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There are many events that happened on this date in history. Here are just a few of them!

February 23 is the 54th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; 311 days remain until the end of the year (312 in leap years).

EVENTS

1455 – Traditionally the date of publication of the Gutenberg Bible, the first Western book printed with movable type.[5]

1836 – Texas Revolution: The Siege of the Alamo (prelude to the Battle of the Alamo) begins in San Antonio, Texas.

1847 – Mexican–American War: Battle of Buena Vista: In Mexico, American troops under future president General Zachary Taylor defeat Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna.

1861 – President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrives secretly in Washington, D.C., after the thwarting of an alleged assassination plot in Baltimore, Maryland.

1870 – Reconstruction Era: Post-U.S. Civil War military control of Mississippi ends and it is readmitted to the Union.

1883 – Alabama becomes the first U.S. state to enact an anti-trust law.

1886 – Charles Martin Hall produced the first samples of aluminium from the electrolysis of aluminium oxide, after several years of intensive work. He was assisted in this project by his older sister, Julia Brainerd Hall.

1887 – The French Riviera is hit by a large earthquake, killing around 2,000.

1898 – Émile Zola is imprisoned in France after writing J'Accuse…!, a letter accusing the French government of antisemitism and wrongfully imprisoning Captain Alfred Dreyfus.

1905 – Chicago attorney Paul Harris and three other businessmen meet for lunch to form the Rotary Club, the world's first service club.

1927 – U.S. President Calvin Coolidge signs a bill by Congress establishing the Federal Radio Commission (later replaced by the Federal Communications Commission) which was to regulate the use of radio frequencies in the United States.

1927 – German theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg writes a letter to fellow physicist Wolfgang Pauli, in which he describes his uncertainty principle for the first time.

1941 – Plutonium is first produced and isolated by Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg.

1942 – World War II: Japanese submarines fire artillery shells at the coastline near Santa Barbara, California.

1945 – World War II: During the Battle of Iwo Jima, a group of United States Marines reach the top of Mount Suribachi on the island and are photographed raising the American flag.

1945 – World War II: The 11th Airborne Division, with Filipino guerrillas, free all 2,147 captives of the Los Baños internment camp, in what General Colin Powell later would refer to as "the textbook airborne operation for all ages and all armies."

1954 – The first mass inoculation of children against polio with the Salk vaccine begins in Pittsburgh.

1983 – The United States Environmental Protection Agency announces its intent to buy out and evacuate the dioxin-contaminated community of Times Beach, Missouri.

BIRTHS

1417 – Pope Paul II (d. 1471)

1583 – Jean-Baptiste Morin, French mathematician, astrologer, and astronomer (d. 1656)

1592 – Balthazar Gerbier, Dutch painter (d. 1663)

1685 – George Frideric Handel, German-English organist and composer (d. 1759)

1723 – Richard Price, Welsh-English minister and philosopher (d. 1791)

1868 – W. E. B. Du Bois, American sociologist, historian, and activist (d. 1963)

1868 – Anna Hofman-Uddgren, Swedish actress, singer, and director (d. 1947)

1889 – Victor Fleming, American director, cinematographer, and producer (d. 1949)

1932 – Majel Barrett, American actress and producer (d. 2008)

1937 – Tom Osborne, American football player, coach, and politician

1938 – Sylvia Chase, American broadcast journalist (d. 2019)

1940 – Peter Fonda, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2019)

1951 – Ed "Too Tall" Jones, American football player and boxer

1951 – Patricia Richardson, American actress

1970 – Niecy Nash, American actress and producer

1983 – Emily Blunt, English actress

1994 – Dakota Fanning, American actress

DEATHS

1447 – Pope Eugene IV (b. 1383)

1792 – Joshua Reynolds, English painter and academic (b. 1723)

1821 – John Keats, English poet (b. 1795)

1848 – John Quincy Adams, American politician, 6th President of the United States (b. 1767)

1965 – Stan Laurel, English actor and comedian (b. 1890)

2014 – Alice Herz-Sommer, Czech-English Holocaust survivor, pianist and educator (b. 1903)

2019 – Katherine Helmond, American actress (b. 1929)

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