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1902
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more events on February 19
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1987
New York Governor Mario Cuomo declares that he will not run for president in the next election.
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1981
The U.S. State Department calls El Salvador a “textbook case” of a Communist plot.
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1976
Britain slashes welfare spending.
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1966
Robert F. Kennedy suggests the United States offer the Vietcong a role in governing South Vietnam.
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1965
Fourteen Vietnam War protesters are arrested for blocking the United Nations’ doors in New York.
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1952
Amy Tan, novelist (The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife).
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1944
The U.S. Eighth Air Force and Royal Air Force begin “Big Week,” a series of heavy bomber attacks against German aircraft production facilities.
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1942
Port Darwin, on the northern coast of Australia, is bombed by the Japanese.
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1940
Smokey Robinson, American singer and songwriter.
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1926
Dr. Lane of Princeton estimates the earth’s age at one billion years.
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1925
President Calvin Coolidge proposes the phasing out of inheritance tax.
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1919
The First Pan African Congress meets in Paris, France.
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1917
Carson McCullers, writer (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter).
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American troops are recalled from the Mexican border.
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1915
British and French warships begin their attacks on the Turkish forts at the mouth of the Dardenelles, in an abortive expedition to seize the straits of Gallipoli.