http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history
Feb 22, 1980: U.S. hockey team makes miracle on ice
In one of the most dramatic upsets in Olympic history, the underdog U.S. hockey team, made up of college players, defeats the four-time defending gold-medal winning Soviet team at the XIII Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid, New York. The Soviet squad, previously regarded as the finest in the world, fell to the youthful American team 4-3 before a frenzied crowd of 10,000 spectators. Two days later, the Americans defeated Finland 4-2 to clinch the hockey gold.
The Soviet team had captured the previous four Olympic hockey golds, going back to 1964, and had not lost an Olympic hockey game since 1968. Three days before the Lake Placid Games began, the Soviets routed the U.S. team 10-3 in an exhibition game at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The Americans looked scrappy, but few blamed them for it--their average age, after all, was only 22, and their team captain, Mike Eruzione, was recruited from the obscurity of the Toledo Blades of the International League.
Few had high hopes for the seventh-seeded U.S. team entering the Olympic tournament, but the team soon silenced its detractors, making it through the opening round of play undefeated, with four victories and one tie, thus advancing to the four-team medal round. The Soviets, however, were seeded No. 1 and as expected went undefeated, with five victories in the first round.
On Friday afternoon, February 22, the American amateurs and the Soviet dream team met before a sold-out crowd at Lake Placid. The Soviets broke through first, with their new young star, Valery Krotov, deflecting a slap shot beyond American goalie Jim Craig's reach in the first period. Midway through the period, Buzz Schneider, the only American who had previously been an Olympian, answered the Soviet goal with a high shot over the shoulder of Vladislav Tretiak, the Soviet goalie.
The relentless Soviet attack continued as the period progressed, with Sergei Makarov giving his team a 2-1 lead. With just a few seconds left in the first period, American Ken Morrow shot the puck down the ice in desperation. Mark Johnson picked it up and sent it into the Soviet goal with one second remaining. After a brief Soviet protest, the goal was deemed good, and the game was tied.
In the second period, the irritated Soviets came out with a new goalie, Vladimir Myshkin, and turned up the attack. The Soviets dominated play in the second period, outshooting the United States 12-2, and taking a 3-2 lead with a goal by Alesandr Maltsev just over two minutes into the period. If not for several remarkable saves by Jim Craig, the Soviet lead would surely have been higher than 3-2 as the third and final 20-minute period began.
Nearly nine minutes into the period, Johnson took advantage of a Soviet penalty and knocked home a wild shot by David Silk to tie the contest again at 3-3. About a minute and a half later, Mike Eruzione, whose last name means "eruption" in Italian, picked up a loose puck in the Soviet zone and slammed it past Myshkin with a 25-foot wrist shot. For the first time in the game, the Americans had the lead, and the crowd erupted in celebration.
There were still 10 minutes of play to go, but the Americans held on, with Craig making a few more fabulous saves. With five seconds remaining, the Americans finally managed to get the puck out of their zone, and the crowd began counting down the final seconds. When the final horn sounded, the players, coaches, and team officials poured onto the ice in raucous celebration. The Soviet players, as awestruck as everyone else, waited patiently to shake their opponents' hands.
The so-called Miracle on Ice was more than just an Olympic upset; to many Americans, it was an ideological victory in the Cold War as meaningful as the Berlin Airlift or the Apollo moon landing. The upset came at an auspicious time: President Jimmy Carter had just announced that the United States was going to boycott the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and Americans, faced with a major recession and the Iran hostage crisis, were in dire need of something to celebrate. After the game, President Carter called the players to congratulate them, and millions of Americans spent that Friday night in revelry over the triumph of "our boys" over the Russian pros.
As the U.S. team demonstrated in their victory over Finland two days later, it was disparaging to call the U.S. team amateurs. Three-quarters of the squad were top college players who were on their way to the National Hockey League (NHL), and coach Herb Brooks had trained the team long and hard in a manner that would have made the most authoritative Soviet coach proud. The 1980 U.S. hockey team was probably the best-conditioned American Olympic hockey team of all time--the result of countless hours running skating exercises in preparation for Lake Placid. In their play, the U.S. players adopted passing techniques developed by the Soviets for the larger international hockey rinks, while preserving the rough checking style that was known to throw the Soviets off-guard. It was these factors, combined with an exceptional afternoon of play by Craig, Johnson, Eruzione, and others, that resulted in the miracle at Lake Placid.
