779, Fort Sackville is surrendered, marking the beginning of the end of British domination in America’s western frontier. Eighteen days earlier, George Rogers Clark departed Kaskaskia on the Mississippi River with a force of approximately 170 men, including Kentucky militia and French volunteers. The party traveled over 200 miles of land covered […]

On February 25, 1862, the U.S. Congress passes the Legal Tender Act, authorizing the use of paper notes to pay the government’s bills. This ended the long-standing policy of using only gold or silver in transactions, and it allowed the government to finance the enormously costly Civil War long after its gold and silver reserves […]

On February 25, 1940, the first telecast of a National Hockey League game is transmitted over New York’s W2XBS—the National Broadcasting Company’s experimental station used to test TV technology. A viewing audience estimated at 300 subscribers watches the New York Rangers defeat the Montreal Canadiens, 6-2, at Madison Square Garden. During the first, crude telecast, winger […]

Under pressure from the Czechoslovakian Communist Party, President Edvard Benes allows a communist-dominated government to be organized. Although the Soviet Union did not physically intervene (as it would in 1968), Western observers decried the virtually bloodless communist coup as an example of Soviet expansion into Eastern Europe. The political scene in Czechoslovakia following World War […]

On February 25, 1987, the NCAA suspends the Southern Methodist University football program for 1987 season for repeated rules violations but stops short of imposing the so-called “death penalty.” Still, the sanctions are the most severe levied by the NCAA against a major college football program. The NCAA also significantly reduced the number of football […]