#TodayInHistory – February 19

February 19 – Some important events on this day

356 👉🏼 Emperor Constantius II shuts all heathen temples
1594 👉🏼 Having already inherited the throne of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth through his mother, Catherine Jagellonica of Poland, Sigismund III of the House of Vasa is crowned King of Sweden, succeeding his father John III of Sweden.
1600 👉🏼 Peruvian stratovolcano Huaynaputina explodes in the most violent eruption in South American recorded history.
1878 👉🏼 Thomas Edison is granted a patent for his gramophone (phonograph).
1906 👉🏼 Will Keith Kellogg and Charles D. Bolin found the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company, now the multinational food manufacturer Kellogg’s

1914 👉🏼 Four-year old Charlotte May Pierstorff mailed by train from Grangeville, Idaho to her grandparents’ house 73 miles away in most famous ‘child in the post’ instance.
When the US postal service began parcel deliveries in 1913 it wasn’t long before some ingenious parents cottoned on to the idea of mailing their children. A 10-month old baby boy, the child of Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Beauge from Batavia, Ohio, was posted for the cost of 15c in stamps, though his parents did insure him for $50. In the most famous case 5-year-old May Pierstorff was mailed via train from her home in Idaho, the stamps stuck to her coat.
The practice is not as callous as it first appears, postmen were trusted local officials whom rural people usually knew personally. May Pierstorff was herself sent with a cousin who was a postal clerk. Nevertheless the US postal service tried to shut the practice down and had to issue a directive that no humans were to be carried in the mail.

1942 👉🏼 About 150 Japanese warplanes attack the Australian city of Darwin
1945 👉🏼 US 5th Fleet launches invasion of Iwo Jima against the Japanese with 30,000 US Marines
1945 👉🏼 Brotherhood Day-1st celebrated
1945 👉🏼 980 Japanese soldiers reportedly killed by crocodiles in 2 days on Ramree Island, Burma
2008 👉🏼 Toshiba announces its formal recall of its HD DVD video format, ending the format war between it and Sony’s Blu-Ray Disc
2020 👉🏼 German gunman opens fire in a bar in Hanau, Germany, killing nine in a racially motivated attack