Today is Friday, Feb. 14, the 45th day of 2020. There are 321 days left in the year. This is Valentine's Day.

Today's Highlight in History:

On Feb. 14, 2018, a gunman identified as a former student opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School near Fort Lauderdale, Florida, killing 17 people in the nation's deadliest school shooting since the attack in Newtown, Connecticut, more than five years earlier.

On this date:


In 1876, inventors Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray applied separately for patents related to the telephone. (The U.S. Supreme Court eventually ruled Bell the rightful inventor.)




In 1945, during World War II, British and Canadian forces reached the Rhine River in Germany.

In 1949, Israel's Knesset convened for the first time.

In 1967, Aretha Franklin recorded her cover of Otis Redding's "Respect" at Atlantic Records in New York.


In 1984, 6-year-old Stormie Jones became the world's first heart-liver transplant recipient when the surgery was performed at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh (she lived until November, 1990).

In 1985, Cable News Network reporter Jeremy Levin, held hostage by extremists in Lebanon, escaped from his captors.

In 2013, double-amputee and Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius shot and killed his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, at his home in Pretoria, South Africa; he was later convicted of murder and is serving a 13-year prison term. American Airlines and US Airways announced an $11 billion merger that turned American into the world's biggest airline.

Ten years ago: The Americans broke through the Nordic combined barrier at Vancouver as Johnny Spillane won the silver, the first U.S. Olympic medal in the sport dominated since its inception by the Europeans (Jason Lamy Chappuis of France won the gold). Jamie McMurray won the Daytona 500. The Eastern Conference edged the West 141-139 in the NBA All-Star game in Arlington, Texas. Larry Ellison's space-age trimaran completed a two-race sweep in the 33rd America's Cup. Death claimed best-selling British author Dick Francis at age 89 and Doug Fieger, leader of the power pop band The Knack, at age 57.

Five years ago: A Danish gunman attacked a free-speech seminar and a synagogue in Copenhagen, killing two people; the shooter was later slain by a special police team. Actor Louis Jourdan (LOO’-wee zhor-DAN’), 93, died in Beverly Hills, California. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Philip Levine, 87, died in Fresno, California.

One year ago: William Barr was sworn in for his second stint as the nation’s attorney general; he succeeded Jeff Sessions, who’d been pushed out of office by President Donald Trump after Trump denounced Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. Amazon abruptly dropped plans for a big new headquarters in New York after politicians and activists objected to the nearly $3 billion in incentives that had been promised to the company. European aviation giant Airbus said it would stop making its superjumbo A380 in 2021 after struggling to sell the plane, the world’s biggest passenger jet.
