February 19th in History: Significant Events and Milestones

February 19th in History: Significant Events and Milestones

Today is February 19th, and it marks the 50th day of the year with 315 days remaining. On this day in history, inventor Thomas Edison received a patent for the phonograph in 1878. Astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus was born in Torun, Poland in 1473. In 1847, the first rescuers reached the snowbound members of the Donner Party in the Sierra Nevada. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in 1942, leading to the internment of 125,000 people of Japanese ancestry during World War II. Operation Detachment began in 1945 as U.S. Marines landed at Iwo Jima to battle Japanese forces. President Gerald R. Ford ended the internment order in 1976, calling it a sad day in American history. In 2003, an Iranian military plane crashed, killing all 275 people on board. Fidel Castro resigned as Cuban president in 2008 after nearly 50 years in power, with his brother Raúl succeeding him. The ocean liner SS United States departed Philadelphia in 2025 to be sunk off Florida's Gulf Coast to create an artificial reef.