Today in history

February 22

1865
Tennessee abolished slavery.

1943
Sophie Scholl, a 22-year-old “White Rose” activist at Munich University, was executed after being convicted of urging students to rise up and overthrow the Nazi government.
There are many memorials in Bavaria and Germany to Sophie and her group, the White Rose, but little is known outside of Germany. Basically they were medical students who organized non-violent resistance to Hitler. They were arrested for printing and distributing anti-Nazi flyers. Sophie, her brother Hans, and Christof Probst, the three young people in the photo, were executed. Only a few of the survived the war which is why the story is not well known.

1972
U.S. President Richard Nixon met with Chinese Premier Mao Tse-tung in Peking. This bold foreign policy coup ended more that two decades of Sino-American hostility.

1974
Sam Lovejoy toppled the weather tower for a proposed nuclear power plant in Montague, Massachusetts. This was the first act of civil disobedience against nuclear power in the U.S.