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February 21: Confederate agent George Nicholas Sanders, who was implicated in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, was born on this date in 1812.

February 20:Charles Feltman, who took a sausage and dressed it up in a bun, thereby inventing the hot dog, died on this date in 1910.

February 19: On this date in 1859, Daniel Sickles was acquitted of murder by reason of temporary insanity; he had killed the lover of his wife, Theresa Bagioli Sickles.

February 18: Glass artist Louis Comfort Tiffany (of Tiffany lamp fame) was born on this date in 1848; his father, who founded Tiffany & Co., died on this date in 1902.

February 17: On this date in 1950, Charles “Mile-A-Minute” Murphy, who in 1889 became the first person to pedal a bicycle one mile in less than one minute, died.

February 16:Stephen Whitney, one of the wealthiest men in America, locked up his checkbook in a safe and died on this date in 1860.

February 15: On this date in 1961, championship ice dancer turned skating judge Harold Hartshorne was killed in a plane crash in Europe that wiped out the entire United States Figure Skating Team.

February 14: Martha Bullock Roosevelt, mother to president-to-be Theodore Roosevelt, and Alice Hathaway Roosevelt, TR’s wife, died on this Valentine’s Day in 1884.

February 13: Frankie Ward, the son of an admiral, was born on this date in 1877; he died three years later and was memorialized with a monument by famed sculptor Daniel Chester French (of Lincoln Memorial fame).

February 12: “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” also called “The Negro National Anthem,” lyrics by James Weldon Johnson, with music by his brother, John Rosamond Johnson, made its debut on this date in 1900.