January 15th
 

1892 ~ James Naismith published the rules for basketball.

1908 ~ Birthday of Edward Teller, Physicist.

1918 ~ Birth of Gamal Abdal Nasser, President of Egypt.

1929 ~ Birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., Civil Rights leader, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 1964.

1951 ~ The "Bitch of Buchenwald", Ilse Koch, was sentenced to life imprisonment.

1953 ~ East German authorities began a purge of senior Jewish officials.

1967 ~ The first Super Bowl was played.

1973 ~ President Nixon announced the suspension of all U.S. offensive action in North Vietnam, citing progress in peace negotiations.

1983 ~ Death of Meyer Lansky, mobster.

1996 ~ Death of Minnesota Fats, American Billiards player.

A particular mix of the great and the ghastly.

January 16th
 

1605 ~ The first edition of “Don Quixote” by Miguel de Cervantes was published in Madrid.

1794 ~ Death of Edward Gibbon, Historian.

1909 ~ Ernest Shackleton's expedition found the magnetic South Pole.

1920 ~ Prohibition began in the U.S. as the 18th Amendment to the Constitution took effect.

1923 ~ Birthday of Dian Fossey, American zoologist.

1970 ~ Muammar al-Qaddafi was proclaimed premier of Libya.

1977 ~ The Marx Brothers were inducted into the Motion Picture Hall of Fame.

1979 ~ The Shah of Iran went into exile in Egypt.

1991 ~ The White House announced the start of Operation Desert Storm.

2003 ~ The Space Shuttle Columbia took off on its final mission, STS-107.

January 17th
 

1893 ~ Hawaii's monarchy was overthrown when Queen Liliuokalani was forced to abdicate.

1899 ~ Birthday of Nevil Shute, Author.

1929 ~ Popeye the Sailor Man first appeared in the "Thimble Theatre" comic strip.

1942 ~ Birthday of Muhammad Ali, the world's greatest heavyweight Boxer.

1964 ~ Death of T.H. White, author.

1977 ~ Convicted murderer Gary Gilmore was executed at Utah State Prison in the first U.S. execution in a decade.

1994 ~ A magnitude 6.6 earthquake struck Southern California at least 61 people were killed with $20 billion worth of damage.

1995 ~ A magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck the city of Kobe, Japan; more than 6,000 people were killed.

1997 ~ Death of Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of the planet Pluto.

2001 ~ Faced with an electricity crisis, California used rolling blackouts to cut off power to hundreds of thousands of people.

January 18th
 

1535 ~ Lima, Peru founded by Francisco Pizarro.

1779 ~ Birthday of Peter Roget, Lexicographer.

1882 ~ Birthday of A. A. Milne, Author.

1892 ~ Birthday of Oliver Hardy, Comedian & Actor.

1936 ~ Death of Rudyard Kipling, Writer & Poet

1944 ~ The New York Met hosted its first jazz concert.Among the performers were Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, and Artie Shaw.

1944 ~ Birthday of Paul Keating, twenty-fourth Prime Minister of Australia.

1967 ~ The “Boston Strangler” was convicted in Cambridge, Mass., of armed robbery, assault and sex offenses.

1990 ~ Washington, DC, Mayor Marion Barry was arrested for drug possession.

1991 ~ Iraq attacked Tel Aviv and Haifa with Scud missiles.

January 19th
 

1807 ~ Birthday of Robert E. Lee, General, Army of Northern Virginia, CSA.

1809 ~ Birthday of Edgar Allan Poe, Poet & short story Author.

1839 ~ Birthday of Paul Cézanne, Painter.

1853 ~ Giuseppe Verdi's opera Il Trovatore premiered.

1937 ~ Howard Hughes set a transcontinental air record by flying from Los Angeles to Newark, N.J., in just under 7 ½ hours.

1943 ~ Birthday of Janis Joplin, Blues/Rock Singer.

1966 ~ Indira Gandhi was elected prime minister of India.

1977 ~ President Gerald Ford pardoned Tokyo Rose.

1983 ~ The Apple Lisa, the first commercial personal computer to have a graphical user interface and a computer mouse, was announced..

1983 ~ Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie was arrested in Bolivia.