This improbable victory was later memorialized in a 2004 film, Miracle, starring Kurt Russell.
Feb 22, 1968: Tet Offensive ends
The American war effort in Vietnam was hit hard by the North Vietnamese Tet Offensive, which ended on this day in 1968. Claims by President Lyndon Johnson that the offensive was a complete failure were misleading. Though the North Vietnamese death toll was 20 times that of its enemies, strongholds previously thought impenetrable had been shaken. The prospect of increasing American forces added substantial strength to the anti-war movement and led to Johnson's announcement that he would not seek re-election.
Feb 22, 1819: The U.S. acquires Spanish Florida
Spanish minister Do Luis de Onis and U.S. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams sign the Florida Purchase Treaty, in which Spain agrees to cede the remainder of its old province of Florida to the United States.
Spanish colonization of the Florida peninsula began at St. Augustine in 1565. The Spanish colonists enjoyed a brief period of relative stability before Florida came under attack from resentful Native Americans and ambitious English colonists to the north in the 17th century. Spain's last-minute entry into the French and Indian War on the side of France cost it Florida, which the British acquired through the first Treaty of Paris in 1763. After 20 years of British rule, however, Florida was returned to Spain as part of the second Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolution in 1783.
Spain's hold on Florida was tenuous in the years after American independence, and numerous boundary disputes developed with the United States. In 1819, after years of negotiations, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams achieved a diplomatic coup with the signing of the Florida Purchase Treaty, which officially put Florida into U.S. hands at no cost beyond the U.S. assumption of some $5 million of claims by U.S. citizens against Spain. Formal U.S. occupation began in 1821, and General Andrew Jackson, the hero of the War of 1812, was appointed military governor. Florida was organized as a U.S. territory in 1822 and was admitted into the Union as a slave state in 1845.
Feb 22, 1917: Mussolini wounded by mortar bomb
On February 22, 1917, Sergeant Benito Mussolini is wounded by the accidental explosion of a mortar bomb on the Isonzo section of the Italian Front in World War I.
Born in Predappio, Italy, in 1883, the son of a blacksmith and a teacher, Mussolini was well-read, largely self-educated and had worked as a schoolteacher and a socialist journalist. He was arrested and jailed for leading demonstrations in the Forli province against the Italian war in Libya in 1911-12. The editor of Avanti!, the Socialist Party newsletter in Milan, Mussolini was one of the most effective socialist journalists in Europe. In 1912, at the age of 29, he took the reins of the Italian Socialist Party at the Congress of Reggio Emilia, preaching a strict Marxist socialism that prompted Vladimir Lenin to write in a Russian publication that The party of the Italian socialist proletariat has taken the right path.
Mussolini early on denounced the Great War, which broke out in 1914, as an imperialist conflict; he later reversed his position and began to advocate Italian entrance into the war on the side of the Allies. He left the Socialist Party in 1915 over its neutrality, believing that Italian participation in the Great War would boost its claims on recovered territory in Austria-Hungary after the war. Enlisting in the army, Mussolini was sent to the front at Isonzo, on the eastern end of the Italian Front near the Isonzo River, after Italy's long-awaited entrance into the war in May 1915.
The mortar bomb that exploded during a training exercise on February 22, 1917, killed four of Mussolini's fellow soldiers. He escaped alive, but spent six months in the hospital, where 44 fragments of shell were removed from his body. Discharged from the army after his release from the hospital, Mussolini headed back to Milan, where he started his own newspaper, Il Popolo d'Italia (The People of Italy), in which he published articles attacking those in Italy who voiced anti-war sentiments.
