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USS Connecticut was the lead ship of the six Connecticut-class battleships. Due to the Royal Navy's commissioning of HMS Dreadnought seven months earlier, Connecticut was obsolete before she was commissioned; thus, she was the last lead ship of any class of pre-dreadnought battleship commissioned by the United States Navy. Connecticut served as a flagship for the Jamestown Exposition, which commemorated the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Jamestown colony. She later sailed with the Great White Fleet on a circumnavigation of the Earth to showcase the United States Navy's growing fleet of blue-water-capable ships. After the Great White Fleet returned to the U.S. on 22 February 1909, Connecticut participated in several flag-waving exercises intended to protect American citizens abroad until she was pressed into service as a troop transport at the end of World War I to expedite the return of American Expeditionary Forces from France. For the remainder of her career, Connecticut sailed to various places in both the Atlantic and Pacific while training newer recruits to the Navy. However, the provisions of the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty stipulated that many of the older battleships, Connecticut among them, would have to be disposed of, so she was decommissioned on 1 March 1922 and sold for scrap on 1 November 1923. (more...)

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February 22: Independence Day in Saint Lucia (1979); Feast of Cathedra Petri (Catholicism)

• 1744 – War of the Austrian Succession: British ships began attacking the Spanish rear of a France–Spanish combined fleet in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast near Toulon, France.
• 1819 – Under the terms of the Adams-Onís Treaty, Spain sold Florida and other North American territory to the United States for about US$5 million.
• 1943 – Members of the White Rose, a nonviolent resistance movement in Nazi Germany that became known for a leaflet campaign that called for active opposition to Adolf Hitler's regime, were found guilty of treason and guillotined.
• 1959 – Lee Petty won the first Daytona 500 NASCAR auto race at the Daytona International Speedway (pictured) in Daytona Beach, Florida, USA.
• 2006 – At least six men staged Britain's biggest robbery ever, stealing £53,116,760 in bank notes from a Securitas depot in Tonbridge, Kent.

• More events: February 21 – February 22 – February 23

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