What Happened on February 14?

February 14 is Valentine's Day, plus the day two states joined the Union, telephone papers raced to the patent office, and the first giant electronic computer amazed the world.

• 1859 — Oregon becomes the 33rd state

  After years as a wild frontier territory crossed by wagon trains, Oregon officially joined the United States as its 33rd state. Read the full story →

• 1876 — Telephone patent papers filed — on the very same morning as a rival's

  On Valentine's Day 1876, lawyers for Alexander Graham Bell filed his telephone patent application at the U.S. Patent Office — just hours before rival inventor Elisha Gray filed papers describing a similar device. Read the full story →

• 1912 — Arizona becomes the 48th state

  President William Howard Taft signed the proclamation making Arizona the 48th state — the last piece of the mainland United States to join. Read the full story →

• 1946 — ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer, is unveiled

  At the University of Pennsylvania, scientists pulled back the curtain on ENIAC, a room-sized electronic brain that calculated thousands of times faster than anything before it. Read the full story →

Famous birthdays

Richard Allen (1760–1831) · Jack Benny (1894–1974) · Carl Bernstein (1944)

Days & observances

Valentine's Day