In the immediate post-war period, Mussolini and a group of fellow young war veterans founded the Fasci di Combattimento, a right-wing, strongly nationalistic, anti-Socialist movement named for the fasces, the ancient Roman symbol for discipline. Fascism grew rapidly in the 1920s, winning support from rich landowners, the army and the monarchy; the growing strength of Mussolini and his now notorious black-shirt militia led King Vittorio Emmanuel III to invite the charismatic leader to form a coalition government in 1922. By 1926, Benito Mussolini, now known as Il Duce, had consolidated power for himself, transforming Italy into a single-party, totalitarian state that would later, alongside Japan and Adolf Hitler's Germany, return to the battlefield against the Allies in the Second World War.
Here's a more detailed look at events that transpired on this date throughout history:
896 - Pope Formosa crowned king Arnulf of Karinthie/French
emperor
1071 - Battle of Cassel; Robert I the Frisian defeats Arnulf
III/I
1281 - Simon de Brion elected Pope Martinus IV
1288 - Girolamo Masci elected Pope Nicolas IV
1300 - Pope Boniface VIII delegates degree
1349 - Jews are expelled from Zurich Switzerland
1495 - French King Charles VIII enters Naples to claim crown
1561 - William of Orange appointed viceroy of
Burgundy/Charolais
1630 - Indians introduce pilgrims to popcorn, at
Thanksgiving
1632 - Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World
Systems is published.
1656 - New Amsterdam granted a Jewish burial site
1744 - Battle at Toulon: English-French & Spanish fleet
1746 - French troops conquer Brussels
1746 - Jakobijnse troops vacate Aberdeen
1774 - British House of Lords rules authors do not have
perpetual copyright
1775 - 1st US joint stock company (to make cloth) offers
shares at 10 cents
1775 - Jews expelled from outskirts of Warsaw Poland
1784 - 1st US ship to trade with China, "Empress of
China," sails from NY
1797 - The Last Invasion of Britain by the French, begins
near Fishguard, Wales.
Astronomer & Physicist Galileo GalileiAstronomer &
Physicist Galileo Galilei 1819 - Spain renounces claims to Oregon Country,
Florida (Adams-Onís Treaty)
1821 - Spain sells (east) Florida to United States for $5
million
1825 - Russia & Britain establish Alaska-Canada boundary
1828 - Russia & Persia sign Peace of Turkmantsjai
1835 - HMS Beagle/Charles Darwin leave Valdivia Chile
1836 - Dutch garrison evacuates fort Du Bus New Guinea
1847 - Battle of Buena Vista: US troops beat Mexican army
1854 - 1st meeting of Republican Party (Michigan)
1856 - 1st national meeting of Republican Party (Pittsburgh)
1858 - Dion Boucicault's "Jessie Brown," premieres
in NYC
1860 - Organized baseball played in SF for 1st time
1860 - Shoe-making workers of Lynn Ms, strike successfully
for higher wages
1861 - On a bet Edward Weston leaves Boston to walk to
Lincoln's inauguration
1864 - -27] Battle at Dalton Georgia
1864 - 2nd/last day of Battle of Okolona, MS
Naturalist Charles DarwinNaturalist Charles Darwin 1864 -
Skirmish at Calfkiller Creek (Sparta) Tennessee
1865 - Battle of Wilmington, NC (Fort Anderson) occupied by
Federals
1865 - Tennessee adopts a new constitution abolishing
slavery
1872 - 1st national convention of Prohibition Party
(Columbus Ohio)
1876 - Johns Hopkins University opens
1878 - Greenback Labor Party forms (Toledo Ohio)
1879 - 1st 5 cent & 10 cent store opened by Frank W
Woolworth (Utica NY)
1882 - With 120 miles James Saunders wins NYC's 24 hour race
& $100 prize
1882 - The Serbian kingdom is refounded.