January 20th
 

1907 ~ Death of Dmitri Mendeleev, Russian Chemist and inventor of the Periodic table.

1920 ~ Birthday of Federico Fellini, Italian film director.

1930 ~ Birthday of Buzz Aldrin, Astronaut.

1942 ~ Nazi officials arrived at a ''final solution'' to Europe's Jewry, during a conference at Lake Wannsee in Berlin.

1961 ~ John F. Kennedy sworn in as U.S. President.

1967 ~ The first pulsar was discovered.

1981 ~ The American hostages held by Iran were released following Ronald Reagan’s inauguration.

1984 ~ Death of Johnny Weissmuller, Olympic swimming gold medalist & Actor (Tarzan).

1986 ~ Britain and France announced plans to build the Channel Tunnel.

1993 ~ Death of Audrey Hepburn, actress.

January 21st
 

1793 ~ King Louis XVI of France, condemned for treason, was executed on the guillotine.

1924 ~ Death of Vladimir Lenin, first leader of the U.S.S.R.

1941 ~ Birthday of Plácido Domingo, tenor Opera Singer.

1950 ~ Death of George Orwell, Writer.

1950 ~ A federal jury in New York City found former State Department official Alger Hiss guilty of perjury.

1954 ~ The USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear powered submarine, was launched.

1959 ~ Death of Cecil B. DeMille, Movie Director.

1968 ~ Start of the Battle of Khe Sanh.

1998 ~ Pope John Paul II began his first visit to Cuba.

2003 ~ The U.S. Census Bureau announced that Hispanics had surpassed blacks as America's largest minority group.

There is a song by an Aussie Band (a long gone icon called Cold Chisel) titled Khe Sanh. A powerful lyric about returning Oz vets from VietNam. Yes, we were there too.

January 22nd
 

1788 ~ Birthday of Lord Byron, Poet.

1840 ~ British colonists reached New Zealand.

1879 ~ Zulu troops defeated British troops at the Battle of Isandlwana.

1909 ~ Birthday of U Thant, 3rd UN Secretary General.

1953 ~ "The Crucible", a drama by Arthur Miller, opened on Broadway.

1970 ~ The Boeing 747 went on its first regularly scheduled commercial flight, from New York to London.

1973 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court, in the Roe vs. Wade decision, legalized abortions, using a trimester approach.

1973 ~ Death of Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th U.S. President.

1984 ~ The Apple Macintosh was introduced with the famous television commercial "1984" (requires QuickTime and patience [but is generally considered among the better commercials in history]).

1992 ~ Dr. Roberta Bondar becomes the first Canadian woman astronaut.

January 23rd
 

1789 ~ Georgetown College, founded by Archbishop John Carroll, became the first Catholic, Jesuit college in the U.S.

1832 ~ Birthday of Edouard Manet, Impressionist artist.

1849 ~ Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in America to receive a medical degree, from the Medical Institution of Geneva, N.Y.

1857 ~ Birthday of Andrija Mohorovičić, Croatian seismologist.

1862 ~ Birthday of David Hilbert, Mathematician.

1968 ~ North Korea seized the USS Pueblo, charging it had intruded into the communist nation's territorial waters on a spying mission. The crew was held for 11 months.

1973 ~ President Nixon appeared on national television to announce "peace with honor" in Vietnam.

1989 ~ Death of Salvador Dalí, Artist.

2002 ~ Daniel Pearl was kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan.

2004 ~ Death of Bob Keeshan, TV's “Captain Kangaroo”.

January 24th
 

1776 ~ Birthday of E.T.A. Hoffmann, Poet & Composer.

1888 ~ Birthday of Ernst Heinkel, aircraft designer.

1908 ~ The first Boy Scout troop was organized in England by Robert Baden-Powell.

1927 ~ Alfred Hitchcock released his first film, “The Pleasure Garden”.

1945 ~ Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz.

1961 ~ Marilyn Monroe divorced Arthur Miller.

1965 ~ Death of Winston Churchill, Englishman.

1984 ~ The Apple Macintosh went on sale. Only 24 years ago! [requires QuickTime – worth the wait]

1993 ~ Death of Thurgood Marshall, U.S. Supreme Court justice.

