TODAY IN HISTORY - FEBRUARY 20TH

1872 – The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens in New York City.
1877 – Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake receives its premiere at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.
1901 – The legislature of Hawaii Territory convenes for the first time.
1902 – Ansel Adams, American photographer and environmentalist (d. 1984) is born.
1924 – Gloria Vanderbilt, American actress and fashion designer is born.
1927 – Sidney Poitier, American actor, director, and diplomat is born.
1931 – The Congress of the United States approves the construction of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge by the state of California.
1933 – The Congress of the United States proposes the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution that will end Prohibition in the United States.
1937 – Roger Penske, American race car driver and businessman is born.
1942 – Lieutenant Edward O'Hare becomes America's first World War II flying ace.
1943 – American movie studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor movies.
1943 – The Saturday Evening Post publishes the first of Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms in support of United States President Franklin Roosevelt's 1941 State of the Union address theme of Four Freedoms.
1952 – Emmett Ashford becomes the first African-American umpire in organized baseball by being authorized to be a substitute umpire in the Southwestern International League.
1954 – Patty Hearst, American actress and author is born.
1956 – The United States Merchant Marine Academy becomes a permanent Service Academy.
1966 – Cindy Crawford, American model and businesswoman is born.
1971 – The United States Emergency Broadcast System is accidentally activated in an erroneous national alert.
1988 – Rihanna, Barbadian-American singer-songwriter and actress is born.
1993 – Ferruccio Lamborghini, Italian businessman, founded Lamborghini (b. 1916) dies.
1998 – American figure skater Tara Lipinski becomes the youngest gold-medalist at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.
2003 – During a Great White concert in West Warwick, Rhode Island, a pyrotechnics display sets the Station nightclub ablaze, killing 100 and injuring over 200 others.
2005 – Hunter S. Thompson, American journalist and author (b. 1937) dies.
2016 – Six people are killed and two injured in multiple shooting incidents in Kalamazoo County, Michigan.