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February 5th
1878 ~ Birthday of André Citroën, automobile pioneer.
1885 ~ King Leopold II of Belgium established the Congo as a personal possession. 1919 ~ Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith launched 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. 1958 ~ A hydrogen bomb known as Tybee Bomb was lost by the US Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, never to be recovered. 1962 ~ French President Charles De Gaulle called for allowing Algeria to be an independent nation. 1968 ~ The Battle of Khe Sanh of the Vietnam War began. 1982 ~ Pioneering budget airliner Laker Airways collapsed owing £270 million to banks and other creditors. 1988 ~ Comic Relief held the first "Red Nose Day", which raised a £15 million in the United Kingdom for charity. |
February 6th
1564 ~ Birthday of Christopher Marlowe, Playwright.
1819 ~ Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles founded Singapore. 1840 ~ Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, founding document of New Zealand. 1895 ~ Birthday of Babe Ruth, Athlete. 1903 ~ Birthday of Claudio Arrau, Pianist. 1913 ~ Birthday of Mary Leakey, Anthropologist. 1952 ~ Elizabeth II became Queen upon the death of her father George VI. At the exact moment of succession, she was in a treehouse in a tree-top hotel in Kenya. 1959 ~ Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments filed the first patent for an integrated circuit. 1993 ~ Death of Arthur Ashe, Athlete. 2004 ~ In Russia, a Chechen suicide-attack in a Moscow metro killed 40 commuters, and injures a hundred and twenty-nine. Holidays and observances New Zealand ~ Waitangi day. |
February 7th
1478 ~ Birthday of Sir Thomas More, Statesman & Author.
1812 ~ Birthday of Charles Dickens, Novelist. 1834 ~ Birthday of Dmitri Ivanovich 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. 1900 ~ The British Labour Party was formed. 1904 ~ The Great Baltimore Fire destroyed more than 1,500 buildings in 30 hours. 1964 ~ The Beatles arrived on their first visit to the United States. 1990 ~ Collapse of the Soviet Union: The Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party agreed to give up its monopoly of power. 1992 ~ The European Union was formed. |
February 9th
1587 ~ Mary, Queen of Scots was executed.
1820 ~ Birthday of William Tecumseh Sherman, Soldier. 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 & film director. 1932 ~ Birthday of John Williams, Composer & Conductor. 1949 ~ Cardinal Mindszenty of Hungary sentenced for treason. 1957 ~ Death of John von Neumann, Mathematician & Quantum Physicist. 1993 ~ General Motors sued NBC after Dateline NBC rigged two crashes showing that some GM pickups could easily catch fire if hit in certain places. NBC settled the lawsuit the next day. |
February 9th
1825 ~ After no presidential candidate received a majority of electoral votes, the U.S. House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams President.
1881 ~ Death of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Author. 1885 ~ Birthday of Alban Berg, Composer. 1900 ~ Davis Cup competition established. 1906 ~ Death of Paul Laurence Dunbar, Poet. 1910 ~ Birthday of Jacques Monod, biochemist, winner of Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1965 1911 ~ Birthday of Gypsy Rose Lee, Author, Actress & Ecdysiast. 1950 ~ Red scare: Senator Joseph McCarthy accused more than 200 staff in the State Department of being Communists. 1971 ~ Satchel Paige became the first Negro League player to be voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. 1997 ~ The Simpsons surpassed The Flintstones as the longest-running prime-time animated series. |
February 10th
1837 ~ Death of Aleksandr Pushkin, Russian Poet and Novelist.
1840 ~ Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. 1870 ~ The YWCA was founded in New York City. 1890 ~ Birthday of Boris Pasternak, Poet, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1958 1898 ~ Birthday of Bertolt Brecht, Author. 1927 ~ Birthday of Leontyne Price, Soprano. 1949 ~ Death of a Salesman opened at the Morocco Theatre in New York City. 1957 ~ Death of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Author. 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. :( |
February 11th
1650 ~ Death of René Descartes, Philosopher.
1840 ~ Gaetano Donizetti's opera La Fille du Régiment received its first performance in Paris. 1847 ~ Birthday of Thomas Alva Edison, Inventor. 1898 ~ Birthday of Leó Szilárd, Physicist, peace activist. 1938 ~ BBC Television produced the world's first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of the Karel Capek play R.U.R. (This play coined the term 'robot.') 1961 ~ Trial of Adolf Eichmann began in Jerusalem. 1978 ~ Censorship: China lifts a ban on works by Aristotle, Shakespeare and Dickens. 1979 ~ Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized power in Iran. 1986 ~ Death of Frank Herbert, Science Fiction author. 1990 ~ Nelson Mandela, a political prisoner for 27 years, was freed from prison outside Cape Town, South Africa. |
February 12th
1544 ~ Death of Lady Jane Grey, briefly Queen of England.
