This Day In History for February 23

1945, during World War II, U.S. Marines on Iwo Jima captured Mount Suribachi, where they raised the American flag twice. (The second flag-raising was captured in the iconic photograph taken by Joe Rosenthal of The Associated Press.)


On this date:

In 1836, the siege of the Alamo began in San Antonio, Texas.

In 1848, the sixth president of the United States, John Quincy Adams, died in Washington, D.C. at age 80.

In 1861, President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrived secretly in Washington to take office, following word of a possible assassination plot in Baltimore.

In 1870, Mississippi was readmitted to the Union.

In 1927, President Calvin Coolidge signed a bill creating the Federal Radio Commission, forerunner of the Federal Communications Commission.

In 1942, the first shelling of the U.S. mainland during World War II occurred as a Japanese submarine fired on an oil refinery near Santa Barbara, Calif., causing little damage.

In 1954, the first mass inoculation of children against polio with the Salk vaccine began in Pittsburgh.

In 1970, Guyana became a republic within the Commonwealth of Nations.

In 1981, an attempted coup began in Spain as 200 members of the Civil Guard invaded the Parliament, taking lawmakers hostage. (However, the attempt collapsed 18 hours later.)

In 1990, former Salvadoran President Jose Napoleon Duarte (doo-AHR'-tay) died at age 64.