Today is Tuesday, Feb. 28, the 59th day of 2023 with 306 to follow.

The moon is waxing. Morning stars are Mars and Mercury. Evening stars are Jupiter, Mars, Neptune, Uranus and Venus.

Those born on this date are under the sign of Pisces. They include French essayist Michel de Montaigne in 1533; chemist/physicist Linus Pauling, twice winner of the Nobel Prize (peace and chemistry), in 1901; movie director Vincente Minnelli in 1903; actor Billie Bird in 1908; actor Charles Durning in 1923; Svetlana Alliluyeva, daughter of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, in 1926; architect Frank Gehry in 1929 (age 94); actor Gavin MacLeod in 1931; dancer Tommy Tune in 1939 (age 84); former race car driver Mario Andretti in 1940 (age 83); musician Brian Jones in 1942; actor Kelly Bishop in 1944 (age 79); former U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu in 1948 (age 75); actor Bernadette Peters in 1948 (age 75); actor Mercedes Ruehl in 1948 (age 75); newspaper columnist/Nobel laureate Paul Krugman in 1953 (age 70); comedian Gilbert Gottfried in 1955; actor John Turturro in 1957 (age 66); celebrity chef Ainsley Harriott in 1957 (age 66); actor Rae Dawn Chong in 1961 (age 62); singer Patrick Monahan in 1969 (age 54); actor Robert Sean Leonard in 1969 (age 54); actor Tasha Smith in 1971 (age 52); hockey Hall of Fame member Eric Lindros in 1973 (age 50); actor Ali Larter in 1976 (age 47); country singer Jason Aldean in 1977 (age 46); actor Sarah Bolger in 1991 (age 32).On this date in history:

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In 1784, the Methodist Church was chartered by John Wesley.

In 1844, an explosion rocked the "war steamer" USS Princeton after it test-fired one of its guns. The blast killed or injured a number of top U.S. government officials who were aboard.

In 1885, the American Telephone and Telegraph Co. was incorporated in New York as a subsidiary of American Bell Telephone.

In 1935, nylon was invented by DuPont researcher Wallace Carothers.

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In 1942, Japanese forces landed in Java, the last Allied bastion in the Dutch East Indies.

In 1983, the concluding episode of the long-running television series M*A*S*H drew what was then the largest TV audience in U.S. history.

In 1986, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was assassinated on a street in Stockholm.

In 1992, a bomb blast blamed on the IRA ripped through a London railway station, injuring at least 30 people and shutting down the British capital's rail and subway system.


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In 1993, federal agents attempting to serve warrants on the Branch Davidian religious cult's compound near Waco, Texas, were met with gunfire that left at least five people dead and 15 injured, and marked the start of a month-and-a-half-long standoff.

In 1994, NATO was involved in combat for the first time in its 45-year history when four U.S. fighter planes operating under NATO auspices shot down four Serb planes that had violated the U.N. no-fly zone in central Bosnia. The action came to be known as the Banja Luka incident.

In 2008, Prince Harry, third in line for the British throne, was pulled from the front lines in Afghanistan immediately after word got out that he was on army duty. He had spent 10 weeks in the war zone.

In 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators held a "difficult" initial round of talks in Belarus aimed at halting the war.

A thought for the day: "A sound nation is built of individuals sound in body and mind and spirit. Government dares not ignore the individual citizen." -- President Dwight D. Eisenhower