On this day: February 20
POSTED: 04:12 PM PST Feb 19, 2013
UPDATED: 11:00 PM PST Feb 19, 2013
The Post Office is born, World War II gets its first flying ace, John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth, and a fire at a Great White concert leaves 100 dead, all on this day.
Alan Light/Wikimedia Commons
1999: Film critic Gene Siskel, who, along with colleague Roger Ebert, hosted the movie review show "Siskel & Ebert At the Movies," dies from surgery complications at the age of 53 in Evanston, Ill. Siskel, who started at the Chicago Tribune in 1969, had undergone surgery in May 1998 for a cancerous brain tumor and taken a leave of absence from the show two weeks before his death.
