• Today is Sunday, Feb. 23, the 54th day of 2014. There are 311 days left in the year.
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• Today's Highlight in History:
• On Feb. 23, 1954, the first mass inoculation of schoolchildren against polio using the Salk vaccine began in Pittsburgh as some 5,000 students were vaccinated.
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• On this date:
• In 1633, English diarist Samuel Pepys (peeps) was born in London.
• In 1836, the siege of the Alamo began in San Antonio, Texas.
• In 1848, the sixth president of the United States, John Quincy Adams, died in Washington, D.C., at age 80.
• In 1863, British explorers John H. Speke and James A. Grant announced they had found the source of the Nile River to be Lake Victoria.
• In 1870, Mississippi was readmitted to the Union.
• In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt signed an agreement with Cuba to lease the area around Guantanamo Bay to the United States.
• In 1927, President Calvin Coolidge signed a bill creating the Federal Radio Commission, forerunner of the Federal Communications Commission.
• In 1934, Leopold III succeeded his late father, Albert I, as King of the Belgians.
• In 1944, U.S. forces secured Eniwetok Atoll from the Japanese during World War II.
• In 1945, U.S. Marines on Iwo Jima captured Mount Suribachi.
• In 1970, Guyana became a republic within the Commonwealth of Nations.
• In 1989, the Senate Armed Services Committee voted 11-9 along party lines to recommend rejection of John Tower as President George H.W. Bush's defense secretary. (Tower's nomination went down to defeat in the full Senate the following month.)
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• Ten years ago: The Army canceled its Comanche helicopter program after sinking $6.9 billion into it over 21 years. Education Secretary Rod Paige likened the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union, to a "terrorist organization" during a private White House meeting with governors. (Paige later called

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