Sparkles of consequence

•On Feb. 15, 1812, Charles Lewis Tiffany is born. After political upheaval in Europe in 1848 dropped the price of gems, he snapped up cheap diamonds, including a few of the French Crown Jewels, which he later sold for a tidy sum, prompting the press to dub Tiffany “The King of Diamonds.”

•On Feb. 13, 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt delivers a stirring speech on the state of race relations. He referred to white Americans as “the forward race,” whose responsibility it was to raise the status of minorities through training “the backward race[s] in industrial efficiency, political capacity and domestic morality.”

•On Feb 18, 1929, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announces the winners of the first Academy Awards. The awards, gold statuettes, weren’t nicknamed “Oscars” until 1931, when a secretary at the academy noted the statue’s resemblance to her Uncle Oscar.

•On Feb. 19, 1942, 10 weeks after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066. By June, more than 110,000 Japanese Americans were relocated to remote internment camps built by the U.S. military.

•On Feb. 14, 1962, the first televised tour of the White House airs, hosted by first lady Jackie Kennedy.