Today in History: February 17, House elects Thomas Jefferson president over Aaron Burr
Today in history:
On Feb. 17, 1801, the U.S. House of Representatives broke an electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, electing Jefferson president; Burr became vice president.
Also on this date:
In 1863, five appointees of the Public Welfare Society of Geneva announced the formation of an 'International Committee for the Relief of Wounded Combatants,' which would later be renamed the International Committee of the Red Cross.
In 1864, during the Civil War, the Union ship USS Housatonic was rammed and sunk in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, by the Confederate hand-cranked submarine HL Hunley in the first naval attack of its kind; the Hunley also sank.
In 1897, the forerunner of the National PTA, the National Congress of Mothers, convened its first meeting in Washington with over 2,000 attendees.
In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Wesberry v. Sanders, ruled that congressional districts within each state must be roughly equal in population.
In 1992, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to life imprisonment after being found guilty of 15 counts of first-degree murder.
In 1995, Colin Ferguson was convicted of six counts of murder in the December 1993 Long Island Rail Road shootings; he was later sentenced to 315 years in prison.
In 2008, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia.
In 2013, Danica Patrick won the Daytona 500 pole, becoming the first woman to secure the top spot for any Sprint Cup race.
In 2014, Jimmy Fallon made his debut as host of NBC's 'Tonight Show.'
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Yahoo
17 hours ago
- Yahoo
American presidents have long used autopens. Just ask Trump.
Donald Trump has repeatedly slammed Joe Biden's use of an autopen during his presidency, going so far as to center its usage in a broad investigation Trump announced Wednesday into his predecessor. But politicians on both sides of the aisle are deeply familiar with the tool. The autopen — also referred to as the robot pen — replicates an individual's signature using a writing utensil, rather than a scanned and printed version of it. The tool, which resembles a small printer with a long arm that allows users to attach a pen to the center, has a long history of use in American politics. The device was first patented in 1803, according to the Shapell Manuscript Foundation, an independent research organization that collects original manuscripts and historical documents. Iterations of the autopen have been used by presidents as far back as Thomas Jefferson, who wrote that 'I could not, now therefore, live without' the device he used to duplicate letters. 'The Autopen has long been a tool for the world's most influential leaders, allowing them to more effectively apply their time and attention to important issues without compromising the impact of personalized correspondence," according to The Autopen Co., which sells the machines. U.S. leaders on both sides of the aisle have used the autopen for decades — and have faced criticism for their use of the tool. During Lyndon Johnson's administration, the autopen was featured in The National Enquirer for an article headlined 'One of the Best Kept Secrets in Washington: The Robot That Sits In For The President.' Even Trump himself has said he used autopens, but 'only for very unimportant papers.' 'We may use it, as an example, to send some young person a letter because it's nice,' Trump said in March, according to The Associated Press. 'You know, we get thousands and thousands of letters, letters of support for young people, from people that aren't feeling well, etcetera. But to sign pardons and all of the things that he signed with an autopen is disgraceful.' In 2004, George W. Bush's secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, faced criticism from some veterans for using an autopen to sign condolence letters to families of troops killed in the Iraq War. In 2011, Barack Obama used an autopen to sign a Patriot Act extension — becoming the first known, apparent use of the tool by a president for legislation — and used it subsequently in his administration. The move resulted in Republicans questioning the constitutionality of Obama's decision, though Bush's Office of Legal Counsel, which is part of the Department of Justice, had already concluded the use of autopens was constitutional. 'The President need not personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature to a bill he approves and decides to sign in order for the bill to become law,' the office's 2005 ruling stated. "Rather, the President may sign a bill within the meaning of Article I, Section 7 by directing a subordinate to affix the President's signature to such a bill, for example by autopen.' There is no specific law governing a president's use of an autopen. But the ruling from the Department of Justice hasn't stopped Trump from accusing Biden and his team of illegally using the tool, alleging that Biden's team used an autopen to sign documents without Biden's permission or knowledge. Trump has also claimed that Biden's round of pardons — including 'preemptive pardons' of Jan. 6 investigators, his son Hunter Biden and Anthony Fauci — were illegal and are 'void' and 'vacant.' However, most legal scholars are in agreement that pardons cannot be overturned once granted. In 1869, a federal court ruled, 'The law undoubtedly is, that when a pardon is complete, there is no power to revoke it, any more than there is power to revoke any other completed act.' Biden has denied the claims that any decision was ever made or issued in his name without his approval or knowledge. Trump and other Republican accusers have provided no evidence that aides used an autopen without the former president's approval. 'Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency,' Biden told POLITICO in a statement. 'I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn't is ridiculous and false. This is nothing more than a distraction by Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans who are working to push disastrous legislation that would cut essential programs like Medicaid and raise costs on American families, all to pay for tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and big corporations.'
