February 24: The Court Speaks, A President Falls, A Princess Rises Three moments when power shifted—through judicial authority, political accountability, and royal spectacle February 24 has witnessed pivotal moments when the nature of authority itself was redefined. A Supreme Court decision that transformed the judiciary from advisory body to constitutional guardian, an impeachment that tested whether Congress could truly check a president's power, and a royal engagement that would reshape modern monarchy—each event reminds us that power is never static, but constantly negotiated between institutions, individuals, and the public that watches them. The Power to Say No On February 24, 1803, Chief Justice John Marshall delivered the Supreme Court's opinion in Marbury v. Madison, a case that began with partisan politics and ended by fundamentally reshaping American government. William Marbury, appointed justice of the peace by outgoing President John Adams, sued when the new administration refused to deliver his commission. Marshall faced a dilemma: rule for Marbury and the Jefferson administration might simply ignore the Court, exposing its weakness; rule against him and validate executive overreach. Marshall found a third path that was nothing short of brilliant. Marshall declared that while Marbury deserved his commission, the law allowing him to sue directly in the Supreme Court was itself unconstitutional—and therefore void. In doing so, Marshall established judicial review: the Supreme Court's authority to declare laws unconstitutional. The decision gave the Jefferson administration its immediate victory while claiming for the Court a power not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution. It was a masterstroke of judicial statesmanship. Marshall transformed the Supreme Court from the weakest branch of government—it had no enforcement power, no budget control—into the ultimate interpreter of constitutional meaning. Two centuries later, judicial review remains the foundation of American constitutional law, all from a case about an undelivered commission for a minor judgeship.   In a modest chamber, the Supreme Court claimed the power to check all other branches One Vote From Removal Sixty-five years later, on February 24, 1868, the House of Representatives voted 126 to 47 to impeach President Andrew Johnson, making him the first president to face this constitutional sanction. Johnson, a Southern Democrat who became president after Lincoln's assassination, had spent three years battling with the Republican Congress over Reconstruction. When Johnson fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in defiance of the Tenure of Office Act—a law designed specifically to protect Stanton—Republicans had their pretext. The impeachment articles charged Johnson with violating that law and bringing disgrace to the presidency. The subsequent Senate trial became pure political theater. Johnson's defense argued that the Tenure of Office Act was itself unconstitutional (the Supreme Court would eventually agree), and that policy disagreements didn't constitute "high crimes and misdemeanors." The prosecution painted Johnson as a traitor to Reconstruction and an obstacle to justice for formerly enslaved people. When the Senate voted on May 16, Johnson survived removal by a single vote—35 guilty to 19 not guilty, one vote short of the required two-thirds. Seven Republican senators broke ranks, convinced that removing a president for political differences would dangerously weaken the presidency. Johnson served out his term powerless and embittered. The impeachment didn't remove him, but it established that Congress could credibly threaten a president with removal—a check that has shaped executive behavior ever since. The Senate chamber became an arena where presidential power faced its greatest test ❦ A Fairy Tale Begins On February 24, 1981, Buckingham Palace announced the engagement of Charles, Prince of Wales, to Lady Diana Spencer, a nineteen-year-old kindergarten teacher. The news electrified Britain and captivated the world. Diana seemed perfect for the role: young, beautiful, aristocratic but not royal, and apparently unspoiled by celebrity. In their engagement interview, when asked if they were in love, Charles famously replied "whatever 'in love' means"—a phrase that seemed charming at the time but would later appear ominous. Diana simply said yes. The wedding that July drew 750 million television viewers worldwide, the largest audience ever for a live broadcast at that time. Diana wore a fairytale dress with a 25-foot train, and for a moment, the British monarchy felt renewed and relevant. But the fairy tale had cracks from the start. Charles remained emotionally attached to Camilla Parker Bowles, Diana struggled with bulimia and the suffocating constraints of royal life, and the intense media scrutiny would only grow more invasive. The marriage would collapse publicly and painfully, ending in divorce in 1996. Diana's death in a Paris car crash in 1997 triggered an outpouring of grief that forced the monarchy to modernize its relationship with public emotion. The engagement announcement that seemed to promise a new golden age for royalty instead marked the beginning of its most turbulent transformation in modern times.   Outside Buckingham Palace, the world celebrated news that would transform the monarchy

February 24: The Blizzard That Stopped the Northeast A bomb cyclone of historic proportions buried the most densely populated corridor in America, shattering records from Maryland to Maine and writing itself into the meteorological history books overnight. In the early hours of February 23, 2026, a rapidly intensifying storm — what meteorologists call a bomb cyclone — detonated off the Mid-Atlantic coast and turned the Northeast into a world of white. By the time the snow stopped falling, more than 40 million people had lived through one of the most powerful winter storms in the region's recorded history, a blizzard so vast its warnings stretched unbroken for 700 miles of coastline from Maryland to Maine. A Storm for the Record Books The numbers tell a staggering story. Providence, Rhode Island, recorded 32.8 inches of snowfall — the largest in the state's history. Long Island's Islip station measured 29.1 inches, also an all-time record. Newark, New Jersey, saw 27 inches pile up, its second-greatest snowfall ever. New York City's Central Park logged nearly 20 inches, triggering the first blizzard warning for the city in nearly a decade. Wind gusts approaching 100 mph lashed the immediate New England coastline, reaching near-hurricane force as the cyclone explosively deepened. More than 600,000 utility customers lost power at the storm's peak, with Massachusetts bearing the heaviest burden at over 238,000 outages. Eight governors declared states of emergency. Across the nation, more than 5,600 flights were canceled in a single day, with New York's JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark airports accounting for the majority of disruptions. What made this storm historically remarkable was not just its intensity, but the speed of its transformation. The system originated as a modest shortwave trough off the Pacific Coast on February 20, crossed the continent in days, and then underwent explosive cyclogenesis off the Carolina coast — dropping pressure so rapidly that it achieved bomb cyclone status within hours of threatening the Northeast corridor. Thundersnow crackled over New Jersey. Snowbands dumped one to two inches per hour in pivoting swaths across the region. The National Weather Service described travel conditions at the storm's height as "nearly impossible," and across New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania, officials agreed — issuing sweeping travel bans that emptied Interstate 95 and brought one of the world's busiest urban corridors to an eerie, snow-blanketed standstill.   A lone pedestrian crosses a snow-covered intersection in New York City as blizzard conditions create near-whiteout visibility. Traffic lights glow red through the heavy snowfall on the empty streets. The storm's cultural footprint matched its meteorological one. Broadway went dark. Schools across New York City and Boston closed their doors. In perhaps the most poignant symbol of the blizzard's reach, The Boston Globe — a newspaper that has published continuously since 1872, through wars, pandemics, and countless prior storms — announced it would not print a paper edition on Tuesday morning, the first time in its nearly 154-year history that weather had halted the presses. Future generations will look back on February 23–24, 2026 as a marker in time: the day the Northeast went quiet, buried under feet of snow, humbled once again by the awesome and indifferent power of winter.