1887 - Union Labor Party organized in Cincinnati
1888 - John Reid of Scotland demonstrates golf to Americans
(Yonkers NY)
1889 - US President Cleveland signs bill to admit Dakotas,
Montana & Washington state to the union
1892 - "Lady Windermere's Fan" by Oscar Wilde
premieres at St James (London)
1892 - Manitoba Rugby Football Union forms
1898 - Black postmaster lynched, his wife & 3 daughters
shot in Lake City SC
Writer/Poet Oscar WildeWriter/Poet Oscar Wilde 1900 - Battle
at Wynne's Hill, South-Africa (Boers vs British army)
1900 - Hawaii became a US territory
1903 - Due to drought the US side of Niagara Falls runs
short of water
1904 - The United Kingdom sells a meteorological station on
the South Orkney Islands to Argentina, the islands are subsequently claimed by
the United Kingdom in 1908.
1906 - Black evangelist William J Seymour arrives in LA
Calif
1907 - 1st cabs with taxi meters begin operating in London
1907 - Leonid N Andreyev's "Zhizn Cheloveka,"
premieres in St Petersburg
1909 - Great White Fleet, 1st US fleet to circle the globe,
returns to Va
1912 - J Vedrines makes 1st airplane flight over 100
mph-161.29 kph
1913 - Lowell HS, SF opens (on its 1st campus)
1915 - Germany begins "unrestricted" submarine war
1917 - German Navy torpedoes 7 Dutch ships
1918 - Germany claims Baltic states, Finland & Ukraine
from Russia
1920 - 1st artificial rabbit used at a dog race track
(Emeryville California)
1922 - Congress authorizes Grant Memorial $1 gold coin
1923 - 1st successful chinchilla farm in US (Los Angeles
California)
1923 - Transcontinental airmail service begins
1927 - ARC soccer team forms in Alphen on the Rhine
1927 - Baruch Spinosa's house of mourning opened as a museum
1928 - 1st solo England to Australia flight lands (Bert
Hinkler)
1932 - Purple Heart award reinstituted
Nazi Politician Hermann GoeringNazi Politician Hermann
Goering 1933 - Hermann Goering forms SA/SS-police, shoots 40-50
1934 - "It Happened One Night," opens at NY's
Radio City Music Hall
1935 - Airplanes are no longer permitted to fly over the
White House
1936 - Construction on Ypenburg Neth airport begins
1939 - Netherlands recognizes Franco regime in Spain
1940 - Finnish troops vacate Koivisto island
1940 - German air force sinks 2 German destroyers, killing
578
1941 - Arthur "Bomber" Harris becomes British Air
Marshal
1941 - German assault on El Agheila Libya
1941 - IG Farben decides building Buna-Werke in Auschwitz
Concentration Camp
1941 - Nazi SS begin rounding up Jews of Amsterdam
1941 - Paul Creston's 1st Symphony, premieres
1941 - Roy Harris' "Ballad of a Railroad Man,"
premieres
1942 - World War II: President Franklin Roosevelt orders
General Douglas MacArthur out of the Philippines as American defenses collapse
1943 - Members of White Rose are executed in Nazi Germany.
WW2 General Douglas MacArthurWW2 General Douglas MacArthur
1944 - US 8th Air Force bombs Enschede, Arnhem & Nijmegen by mistake/800+
die
1945 - Arab League forms (Cairo)
1945 - British troops take Ramree Island, Burma
1945 - Canadian 3rd Division occupies Moyland
1948 - Arabs bomb attack in Jerusalem, 50 die
1950 - Brockway & Weinstock publish "Men of
Music" (rev ed)
1955 - British aircraft carrier Ark Royal sets sail
1956 - 1st British soccer match at Kunstlicht: Portsmouth vs
Newcastle United
1956 - Elvis Presley's 1st hit in Billboard's top 10:
"Heartbreak Hotel"
1957 - Jockey Ted Atkinson, 3,500th win
1957 - Walter O'Malley says Dodgers may play 10 exhibitions
in California in 1958
1958 - "Portotino" closes at Adelphi Theater NYC
after 3 performances
1958 - Australian swimmer Jon Konrads sets 6 world records
in 2 days
1958 - Egypt & Syria form United Arab Republic (UAR)
1958 - Indonesian air force bombs Padang, Sumatra/Menado,
Celebes
Singer & Cultural Icon Elvis PresleySinger &
Cultural Icon Elvis Presley 1959 - 1st Daytona 500 auto race-Lee Petty wins
(135.521 MPH)
1962 - Wilt Chamberlain sets NBA record with 34 free throw
