A Playwright, a Governor, a Tragic Accident and a Hero

February 19, 1766: William Dunlap was born in Perth Amboy on February 19. Dunlap was the first American playwright who was able to make a living off of his work. His best-known work is The Life of Major Andre, which he wrote in 1798.

February 19, 1799: Charles Smith Olden, governor of New Jersey at the outbreak of the Civil War, was born into an old and established ...Quaker family in Stony Brook, near Princeton.

February 19, 1903: A trolley car full of Newark high school students slid on icy tracks and crashed through a gate across the Delaware Lackawanna and Western Railroad tracks into the path of an oncoming locomotive. Nine of the students were killed. A grand jury indicted the officers of the trolley company, the North Jersey Street Line, for manslaughter, but a trial jury failed to convict. A grand juror later charged that political chicanery and bribery had secured the verdict, although the assertion was never proven.

February 19, 1968: U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Fred Zabitosky of Trenton, although wounded himself, rescued a pilot whose helicopter had crashed and who was pinned down under heavy fire on a mission in Laos. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism.