Milestones: February 14, 2024

February 14, 2024 Suzanne Akceylan

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NOT ALL ABOUT LOVE — VALENTINE’S DAY HAD A CRUEL AND VIOLENT ORIGIN WHEN ON FEB. 14, CA. 270 A.D., a priest is believed to have been executed for performing marriages. The priest, named Valentine, lived during the rule of Roman Emperor Claudius, also known as Claudius the Cruel, who led some very bloody and unpopular military campaigns. The male citizens refused to join the army, and Claudius attributed this to their unwavering devotion to their wives and families. Claudius’ response was to ban all engagements and marriages. Fr. Valentine, viewing the edict as unjust, defied Claudius and continued secretly officiating marriages until his actions were discovered. Claudius had Valentine beaten and beheaded.

Some scholars assert, however, that this account is legend, and point to the existence of three different Saint Valentines, all of them martyrs, listed in the early martyrologies under the date of 14 February.” One of them was a priest in Rome, another served a Roman province in Africa.

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GANGSTER MASSACRE — ST. VALENTINE’S DAY WOULD AGAIN PROVE BLOODY ON FEB. 14, 1929, DURING THE HEIGHT OF THE PROHIBITION ERA. On this day, four men disguised as police officers entered gangster Bugs Moran’s headquarters on North Clark Street in Chicago, lined up seven of Moran’s henchmen against a wall, and shot them, execution style. George “Bugs” Moran, a career criminal, led the North Side gang; his rival was Brooklyn-born “Scarface” Al Capone. They fought over control of organized crime, particularly bootlegging and trafficking. This was a largely ethnic war: Bugs Moran’s gang was predominantly Irish; Capone’s was Italian.

Although both Moran and Capone survived multiple attempts on their lives in 1920s Chicago, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre proved to be their last conflict. Capone was jailed in 1931 and Moran lost too many key henchmen to continue controlling his turf.

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GRIEF DOUBLED — FEB. 14, 1884 WAS A SORROWFUL DAY FOR THEODORE ROOSEVELT WHEN BOTH HIS WIFE AND MOTHER DIED, HOURS APART. At the time, Roosevelt was a state Assemblymember working on the passage of a government reform bill. He received a message summoning him home — only to find that his mother, Mittie, had already succumbed to typhoid fever. As he was mourning her, his wife, Alice Lee, died of a severe kidney disorder known at the time as Bright’s Disease. Alice Lee had just given birth two days earlier to the Roosevelts’ daughter, Alice. This double tragedy left Roosevelt in deep grief, to the point in which he left politics and moved out to the Dakota territories, leaving his daughter in his sister’s care. He lived as a rancher and local sheriff until another major loss struck him: His cattle herd perished in an 1885 blizzard. He then moved back east and picked up in politics, later becoming governor of New York, vice president, and then, upon William McKinley’s assassination, President of the United States.

The daughter, Alice Roosevelt, proved to be precocious and quite sassy. She became a national celebrity.

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EVERYONE’S FAVORITE MISER — A VALENTINE’S DAY THAT PROVED A HAPPIER PORTENT WAS THE BIRTHDATE OF ICONIC AND BELOVED COMEDIAN JACK BENNY. Born in 1894 as Benjamin Kublesky, the future comedian grew up in Waukegan, Illinois, where a local junior high school bears his namesake. He spent only one term at school, worked for his dad, and then took up the violin. Some of his later skits focused on his bad playing, but in real life, he loved the instrument; he just hated practicing. He played reasonably well enough to join piano-violin duets in a theater. Then he joined the Navy, where his uncanny comedic timing was discovered. Starting in radio, he was featured on his friend Ed Sullivan’s talk show, and it took only two months for Benny to become host of his own radio program.

Although Jack Benny’s radio and TV persona was of a curmudgeonly miser who couldn’t stand to part with money, in real life he was known to be generous.

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‘AMERICA’S ANSWER TO THE EIFFEL TOWER’ — GEORGE FERRIS, WHO IS WIDELY CREDITED AS THE INVENTOR OF THE FERRIS WHEEL, WAS BORN ON FEB. 14, 1859. An American civil engineer and inventor, he developed the Ferris Wheel for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and his invention proved to be a popular attraction. The Ferris Wheel was 250 feet in diameter and held 36 coaches, each with a 40-person capacity. More than 100,000 parts went into Ferris’ wheel, notably an 89,320-pound axle hoisted onto two towers. Ferris’ Wheel proved to be “America’s answer to the Eiffel Tower,” which had been the star of the Paris International Exposition of 1889.

Ferris was not the first to design a passenger wheel. A carpenter named William Somers was building 50-foot wooden wheels at Asbury Park, Atlantic City and here in Brooklyn, at Coney Island; calling his invention a roundabout.

See previous milestones, here.