Unlikely achievements
A rag-tag band of college players (with only one prior Olympian) on the seventh-seeded U.S. hockey team rose and beat the first-seeded Soviet team 4-3 on Feb. 22, 1980. The Soviet team was considered to be the best in the world at that time. Ever notice how any time a ramshackle band of Americans get together they pull an amazing win out of their nether regions? Especially when facing a larger and
better-equipped opponent?
Attack of the clones
Amid ethical controversy, Dolly, the first successfully cloned mammal, was revealed on Feb. 22, 1997. As the scientific breakthrough of the decade, Dolly the sheep was seventh months old, named after Dolly Parton because she was taken from a mammary gland, and unrelated but identical to the animal whose cell she borrowed. Dolly was euthanized because of lung disease and is now on display in Scotland. Cloning began in 1952 with tadpoles, and hundreds of cloned animals exist today. Though the idea of cloning has pretty much been tabled in lieu of more pressing
issues, society may take a stance on it someday.
Flags of Iwo Jima
On Feb. 23, 1945, the most famous war photograph of all time (some may argue the most controversial photograph of all time), of five marines and one naval corpsman straining to hoist the American flag on the crest of Mount Suribachi was taken by Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press. A marine photographer captured the original flag being raised, but a bigger flag was later carried up the mountain at the behest of naval commanders who could not see it from the sea, which Rosenthal photographed. Though many stories say the famous flag-raising photo was posed, video footage proves the Pulitzer-prize winning photograph is real, which is nice to know because it’s the most reproduced photograph of all time. The photograph encapsulates the moment that the war in the Pacific turned.
Bowl of impeaches
With 11 votes of articles of impeachment against him from the House of Representatives, Andrew Johnson became the first U.S. president to be impeached on Feb. 24, 1868. A recently-passed tenure of office act meant that his recent removal of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton was in violation. This was the second attempt at his impeachment, and both times failed to get the two-thirds majority required for conviction. Clearly, being an unpopular and disliked president isn’t enough. Perhaps they should have thought up a racy scandal to embroil him in.

Unstoppable Mardi Gras
Mardi Gras began in the U.S. on Feb. 27, 1827, when a group of costumed students celebrated carnivale in New Orleans in a tradition that made the city world-famous. People rode on floats and threw things such as beads at people in the early years of the event, but floats are no longer allowed on Bourbon Street or in the French Quarter. In 2006, after Hurricane Katrina, Mardi Gras took place with a diminished attendance but marked an important step in the recovery of New Orleans for its citizens and a grieving country.
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