This Day in History: Feb. 15

Dale Earnhardt Jr. (AP Photo/Terry Renna)

On this day, Feb. 15 ...

2004: Dale Earnhardt Jr. wins the Daytona 500 on the same track where his father was killed three years earlier.

Also on this day:

• 1564: Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei is born in Pisa.
• 1798: A feud between two members of the U.S. House of Representatives (meeting in Philadelphia) boils over as Roger Griswold of Connecticut uses a cane to attack Vermont’s Matthew Lyon, who defends himself with a set of tongs.
• 1898: The U.S. battleship Maine mysteriously blows up in Havana Harbor, killing more than 260 crew members and bringing the United States closer to war with Spain.
• 1933: President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt escapes an assassination attempt in Miami that mortally wounds Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak; gunman Giuseppe Zangara would be executed more than four weeks later.
• 1952: A funeral is held at Windsor Castle for Britain’s King George VI, who died nine days earlier.
• 1953: Tenley Albright, 17, becomes the first American woman to win the world figure skating championship, which is held in Davos, Switzerland.
• 1961: Seventy-three people, including an 18-member U.S. figure skating team en route to the World Championships in Czechoslovakia, are killed in the crash of a Sabena Airlines Boeing 707 in Belgium.
• 1965: Canada’s new maple-leaf flag, which replaces the "Red Ensign" design, is unfurled in ceremonies in Ottawa.
• 1965: Singer Nat King Cole, 45, dies in Santa Monica, Calif.
• 1989: The Soviet Union announces that the last of its troops has left Afghanistan, after more than nine years of military intervention.

(FILM) (Photo credit should read EUGENE GARCIA/AFP via Getty Images)

• 1992: A Milwaukee jury finds that Jeffrey Dahmer was sane when he killed and mutilated 15 men and boys. (The decision meant that Dahmer, who had already pleaded guilty to the murders, would receive a mandatory life sentence for each count; Dahmer would be beaten to death in prison in 1994.)
• 2002: A private funeral is held at Windsor Castle for Britain’s Princess Margaret, who had died six days earlier at age 71.
• 2006: Vice President Dick Cheney accepts blame for accidentally shooting a hunting companion, calling it "one of the worst days of my life."
• 2018: Nikolas Cruz, the suspect in the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, is ordered held without bond at a brief court hearing.