Today in History, February 2nd
On February 2, 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War. Plus the first Groundhog Day and Stalingrad's end.
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February 2 is best known for the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War and handed the U.S. about 525,000 square miles of the Southwest. It is also Groundhog Day, first observed in 1887, and the date the last German troops surrendered at Stalingrad in 1943.
The big story: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848)
By early 1848, U.S. forces had pushed deep into Mexico, and the Mexican government had fled to the town of Guadalupe Hidalgo. There, on February 2, the two sides signed the treaty that ended the Mexican-American War. The American negotiator, State Department clerk Nicholas Trist, had actually been recalled by President James K. Polk and kept talking anyway. The terms were lopsided. Mexico gave up about 55 percent of its territory: present-day California, Nevada, Utah and New Mexico, most of Arizona and Colorado, and slices of other states. It dropped its claim to Texas and accepted the Rio Grande as the border. In return, the U.S. paid $15 million and took on up to $3.25 million in claims American citizens held against Mexico. Mexicans living in the ceded land could become U.S. citizens. The Senate ratified the treaty on March 10, 1848, after cutting the article that protected Mexican land grants.
More events on February 2
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1876 | The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs was formed. The modern National League grew from it. |
| 1887 | The first official Groundhog Day was observed in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. |
| 1897 | Alfred Cralle, a Black inventor, received a patent for his ice cream scoop. |
| 1913 | Grand Central Terminal opened in New York City. |
| 1925 | Musher Gunnar Kaasen and his dog team reached Nome, Alaska, with diphtheria antitoxin at the end of a relay across the frozen territory. |
| 1943 | The last German troops surrendered at Stalingrad, ending one of the turning-point battles of World War II. |
| 1950 | Klaus Fuchs, a British physicist who had worked on the atomic bomb, was arrested for passing secrets to the Soviet Union. |
| 1971 | Idi Amin declared himself president of Uganda, a week after seizing power in a coup. |
| 1980 | Details of ABSCAM, an FBI sting operation aimed at political corruption, became public. |
| 2014 | Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman died in New York City at 46. |
Born on February 2
- 1882: James Joyce, Irish writer of Ulysses and Dubliners.
- 1905: Ayn Rand, Russian-born novelist of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
- 1947: Farrah Fawcett, actress and star of Charlie’s Angels.
Sources
- Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), National Archives
- This Day in History: February 2, History.com
- Battle of Stalingrad, Britannica
- James Joyce, Britannica
- Ayn Rand, Britannica
- Farrah Fawcett, Britannica
Wow! Groundhog’s day and Anthropogenic Global Warming all on February 02. Hmmm if AGW doomcryers are correct the groundhog has seen the last of that pesky shadow.