MIKE GRACIA

The west Pacific volcanic island of Iwo Jima was declared secured
by the U.S. military after weeks of fiercely fighting its Japanese defenders.

The Americans began applying pressure to the Japanese defense
of Iwo Jima in February 1944, when B-24 and B-25 bombers raided
the island for 74 days straight. It was the longest pre-invasion bombardment of the war,

Iwo Jima island today.

On this day in 1751, James Madison, drafter of the Constitution,
recorder of the Constitutional Convention, author of the Federalist 
Papers and fourth president of the United States, was born on a
plantation in Virginia.

Madison first distinguished himself as a student at the College
of New Jersey (now Princeton University), where he successfully completed a four-year course of study in two years and, in 1769,
helped found the American Whig Society, the second literary and
debate society at Princeton (and the world), to rival the previously established Cliosophic Society.