2003 ~ The U.S. Department of Homeland Security officially began operation.

January 25th
 

1627 ~ Birthday of Robert Boyle, Chemist.

1759 ~ Birthday of Robert Burns, Poet.

1882 ~ Birthday of Virginia Woolf, Writer.

1890 ~ Nellie Bly completed her round-the-world journey in 72 days.

1919 ~ The League of Nations was founded.

1947 ~ Death of Al Capone, Gangster.

1971 ~ General Idi Amin becomes Ugandan President Idi Amin after a coup.

1977 ~ Rene Levesque told a Wall Street audience at the Economic Club of New York that “separation is inevitable”.

1998 ~ During his visit to Cuba, Pope John Paul II called for the release of political prisoners and political reforms and also condemned American isolation of the country.

2004 ~ Opportunity landed on Mars.

January 26th
 

1885 ~ Troops loyal to the Mahdi conquered Khartoum.

1905 ~ The Cullinan Diamond was found near Pretoria, South Africa.

1905 ~ Birthday of Maria von Trapp, Singer.

1925 ~ Birthday of Paul Newman, Actor.

1961 ~ Birthday of Wayne Gretzky, Canadian hockey Player, Coach, Owner.

1972 ~ Death of Mahalia Jackson, Gospel Music singer.

1988 ~ The musical "Phantom of the Opera", by Andrew Lloyd Webber opened at Broadway's Majestic Theater.

1996 ~ First lady Hillary Clinton testified before a grand jury connected to the Whitewater probe.

1998 ~ U.S. President Clinton denied on television he had "sexual relations" with Monica Lewinsky.

2005 ~ Following her confirmation by the Senate, Condoleezza Rice was sworn in as U.S. Secretary of State.

Feastdays & Holidays

Australia~ Australia Day

January 27th
 

1606 ~ The trial of Guy Fawkes and other Gunpowder Plot conspirators began.

1756 ~ Birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Composer.

1832 ~ Birthday of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who wrote “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” under the pen name Lewis Carroll.

1901 ~ Death of Giuseppe Verdi, Composer.

1945 ~ The Red Army liberated the concentration camp at Auschwitz in southern Poland.

1967 ~ More than 60 nations signed a treaty banning the orbiting of nuclear weapons.

1967 ~ Astronauts Grissom, White and Chaffee were killed in a fire during a test of the Apollo 1 spacecraft.

1977 ~ The Vatican reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church's ban on female priests.

1997 ~ It was revealed that French museums had retained nearly 2,000 pieces of art stolen by Nazis.

1998 ~ U.S. First Lady Hillary Clinton called the attacks against her husband part of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" on the “Today Show”.

January 28th
 

1521 ~ The Diet of Worms began.

1574 ~ Death of Henry VIII, King of England.

1596 ~ Death of Sir Francis Drake, Explorer & Soldier.

1788 ~ The first penal colony was established at Botany Bay, Australia.

1822 ~ Birthday of Alexander Mackenzie, Prime Minister of Canada.

1887 ~ Birthday of Artur Rubinstein, Polish Pianist.

1935 ~ Iceland became the first country to legalize abortion.

1939 ~ Death of William Butler Yeats, Writer.

1986 ~ Space Shuttle Challenger exploded just after takeoff killing all seven astronauts onboard.

2004 ~ Lord Hutton published his report into the death of Dr. David Kelly.

Feastdays & Holidays

Catholicism ~ Feast day of St. Thomas Aquinas.

January 29th
 

1845 ~ Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven" was first published, in the New York Evening Mirror.

1856 ~ Queen Victoria instituted the Victoria Cross.

1880 ~ Birthday of W.C. Fields, Actor.

1933 ~ Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg.

1936 ~ The first members of baseball's Hall of Fame, including Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth, were named in Cooperstown, N.Y.

1956 ~ Death of H. L. Mencken, Journalist.

1962 ~ Death of Fritz Kreisler, Austrian violinist.

1963 ~ Death of Robert Frost, Poet.

1996 ~ France ended nuclear testing.

2002 ~ In his State of the Union Address, President Bush coined the term "Axis of Evil".

January 30th
 

1649 ~ King Charles I of England was beheaded.

1862 ~ The first Union ironclad warship, the USS Monitor was launched.

1933 ~ The first episode of the ''Lone Ranger'' radio program was broadcast on station WXYZ in Detroit.

1937 ~ Birthday of Boris Spassky, World Chess Champion.

1948 ~ Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated.

1968 ~ Viet Cong guerillas and North Vietnamese soldiers launched the Tet offensive.

1969 ~ Last public performance by The Beatles.

1972 ~ Thirteen Roman Catholic civil rights marchers were shot to death by British soldiers in Northern Ireland on what became known as "Bloody Sunday”.

1991 ~ The first major ground battle of the Gulf War was fought at the frontier port of Al Khafji in Saudi Arabia.

2003 ~ Richard Reid, the "Shoe bomber" jailed for life.

January 31st
 

1606 ~ Guy Fawkes was executed for his part in the Gunpowder Plot.

1797 ~ Birthday of Franz Schubert, Composer.

1865 ~ The U.S. House of Representatives passed a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery.

1919 ~ Birthday of Jackie Robinson, Baseball Player & Barrier Breaker.

1929 ~ The Soviet Union exiled Leon Trotsky.

1950 ~ President Harry S. Truman announced a program to develop the hydrogen bomb.

1956 ~ Death of A. A. Milne, Author (Winnie the Pooh).

1958 ~ James Van Allen discovered the Van Allen radiation belt.

1990 ~ George Cohon opened McDonald's Corp. first Moscow restaurant in Pushkin Square.

1996 ~ An explosives-filled truck rammed into the gates of the Central Bank in Colombo, Sri Lanka killing 91 and injuring 1,400.

February 1st
 

1851 ~ Death of Mary Shelley, English Author (Frankenstein).

1896 ~ Puccini’s opera La Bohème premiered in Turin.

1920 ~ The Royal Canadian Mounted Police was established.

1929 ~ Frenchman Charles Rigoulet became the first weightlifter to lift over 400 pounds (181 kg) in the "clean and jerk" method.

1960 ~ Four black college students began a sit-in protest against racial segregation at a lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., where they'd been refused service.

1979 ~ Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran.

1979 ~ Patty Hearst, whose prison sentence for bank robbery had been commuted by President Jimmy Carter, left a federal prison near San Francisco.

2003 ~ Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas upon reentry killing all seven astronauts.

2004 ~ Hundreds of people were killed and injured in a stampede duringthe Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.

2004 ~ Super Bowl XXXVIII: One team defeated the other team, 32-29. During the half-time show Janet Jackson's right breast was bared.

February 2nd
 

1709 ~ Alexander Selkirk was rescued from a desert island, inspiring the book “Robinson Crusoe” by Daniel Defoe.

1870 ~ The Cardiff Giant - supposedly the petrified remains of a human discovered in Cardiff, N.Y. - was revealed to be nothing more than carved gypsum.

1875 ~ Birthday of Fritz Kreisler, Austrian violinist.

1887 ~ In Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania the first Groundhog Day was observed.

1905 ~ Birthday of Ayn Rand, Writer, Philosopher.

1943 ~ The German 6th Army surrendered at Stalingrad.

1969 ~ Death of Boris Karloff, English actor.

1970 ~ Death of Bertrand Russell, Mathematician & Philosopher.

1990 ~ At the opening of Parliament in Cape Town, President FW de Klerk announced the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa..

Feastdays & Holidays

U.S. & Canada – Groundhog Day

February 3rd
 

1809 ~ Birthday of Felix Mendelssohn, Composer.

1870 ~ The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified.

1874 ~ Birthday of Gertrude Stein, Writer.

1894 ~ Birthday of Norman Rockwell, Illustrator.

1907 ~ Birthday of James Michener, American author.

1917 ~ The U.S. broke off diplomatic relations with Germany after Germany announced a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare.

1947 ~ You want winter weather? You want COLD? Snag, Yukon recorded a temperature of -62.8°C, the lowest official temperature ever measured in Canada.

1947 ~ Birthday of Melanie Safka, Singer.

