Today in history—February 22

1512: Navigator Amerigo Vespucci, the first man to realize that Christopher Columbus had found new continents, not the East Indies, dies. They were named after him chiefly because his own writings were much more widely known than Columbus’s at the time.

1630: English colonists are introduced to an Indian delicacy they call “popped corn.”

1732: George Washington is born at Pope’s Creek Plantation in Westmoreland County, Virginia. 1788: Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, whose chief goal in life is to depress the hell out of everyone, is born at Sztutowo, Poland.

1819: Spain cedes Florida to the United States, thus ensuring Bush’s victory over Gore in 2000. Many speculate that Karl Rove is somehow involved in the transaction.

1865: Tennessee adopts a new constitution that abolishes slavery in the state.

1876: Johns Hopkins University, whose law school frequently does very well in surveys of prestige, is founded at Baltimore.

1879: Frank Woolworth opens the first of his “five and dime” stores in Utica, New York.

1932: Edward Moore Kennedy (Virginia Law 1959) is born at Brookline, Massachusetts.

1959: The first Daytona 500, the “Super Bowl of Auto Racing,” is held at Daytona International Speedway.

1965: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter dies at Washington, D.C.

1965: The Kingsmen’s “Jolly Green Giant” tops the charts. One office of Libby Foods, owner of the brand, sues for trade disparagement, but another sends free boxes of vegetables for the band to give away at concerts. He lives down there in his valley // The cat stands tall and green // Well, he ain’t no prize, and there’s no women his size, // And that’s why the cat’s so mean.