Moments in Time – February 9, 2022

#Middlebury

• On Feb. 27, 1860, President Abraham Lincoln poses for the first of several portraits by noted Civil War-era photographer Mathew Brady. A relatively new art form, the photograph (or daguerreotype) showed a beardless Lincoln just moments before he delivered an address at Cooper Union.
• On Feb. 23, 1885, a 19-year-old man named John Lee is sent to the gallows in Exeter, England, for the murder of a rich, older woman. However, the gallows equipment malfunctioned three times and Lee was not dropped. He was then sent back to prison.
• On Feb. 25, 1890, Vlacheslav Skryabin, foreign minister for the Soviet Union who took the revolutionary name Molotov, is born in Russia. Molotov advocated the use of throwing bottles filled with flammable liquid and stuffed with a lit rag, and the famous “Molotov cocktail” was born.
• On Feb. 26, 1903, Alexander Winton, driving his Winton Bullet, sets the first speed record ever achieved at Daytona Beach, Florida. Built in 1902 the “Bullet Number 1” drove a measured mile at over 65 mph.
• On Feb. 22, 1946, George Kennan, the temporary American ambassador in Moscow, sends an 8,000-word telegram to the Department of State detailing his views on the Soviet Union, and U.S. policy toward the communist state. Kennan’s analysis provided one of the most influential underpinnings for America’s Cold War policy of containment.
• On Feb. 21, 1952, men’s figure skater Dick Button wins his second Olympic gold medal. Button captured his first gold prize at the 1948 Olympics, becoming the first American to ever take home the men’s title. Button retired from amateur skating in 1952 and went on to perform with the Ice Capades as well as graduate from Harvard Law School.
• On Feb. 24, 1969, after a North Vietnamese mortar shell rocks their Douglas AC-47 gunship, Airman First Class John L. Levitow throws himself on an activated flare and tosses it out of the aircraft just before it ignites. For saving his fellow crewmembers and the gunship, Airman Levitow was later awarded the Medal of Honor.

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