From Historynet: Today in History February 15

1798          The first serious fist fight occurs in Congress.

1804          New Jersey becomes the last northern state to abolish slavery.

1862          Union General Ulysses S. Grant  launches a major assault on Fort Donelson, Tenn.

1869          Charges of treason against 

Jefferson Davis  are dropped.

1898          The U.S. battleship Maine blows up in Havana Harbor, killing 268 sailors and bringing hordes of Western cowboys and gunfighters rushing to enlist in the Spanish-American War.

1900          The British threaten to use natives in the Boer War fight.

1925          The London Zoo announces it will install lights to cheer up fogged-in animals.

1934          U.S. Congress passes the Civil Works Emergency Relief Act, allotting new funds for Federal Emergency Relief Administration.

1940          Hitler  orders that all British merchant ships will be considered warships.

1942          British forces in Singapore surrender to Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita .

1943          The Germans break the American Army's lines at the Fanid-Sened Sector in Tunisia, North Africa.

1944          American bombers attack the Abbey of Monte Cassino in an effort to neutralize it as a German observation post in central Italy.

1946          Royal Canadian mounted police arrest 22 as Soviet spies.

1950          Joseph Stalin  and 

Mao Tse-tung  sign a mutual defense treaty in Moscow.

1957          Andrei Gromyko  replaces 

Dmitri T. Shepilov  as the Soviet Foreign Minister.

1961          Eighteen members of the U.S. figure skating team are lost in an airplane crash in Belgium.

1965          Canada's maple leaf flag is raised for the first time.

1967          Thirteen U.S. helicopters are shot down in one day in Vietnam

1974          U.S. gas stations threaten to close because of federal fuel policies.