attempts
1963 - Beatles begin their own music publishing company
(Northern Songs)
1964 - Beatles arrive back in England after their 1st US
visit
1965 - USSR launches Kosmos 57 into earth orbit (Voskhod
Test)
1966 - Soviets launch Kosmos 110 with Veterok & Ugolek,
1st 2-dog crew
1967 - Barbara Garson's "MacBird," premieres in
NYC
1967 - Sling-shot goal post & 6' wide border around
field are standard in NFL
1967 - 25,000 US & S Vietnamese troops launched
Operation Junction City, offensive to smash Viet Cong stronghold near Cambodian
border
1968 - Rock group Genesis release their 1st record
"Silent Sun"
1969 - Barbara Jo Rubin becomes 1st female jockey to win at
a major US track
1970 - "Charles Aznavour" closes at Music Box
Theater NYC after 23 perfs
1971 - Lt Gen Hafiz al-Assad becomes President of Syria
1972 - Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani becomes Amir & Prime
Minister of Qatar
1972 - President Nixon, meets with Chinese Premier Chou
En-Lai in Beijing
1973 - US & China agree to establish liaison offices in
Beijing & Wash DC
1974 - Ethiopian police shoot at demonstrators
1976 - Kathy Whitworth wins LPGA Bent Tree Golf Classic
1978 - 2 tankers with propane gas explode killing 15 at
Waverly, Tenn
1979 - Billy Martin named manager of Oakland A's
1979 - Cleveland Metroparks Zoo's Primate & Cat Building
is dedicated
1979 - St Lucia gains independence from Britain
1980 - Afghanistan declares martial law
1980 - USA beats USSR in Olympic hockey 4-3 en route to a
gold medal
1981 - Amy Alcott wins LPGA Bent Tree Ladies Golf Classic
1982 - NYC Mayor Koch announces he will run for NY governor
(unsuccessful)
1983 - Harold Washington wins Chicago's Democratic mayoral
primary
1983 - Hindus kill 3000 Moslems in Assam, India
1983 - Vladimir Salnikov (USSR) sets 1500m free style
swimming record
1984 - Brothers Anton & Peter Stastny score 8 pts each
for NHL Quebec
1986 - Start of the People Power Revolution in the
Philippines.
1987 - Bruno Marie-Rose runs world record 200m indoor (20.36
sec)
1988 - Bonnie Blair skates world record 500m (39.10 sec)
1989 - Fins ministry of Public health installs sex vacation
to thwart stress
1989 - NY Lotto pays $26.9 million to one winner (#s are
1-5-12-19-44-50)
Physicist Stephen HawkingPhysicist Stephen Hawking 1989 - UK
physicist Stephen Hawking calls Star Wars a "deliberate fraud"
1989 - US authors demonstrate against Iranian death treats
against Salman Rushdee, author of "Satanic Rituals"
1989 - 31st Grammy Awards: Don't Worry Be Happy, Faith,
Tracy Chapman
1989 - 1st Spanish commercial on network TV (Pepsi-Cola-CBS
Grammy Award)
1990 - 1st day India v NZ cricket at Auckland NZ 5-78 at
lunch, 9-387 stumps
1991 - Bush & US Gulf War allies give Iraq 24 hrs to
begin Kuwait withdrawal
1991 - Kelli McCarty, 21, (Kansas), crowned 40th Miss USA
1991 - Test Cricket debut of Sanath Jayasuriya, vs NZ at
Hamilton
1992 - "Park Your Car in Harvard Yard" closes at
Music Box NYC
1992 - Barry Diller resigns as CEO of Fox
1992 - Lisa Walters wins LPGA Itoki Hawaiian Ladies Open
Golf Tournament
1992 - Rockers Kurt Corbin (Nirvana) & Courtney Love
(Hole), wed
1993 - Vinod Kambli scores 224 v England at Bombay, 411
balls, 23 fours
1994 - "Les Miserables," opens at Chunichi
Theatre, Nagoya
1995 - Algiers police kill at least 99 prison rioters
Singer-Songwriter Courtney LoveSinger-Songwriter Courtney
Love 1995 - Steve Fossett completes 1st air balloon over Pacific Ocean (9600
km)
1996 - "Bus Stop" opens at Circle in Sq Theater
NYC for 29 performances
1996 - Actress Halle Berry files for divorce from David
Justice
1996 - STS 75 (Columbia 19), launches into orbit
1997 - Annika Sorenstam wins LPGA Cup Noodles Hawaiian
Ladies Open
1998 - "King & I," closes at Neil Simon
Theater NYC after 781 performances
1998 - 18th Winter Olympic games close at Nagano Japan
2002 - Angolan political and rebel leader Jonas Savimbi is
killed in a military ambush.
