February 14

On the 14th in 1778, the flag of the nascent United States was formally recognized by a foreign naval vessel for the first time, when the French admiral Toussaint-Guillaume Picquet de la Motte, gave a nine-gun salute to the USS Ranger, whose captain was John Paul Jones. Apparently, among naval types in the eighteenth century, making a lot of noise by firing guns was the diplomatic way of saying ‘Wassup dawg’. Sort of like a rap concert today.