1959 ~ Rock 'n' Roll stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper died in a plane crash. Don McLean immortalized the tragedy in “American Pie”.

1966 ~ The Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft made the first controlled landing on the Moon.

February 4th
 

1789 ~ George Washington was unanimously elected by the Electoral College to be the first President of the United States.

1861 ~ In Montgomery, Alabama the Confederate States of America was formed by delegates from six break-away United States.

1902 ~ Birthday of Charles Lindbergh, U.S. aviator.

1906 ~ Birthday of Clyde Tombaugh, American astronomer.

1913 ~ Birthday of Rosa Parks, U.S. civil rights activist.

1928 ~ Death of Hendrik Lorentz, Dutch physicist and Nobel laureate.

1974 ~ The Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapped Patty Hearst in Berkeley, California.

1987 ~ Death of Liberace, "Mr. Showmanship".

1997 ~ O. J. Simpson was found to be civilly liable for the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

1998 ~ A magnitude 6.1 earthquake hit northeast Afghanistan, killing an estimated 5,000 people.

February 5th
 

1878 ~ Birthday of André-Gustave Citroën, automobile pioneer.

1897 ~ The Indiana House of Representatives passed a measure redefining the area of a circle and the value of π. The bill died in the state Senate.

1917 ~ The U.S. Congress passed, over President Woodrow Wilson's veto, a law severely curtailing the immigration of Asians.

1919 ~ Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith created United Artists.

1924 ~ The Royal Greenwich Observatory began to broadcast hourly time signals known as the Greenwich Time Signal or the "BBC pips".

1934 ~ Birthday of Hank Aaron, Athlete.

1937 ~ President Roosevelt proposed increasing the number of Supreme Court justices; critics charged Roosevelt was attempting to "pack" the court.

1958 ~ A hydrogen bomb was lost by the U.S. Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, never to be recovered.

1962 ~ French President Charles De Gaulle called for Algerian independence.

1982 ~ Laker Airways collapsed owing £270 million to banks and other creditors.

February 6th
 

1840 ~ Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, founding document of New Zealand.

1895 ~ Birthday of Babe Ruth, Athlete.

1913 ~ Birthday of Mary Leakey, Anthropologist.

1922 ~ Birthday of Patrick Macnee, British actor (John Steed in 'The Avengers').

1952 ~ The UK’s King George VI died; he was succeeded by his daughter, Elizabeth II.

1959 ~ Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments filed the first patent for an integrated circuit.

1971 ~ Alan Shepard became the first man to hit a golf ball on the Moon.

1983 ~ Former Gestapo commandant Klaus Barbie extradited to France from Bolivia to stand trial for war crimes.

1993 ~ Death of Arthur Ashe, Athlete.

2004 ~ An explosion in a Moscow subway car during rush hour killed 41 people in a terrorist attack blamed on Chechen separatists.

February 7th
 

1812 ~ Birthday of Charles Dickens, Novelist.

1834 ~ Birthday of Dmitri Mendeleev, chemist and inventor of the Periodic table of the chemical elements.

1883 ~ Birthday of Eubie Blake, Musician, Composer.

1885 ~ Birthday of Sinclair Lewis, Author.

1905 ~ The Great Baltimore Fire destroyed more than 1,500 buildings in 30 hours.

1964 ~ The Beatles arrived in New York for their first American tour, touching off rock 'n' roll's “British invasion”.

1971 ~ Women became entitled to vote in Switzerland.

1984 ~ Bruce McCandless and Robert Stewart went on the first untethered spacewalk.

1990 ~ The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union agreed to let other political parties compete for control of the country, thereby giving up its monopoly on power.

1992 ~ The European Union was formed.

February 8th
 

1587 ~ Mary, Queen of Scots was executed.

1828 ~ Birthday of Jules Verne, Author.

1855 ~ The Devil's Footprints mysteriously appeared in southern Devon.

1910 ~ The Boy Scouts of America was incorporated by William D. Boyce.

1925 ~ Birthday of Jack Lemmon, Actor.

1932 ~ Birthday of John Williams, Composer & Conductor.

1952 ~ Princess Elizabeth proclaimed herself Queen.

1957 ~ Death of John von Neumann, Mathematician.