2006 - At least six men stage Britain's biggest robbery
ever, stealing £53m (about $92.5 million or 78€ million) from a Securitas depot
in Tonbridge, Kent.
2011 - An earthquake measuring 6.3 in magnitude strikes
Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 181 people
2012 - Train crash in Buenos Aires, Argentina, kills 50 and
injures hundreds
2013 - 29 people are killed and 150 are injured by by 3
Syrian army missiles in Aleppo
2013 - 13 Chadian soldiers and 65 Muslim insurgents are
killed in conflict in Northern Mali
2013 - The UK's credit rating is downgraded from AAA to AA1
by Moody's Investors Service
1630 - Quadequine introduced popcorn to English colonists at their first Thanksgiving dinner. 1784 - "Empress of China", a U.S. merchant ship, left New York City for the Far East. 1819 - Spain ceded Florida to the United States. 1855 - The U.S. Congress voted to appropriate $200,000 for continuance of the work on the Washington Monument. The next morning the resolution was tabled and it would be 21 years before the Congress would vote on funds again. Work was continued by the Know-Nothing Party in charge of the project. 1859 - U.S. President Buchanan approved the Act of February 22, 1859, which incorporated the Washington National Monument Society "for the purpose of completing the erection now in progress of a great National Monument to the memory of Washington at the seat of the Federal Government." 1860 - Organized baseball’s first game was played in San Francisco, CA. 1865 - In the U.S., Tennessee adopted a new constitution that abolished slavery. 1879 - In Utica, NY, Frank W. Woolworth opened his first 5 and 10-cent store. 1885 - The Washington Monument was officially dedicated in Washington, DC. It opened to the public in 1889. 1892 - "Lady Windermere's Fan", by Oscar Wilde, was first performed. 1920 - The first dog race track to use an imitation rabbit opened in Emeryville, CA. 1923 - The first successful chinchilla farm opened in Los Angeles, CA. It was the first farm of its kind in the U.S. 1924 - U.S. President Calvin Coolidge delivered the first presidential radio broadcast from the White House. 1954 - ABC radio’s popular "Breakfast Club" program was simulcast on TV for the first time. 1969 - Barbara Jo Rubin became the first woman to win a U.S. thoroughbred horse race. 1973 - The U.S. and Communist China agreed to establish liaison offices. 1984 - The U.S. Census Bureau statistics showed that the state of Alaska was the fastest growing state of the decade with an increase in population of 19.2 percent. 1994 - The U.S. Justice Department charged Aldrich Ames and his wife with selling national secrets to the Soviet Union. Ames was later convicted to life in prison. Ames' wife received a 5-year prison term. 1997 - Scottish scientist Ian Wilmut and colleagues announced that an adult sheep had been successfully cloned. Dolly was actually born on July 5, 1996. Dolly was the first mammal to have been successfully cloned from an adult cell. 2002 - In the Philippines, An MH-47E Chinook helicopter crashed into the ocean. All 10 men aboard were killed.
The following links are to web sites that were used to complete this blog entry:
http://www.historyorb.com/today/events.php
http://on-this-day.com/onthisday/thedays/alldays/feb22.htm
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history
http://www.infoplease.com/dayinhistory
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