This Day in History for February 14 – Penicillin Discovered and More

Here’s a look at some interesting events that took place on this day in history:

1920 – The League of Women Voters is founded (More info)

1929 – Seven people, six of them gangster rivals of Al Capone’s gang, are murdered in Chicago in what would come to be known as the Saint Valentine’s Day massacre (More info)

1929 – Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming accidentally discovers penicillin (More info)

1939 – Hedda Hopper pens the first installment of what would become her tremendously influential gossip column in the Los Angeles Times (More info)

1989 – Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini issues a fatwa calling for the death of Salman Rushdie, author of the controversial book ‘The Satanic Verses’ (More info)

1990 - Friends of Beer was founded in Czechoslovakia as a political party with a platform of improving the quality of Czech beer while forcing down the price.

1999 - Theresa Mueller of Philadelphia announced that her $8.95 chocolate heart, life-size and shaped like a human heart, was her chocolate shop's best-selling Valentine novelty ever. It even beat out the top-selling body-part novelty from 1998, a dozen chocolate noses.

It is Valentine's Day, and  National Donor Day.

Oregon became the 33rd U.S. state in 1859, and Arizona became U.S. state number 48 in 1912.