February 20

February 20 in history:

• 1792, the Postal Service Act, establishing the United States Post Office Department, is signed by President George Washington

• 1809, the Supreme Court, in United States v. Peters, ruled the power of the federal government is greater than that of any individual state

• 1839, Congress prohibited dueling in the District of Columbia

• 1872, in New York City, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opens

• 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt signed an immigration act which excluded "idiots, imbeciles, feebleminded persons, epileptics, insane persons" from being admitted to the United States

• 1931, California gets the go-ahead by the U.S. Congress to build the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge

• 1933, the Congress of the United States proposes the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution, which would end Prohibition in the United States

• 1938, Anthony Eden resigned as British foreign secretary following Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's decision to negotiate with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

• 1943, American movie studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor movies

• 1947, State of Prussia ceases to exist

• 1962, Mercury program: While aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn orbits the earth three times in 4 hours, 55 minutes, becoming the first American to orbit the earth

• 1987, Soviet authorities released Jewish activist Josef Begun

• 2007, in a victory for President Bush, a divided federal appeals court ruled that Guantanamo Bay detainees could not use the U.S. court system to challenge their indefinite imprisonmen