New York Times
a day ago
- New York Times
How a Hate Crime in a Southern City Foretold the Rise of the Far Right
CHARLOTTESVILLE: An American Story, by Deborah Baker Charlottesville always seemed like an odd place for Charlottesville to happen. Tucked away in Virginia's Blue Ridge foothills, the city long projected an image of gentility, civility and rationality. In 2017, before everything changed, Charlottesville was home not only to Thomas Jefferson's complicated legacy but also to a Jewish mayor, a substantial Black population and one of the country's elite public universities. Now, however, the site of Jefferson's Monticello and 'Academical Village' is so synonymous with the frightful and portentous Unite the Right rally of August 2017 that no explanatory subtitle was needed for Deborah Baker's searching and personal exploration of her hometown's violent invasion, 'Charlottesville: An American Story.' Baker's vividly detailed reconstruction is a worthwhile addition to a growing canon of narrative nonfiction aimed at documenting and interpreting the outburst of race- and hate-driven violence in America between 2015 (the massacre at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C.) and 2020 (the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis). Charlottesville, with its indelible video of torch-wielding Nazis and a careening Dodge death mobile, fell squarely in the middle of this stretch, an inevitable allegory for the rightward swerve of American politics under Donald Trump. Baker left Charlottesville for New York after graduating from the University of Virginia in 1981 but was drawn back to examine how such a shockingly regressive act could take place in her seemingly progressive hometown. She is transparent from the get-go about her bewilderment that the storm troopers who gathered in Charlottesville might represent something enduring in American politics. 'Were they, like the election of Donald Trump, a harbinger of some future I was too old or ill-equipped to grasp?' she asks in her introduction. Many Americans — perhaps just under half — can likely relate. Baker is clearheaded, however, about the 'direct path' between Charlottesville and the insurrectionist attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and, implicitly, the revival of Trumpism in 2024. She is equally clear that there were not 'very fine people on both sides,' as President Trump asserted three days after one of those people accelerated his car into a crowd, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring at least three dozen others. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Chicago Tribune
a day ago
- Chicago Tribune
Today in History: George Orwell's ‘1984' first published
Today is Sunday, June 8, the 159th day of 2025. There are 206 days left in the year. Today in history: On June 8, 1949, George Orwell's novel '1984' was first published. Also on this date: In 1789, in an address to the U.S. House of Representatives, James Madison proposed amending the Constitution to include a Bill of Rights. In 1966, a merger was announced between the National and American Football Leagues, to take effect in 1970. In 1967, during the Six-Day War, 34 American crew members were killed when Israel attacked the USS Liberty, a Navy intelligence-gathering ship in the Mediterranean Sea. (Israel later said the Liberty had been mistaken for an Egyptian vessel.) In 1968, U.S. authorities announced the capture in London of James Earl Ray, the suspected assassin of civil rights leader the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In 1978, a jury in Clark County, Nevada, ruled the so-called 'Mormon Will,' purportedly written by the late billionaire Howard Hughes, was a forgery. In 1995, U.S. Marines rescued Capt. Scott O'Grady, whose F-16C fighter jet had been shot down by Bosnian Serbs on June 2. In 2009, North Korea's highest court sentenced American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee to 12 years' hard labor for trespassing and 'hostile acts.' (The women were pardoned in early August 2009 after a trip to Pyongyang by former President Bill Clinton.) In 2017, former FBI Director James Comey, testifying before Congress, asserted that President Donald Trump fired him to interfere with Comey's investigation of Russia's ties to the Trump campaign. In 2021, Ratko Mladić, the military chief known as the 'Butcher of Bosnia' for orchestrating genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Balkan nation's 1992-95 war, lost his final legal battle when U.N. judges rejected his appeal and affirmed his life sentence. In 2023, Donald Trump was indicted by a grand jury in Miami on 37 felony counts related to the alleged mishandling of classified documents that had been moved to Mar-a-Lago, Trump's Florida home. (The case against Trump was abandoned following Trump's November 2024 presidential election victory.) Today's Birthdays: Singer Nancy Sinatra is 85. Musician Boz Scaggs is 81. Pianist Emanuel Ax is 76. Actor Sonia Braga is 75. Actor Kathy Baker is 75. Singer Bonnie Tyler is 73. Computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee is 70. Actor Griffin Dunne is 70. 'Dilbert' creator Scott Adams is 68. Actor-director Keenen Ivory Wayans is 67. Singer Mick Hucknall (Simply Red) is 65. Musician Nick Rhodes (Duran Duran) is 63. Actor Julianna Margulies is 59. Former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat from Arizona, is 55. Tennis Hall of Famer Lindsay Davenport is 49. TV personality-host Maria Menounos is 47. Country singer-songwriter Sturgill Simpson is 47. Guitarist-songwriter Derek Trucks is 46. Tennis Hall of Famer Kim Clijsters is 42. U.S. Olympic track gold medalist Athing Mu-Nikolayev is 23.
