On This Day - February 19th

On this day in the year 197 of the common era (CE), at the Battle of Lugdunum, named for the Celtic high-god Lug (modern Lyon), the army of Lucius Septimius Severus (the only Roman emperor of African descent) defeats Clodius Albinus; one hundred and fifty-nine years later the Roman emperor Constantius II closes all traditional temples. Four hundred and eighty-six years after that the Iconoclastic controversies end as a council in Constantinople formally reinstates the veneration of icons in churches.

On this day in the year 1803 CE, the United States Congress accepts Ohio's bid for statehood, but neglects to ratify their constitution; this oversight was not corrected for one hundred and fifty years. Four years later, United States Vice President Aaron Burr is arrested in Alabama for treason…later acquitted; seventy-four years later the state of Kansas becomes first state to prohibit all alcoholic beverages.

On this day in 1831 CE the first coal-burning locomotive makes its trial run in Pennsylvania; twenty-five years later the Tin-type Camera is patented by Hamilton Smith of Gambier, Ohio. Twenty-two years after that, Thomas Edison is granted a patent for his cylinder phonograph

In 1906 CE, Will Keith Kellogg joins Charles D. Bolin in founding the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company, now the multinational food manufacturer Kellogg's, after falling out with his brother over development credit and wanting to add sugar to cereal; four years later, in New Yor, New York, Mary Mallon (also known as Typhoid Mary) is freed from her first period of forced isolation, then goes on to cause several further outbreaks of typhoid in the New York area. Six years after that the first prize is inserted into a box of Cracker Jack’s.

In 1919 CE the Pan-African Congress is organized by American civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois and held at the Grand Hotel in Paris, France; fourteen years later Hermann Göring bans all Catholic newspapers in Cologne, Germany claiming that Catholics illegally engage in politics. Eleven years after that, United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt, illegally orders the detention and internment of all Japanese Americans on the West Coast, a crime against humanity which U.S. president Ronald Reagan would apologize for in 1988 CE.

In 1945 CE. The United States 5^th Fleet with thirty thousand Marines, launches the invasion of Iwo Jima against the Japanese army; the battle would rage for thirty-seven days, resulting in the death of over seven thousand U.S. service and nineteen thousand injured, along with the deaths of the entire compliment of twenty-one thousand Japanese soldiers killed; seven years later the first Indo-China war begins with a French offensive against the Vietnamese city of Hanoi..

In 1949 CE the first Bollingen Prize for poetry is awarded to Ezra Pound; four years later Georgia approves the first censorship board for literature in the United States. Seven years after that in 1960 CE, Bil Keane's Family Circus cartoon strip debuts; three years later The Feminine Mystique is published by Betty Friedan and is widely credited as the start of second-wave feminism.

In 1962 CE the United States performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site; sixteen years later France performs nuclear test at Mururoa Atoll. Five years after that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) performs nuclear test at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in northeast Kazakhstan, and then again two years later.

In 1968 CE the children's educational TV program Mister Rogers' Neighborhood debuts on NET (now PBS); seventeen years later the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) premiers the television soap opera East Enders.

In 1977 CE the Manfred Mann's Earth Band's cover of Bruce Springsteen's song Blinded By The Light goes makes it to number one on the Billboard charts; four years later George Harrison is ordered to pay ABKCO Music $587,000 for "subconscious plagiarism" of Ronnie Mack's song He's So Fine.

In 1986 CE the United States Senate ratifies United Nation's anti-genocide convention, thirty-seven years after it was passed in the international body; eighteen years later Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal of Austria, is awarded an honorary British knighthood in recognition of a "lifetime of service to humanity."

In 1986 CE the U.S.S.R. launches the Mir space station into Earth orbit; thirty-eight years later, the brightest object in the observable universe is identified as a quasar, five hundred trillion times brighter than our sun; it is powered by a supermassive black hole that devours a sun-sized mass every day.

In 1992 CE the American pornography producer and director, Jim Mitchell, is found guilty of killing his brother Artie who was also his business partner; twenty-six years later the Vatican confirms the existence of secret church guidelines for managing the children born to priests who have been to celibacy (a medieval convention). In the twenty-first century it is estimated that twenty thousand children have been fathered by the four hundred and fifty thousand priests currently under holy orders…against their vows of chastity.