February 23 · This Day in America
Iwo Jima is a volcanic cinder the size of a small town, and taking it is costing American lives by the thousand. On the fourth day, Marines fight their way to the top of Mount Suribachi and raise a flag. It is small; the men below can barely see it. So a larger one is sent up, and as six Marines strain to plant it against the wind, Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal lifts his camera and, almost without aiming, takes one frame. He does not know what he has. What he has is the most reproduced photograph in American history — a single image of ordinary men, faces hidden, lifting something heavier than a flagpole. Three of the six would not leave the island alive. The battle ground on for weeks more. But the picture had already become what it remains: not a victory pose, but the shape of shared effort, frozen at the instant it cost the most.
Source: www.archives.gov
Also on this day · 1822
After nearly two centuries as a town run by open meeting, Boston is incorporated as a city. The Puritan settlement of 1630 — the "city upon a hill" John Winthrop had imagined aboard a ship before he ever saw the shore — was now, officially, a city. The phrase would echo through American speeches for four hundred years, an aspiration the country keeps measuring itself against.
Source: www.boston.gov