1993 ~ General Motors sued NBC, alleging that the program "Dateline NBC" had rigged two crashes to show that GM pickups were prone to fires. NBC settled the lawsuit the following day.

1996 ~ President Clinton signed the Communications Decency Act at the Library of Congress.

February 9th
 

1825 ~ After no presidential candidate received a majority of electoral votes, the U.S. House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams President.

1861 ~ The Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America elected Jefferson Davis president and Alexander H. Stephens vice president.[/URL].

1881 ~ Death of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Author.

1900 ~ Davis Cup competition established.

1906 ~ Death of Paul Laurence Dunbar, Poet.

1910 ~ Birthday of Jacques Monod, biochemist, winner of 1965 Nobel Prize in Medicine.

1943 ~ American authorities declared Guadalcanal secure.

1950 ~ Senator Joseph McCarthy charged that the U.S. State Department was infested with Communists.

1971 ~ Satchel Paige became the first Negro League player to be voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

1984 ~ Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov died at age 69, less than 15 months after succeeding Leonid Brezhnev.

February 10th
 

1837 ~ Death of Aleksandr Pushkin, Russian Poet & Novelist.

1840 ~ Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

1890 ~ Birthday of Boris Pasternak, Poet, winner of the 1958 Nobel Prize in literature.

1898 ~ Birthday of Bertolt Brecht, Author.

1927 ~ Birthday of Leontyne Price, Soprano.

1933 ~ The first singing telegram was introduced by the Postal Telegram Co. in New York. Sic transit gloria mundi.

1962 ~ Captured American spy pilot Francis Gary Powers was exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.

1996 ~ Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov for the first time. :(

2005 ~ Death of Arthur Miller, playwright .

2007 ~ Sen. Barack Obama announced his bid for president.

February 11th
 

1650 ~ Death of René Descartes, Philosopher.

1898 ~ Birthday of Leó Szilárd, Physicist & Peace Activist.

1938 ~ BBC Television produced the first science fiction television program, an adaptation of the Karel Capek play R.U.R. (This play coined the term 'robot.')

1941 ~ Birthday of Sergio Mendes, Brazilian musician (Brazil '66).

1945 ~ President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and Premier Stalin signed the Yalta Agreement.

1961 ~ The trial of Adolf Eichmann began in Jerusalem.

1978 ~ China lifts a ban on works by Aristotle, Shakespeare and Dickens.

1979 ~ Followers of Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in Iran, after the religious leader returned to his home after his exile.

1986 ~ Death of Frank Herbert, Science Fiction author.

1990 ~ South African black activist Nelson Mandela was freed after 27 years in captivity.

February 12th
 

1804 ~ Death of Immanuel Kant, German Philosopher.

1809 ~ Birthday of Charles Darwin, Naturalist.

1893 ~ Birthday of Omar Bradley, General.

1924 ~ George Gershwin's ''Rhapsody in Blue'' premiered in New York City.

1938 ~ Anschluss: German troops enter Austria.

1942 ~ Birthday of Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel.

1994 ~ Edvard Munch's "The Scream" was stolen from a museum in Norway.

1999 ~ The U.S. Senate voted to acquit President Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

2000 ~ Death of Charles M. Schulz, creator of the “Peanuts” comic strip.

2002 ~ The war crimes trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic began in The Hague.

I'm too lazy to actually look it up but according to The Late Show with Craig Ferguson, on this date in 1983 Michael Jackson's Thriller album was released.

February 13th
 

1883 ~ Death of Richard Wagner, Composer.

1923 ~ Birthday of Chuck Yeager, pilot of first supersonic flight.

1935 ~ A jury found Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh.

1945 ~ The RAF & USAAF created a firestorm in Dresden, Germany which killed tens of thousands of civilians.

1960 ~ France tested its first nuclear weapon.

1974 ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in literature, was exiled from the Soviet Union.

1988 ~ Winter Olympic Games opened in Calgary, Alberta.

1991 ~ Hundreds of Iraqi civilians were killed when a pair of laser-guided bombs destroyed an underground facility in Baghdad identified by U.S. officials as a military installation, but which Iraqi officials said was a bomb shelter.

