February 25 ...
In 1570 Pope Pius V excommunicated England's Queen Elizabeth I. In 1793 the department heads of the US government met with President George Washington at his home for the first Cabinet meeting on record. In 1841 impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges, Haute-Vienne, France. In 1901 US Steel Corp. was incorporated by J.P. Morgan. In 1913 the 16th Amendment to the US Constitution, giving Congress the power to levy and collect income taxes, was declared in effect. In 1943 US troops reoccupied the Kasserine Pass. In 1948 Communists seized power in Czechoslovakia. In 1956 Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev harshly criticized the late Josef Stalin in a speech before a Communist Party congress in Moscow. In 1964 Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali) became world heavyweight boxing champion by defeating Sonny Liston in Miami Beach, FL. In 1986 President Ferdinand E. Marcos fled the Philippines after 20 years of rule in the wake of a tainted election; Corazon Aquino assumed the presidency. In 1996 a 12-mile tether connecting a half-ton satellite to the space shuttle Columbia broke loose as it was almost completely unreeled.