February 22 in History

On February 22, 1980, a team of American college players and amateurs beat the heavily favored Soviet national hockey team 4-3 at the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. The result, known as the "Miracle on Ice," became one of the most celebrated upsets in sports history. It carried unusual weight because it took place during a tense stretch of the Cold War, and many Americans saw it as a morale-boosting moment in a gloomy period.

In February 1997, scientists at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, Scotland, announced that they had produced a lamb named Dolly, the first mammal cloned from a cell taken from an adult animal. Dolly had been born the previous July, and the news was held back until the research could be published. Her existence showed that a specialized adult cell could be reprogrammed to produce an entire new organism, overturning a long-held assumption in biology and igniting a worldwide debate about the ethics of cloning.