Today’s highlight

On Feb. 23, 1954, the first mass inoculation of schoolchildren against polio using the Salk vaccine began in Pittsburgh as some 5,000 students were vaccinated.

On this date

1685: Composer George Frideric Handel was born in present-day Germany.

1822: Boston was granted a charter to incorporate as a city.

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

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

1903: President Theodore Roosevelt signed an agreement with Cuba to lease the area around Guantanamo Bay to the United States.

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, California, causing little damage.

2011: In a major policy reversal, the Obama administration said it would no longer defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law banning recognition of same-sex marriage.

2021: Golfer Tiger Woods was seriously injured when his SUV crashed into a median and rolled over several times on a steep road in suburban Los Angeles.