1997 ~ Tune-up and repair work on the Hubble Space Telescope performed by astronauts from the Space Shuttle Discovery.

2002 ~ Death of Waylon Jennings, American musician.

February 14th
 

1766 ~ Birthday of Thomas Malthus, Economist.

1779 ~ James Cook was killed by the natives of the Sandwich Islands.

1895 ~ First performance of Oscar Wilde's last play "The Importance of Being Earnest”.

1929 ~ The St. Valentine's Day Massacre took place in a Chicago garage.

1945 ~ U.S. President Roosevelt met with King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia aboard the USS Quincy, officially starting the US-Saudi diplomatic relationship.

1966 ~ Australian currency was decimalized.

1989 ~ The first of the 24 Global Positioning System satellites was placed into orbit.

1989 ~ Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini called on Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie, author of ''The Satanic Verses,'' a novel Khomeini condemned as blasphemous.

2003 ~ Death of Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal.

Feastdays & Holidays

Catholicism ~ Feast day of Saint Valentine.

February 15th
 

1820 ~ Birthday of Susan B. Anthony, Activist & Suffragist.

1874 ~ Birthday of Sir Ernest Shackleton, British polar explorer.

1898 ~ The USS Maine exploded and sank in Havana Harbor, killing more than 260.

1954 ~ Birthday of Matt Groening, Satirist.

1965 ~ Death of Nat “King” Cole, Singer.

1965 ~ A new red and white maple leaf design was adopted as the flag of Canada replacing the old Canadian Red Ensign banner.

1988 ~ Death of Richard Feynman, Physicist.

1995 ~ Kevin Mitnick was arrested by the FBI and charged with breaking into some of the more "secure" U.S. computer systems.

1989 ~ The Soviet Union announced that the last of its troops had left Afghanistan after more than nine years of military intervention.

2005 ~ YouTube was launched.

February 16th
 

1923 ~ Howard Carter unsealed the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun.

1935 ~ Birthday of Sonny Bono, Singer & Congressman.

1937 ~ Wallace Carothers received a patent for nylon.

1942 ~ Birthday of Kim Jong Il, North Korean leader.

1959 ~ Fidel Castro became premier of Cuba after the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista.

1978 ~ The first computer bulletin board system, CBBS, was created in Chicago, Illinois.

1985 ~ Hezbollah founded.

1986 ~ The Soviet liner Mikhail Lermontov ran aground in the Marlborough Sounds, New Zealand.

2001 ~ Death of William Masters, American gynecologist and sexologist (Masters and Johnson).

2005 ~ The Kyoto Protocol came into effect.

I've always wondered if Chinese food ever makes Kim Jong Il...

February 17th
 

1653 ~ Birthday of Arcangelo Corelli, Composer.

1801 ~ An electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr was resolved when Jefferson was elected President and Burr Vice President by the House of Representatives.

1844 ~ Birthday of Aaron Montgomery Ward, American department store founder.

1867 ~ The first ship passed through the Suez Canal.

1895 ~ Swan Lake, one of the more famous ballets, with music by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, was first completely performed in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

1909 ~ Death of Geronimo, Apache leader.

1962 ~ Death of Bruno Walter, Conductor.

1972 ~ President Nixon departed on his historic trip to China.

1979 ~ China invaded Vietnam.

1992 ~ Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced in Milwaukee to life in prison.

February 18th
 

1546 ~ Death of Martin Luther, religious reformer.

1745 ~ Birthday of Alessandro Volta, Physicist, eponym for the unit of the electric potential.

1838 ~ Birthday of Ernst Mach, Austrian Physicist & Philosopher.

1861 ~ In Montgomery, Alabama Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as the first and only President of the Confederate States of America.

1885 ~ Mark Twain's “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” was first published.

1930 ~ While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto.

1933 ~ Birthday of Yoko Ono, Singer, Artist, wife of John Lennon.

1969 ~ Lulu and Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees marry.

1967 ~ Death of J. Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist.

2005 ~ The UK law banning fox hunting, hare coursing and other sports which kill wild mammals is enforced from this date.

1998 ~ Death of Harry Caray, legendary baseball broadcaster.