MOMENTS IN TIME

• On Feb. 14, 1842, fans of Charles Dickens organize the Boz Ball, an elite party for the celebrated writer. (Dickens' earliest works had been published under the pseudonym Boz.) Only members of New York's aristocracy were invited, and tickets were priced at the then-outrageous sum of $10.

• On Feb. 15, 1965, jazz singer and pianist Nat King Cole dies of lung cancer at age 46. In 1991, his daughter, singer Natalie Cole, released the album "Unforgettable With Love." Electronic recording and mixing technology allowed her to record duets with her father, using his old tracks.

• On Feb. 16, 1959, Fidel Castro is sworn in as prime minister of Cuba after leading a guerrilla campaign that forced right-wing dictator Fulgencio Batista into exile. Castro replaced Miro Cardona as head of the country's new provisional government.

• On Feb. 17, 1801, after one tie vote in the Electoral College and 35 indecisive ballot votes in the House of Representatives, Vice President Thomas Jefferson is elected the third president of the United States. The confusing election exposed major problems in the presidential electoral process.

• On Feb. 18, 1885, Mark Twain publishes his famous - and famously controversial - novel "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." Twain (the pen name of Samuel Clemens) first introduced Huck Finn as the best friend of Tom Sawyer, hero of his novel "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" (1876).

• On Feb. 19, 1914, Pittsburgh movie theaters are required to establish a seating section for unaccompanied women. Some women attending movies alone had complained of harassment.

• On Feb. 20, 1725, a posse of New Hampshire volunteers comes across a band of encamped Native Americans and takes 10 "scalps" in the first significant appropriation of this Native American practice. The posse received a bounty of 100 pounds per scalp from the Colonial authorities in Boston.