1733 ~ Englishman James Oglethorpe founded the 13th and final American colony of Georgia, and its first city at Savannah. 1804 ~ Death of Immanuel Kant, German philosopher. 1809 ~ Birthday of Charles Darwin, Naturalist 1870 ~ Women gain the right to vote in Utah Territory. 1893 ~ Birthday of Omar Bradley, General. 1909 ~ The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded. 1999 ~ President Bill Clinton was acquitted by the United States Senate in his impeachment trial. 2000 ~ Death of Charles M. Schulz, creator of the “Peanuts” comic strip. 2002 ~ The trial of former President of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic began at the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague. |
February 13th
1542 ~ Death of Catherine Howard, fifth wife of Henry VIII of England.
1866 ~ Jesse James robbed his first bank. 1883 ~ Death of Richard Wagner, German composer. 1923 ~ Birthday of Chuck Yeager, pilot of first supersonic flight. 1935 ~ A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. 1945 ~ World War II: The Royal Air Force created a firestorm in Dresden, Germany which killed tens of thousands of civilians. 1974 ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1970, was exiled from the Soviet Union his book The Gulag Archipelago. 1978 ~ Hilton bombing: a bomb exploded in a garbage truck outside the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, Australia, killing two garbage men and a policeman. 1990 ~ German reunification: An agreement is reached for a two-stage plan to reunite Germany. 1997 ~ Tune-up and repair work on the Hubble Space Telescope performed by astronauts from the Space Shuttle Discovery. |
February 14th
1766 ~ Birthday of Thomas Malthus, Economist.
1779 ~ James Cook was killed by the natives of the Sandwich Islands. 1803 ~ Chief Justice John Marshall declared that any act of U.S. Congress which conflicts with the Constitution is void. 1895 ~ First showing of Oscar Wilde's last play “The Importance of Being Earnest” at St James's Theatre in London. 1943 ~ World War II: The Battle of the Kasserine Pass - German General Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps defeat the Americans under General Lloyd Fredendall. 1945 ~ President Franklin Roosevelt met with King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia aboard the USS Quincy, officially starting the US-Saudi diplomatic relationship. 1946 ~ The Bank of England was nationalized. 1966 ~ Australian currency was decimalized. 1989 ~ Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini issues a fatwa encouraging Muslims to kill the author of The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie. 2003 ~ Death of Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal. Holidays and observances Catholicism ~ Feast day of Saint Valentine. |
February 15th
1564 ~ Birthday of Galileo Galilei, Tuscan astronomer, father of the scientific method, born in Pisa.
1820 ~ Birthday of Susan B. Anthony, feminist and suffragist. 1874 ~ Birthday of Sir Ernest Shackleton, British polar explorer. 1898 ~ Spanish-American War: The USS Maine exploded and sank in Havana Harbor, for then unknown reasons killing more than 260. This event led the United States to declare war on Spain. 1942 ~ World War II: Singapore surrendered to Japanese forces. About 130,000 Indian, Australian and British troops became prisoners of war. The fall of Singapore was the largest surrender of British military personnel in history. 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. 1971 ~ Decimalization of British coinage completed on Decimal Day. 1988 ~ Death of Richard Feynman, Physicist. 1989 ~ Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan: The Soviet Union officially announced that all of its troops had left Afghanistan. Holidays and observances Canada ~ Flag Day. |
January 23rd
1923 ~ Howard Carter unsealed the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun.
1935 ~ Birthday of Sonny Bono, singer, music producer, television producer, Congressman. 1937 ~ Wallace H. Carothers received a patent for nylon. 1942 ~ Birthday of Kim Jong Il, North Korean leader. 1959 ~ Fidel Castro became Premier of Cuba after President Fulgencio Batista was overthrown on January 1. 1978 ~ The first computer bulletin board system, CBBS, was created in Chicago, Illinois. 1986 ~ The Soviet liner Mikhail Lermontov ran aground in the Marlborough Sounds, New Zealand. 1989 ~ Pan Am flight 103: Investigators announced that the cause of the crash was a bomb hidden inside a radio-cassette player. 1999 ~ Across Europe, Kurdish rebels took over embassies and held hostages after Turkey arrested one of their rebel leaders, Abdullah Öcalan. 2005 ~ The Kyoto Protocol comes into effect. |
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 of the United States and Burr Vice President by the U.S. House of Representatives. 1867 ~ The first ship passed through the Suez Canal. 1895 ~ Swan Lake, one of the most famous ballets, with music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, was first performed at full length in Saint Petersburg, Russia. 1909 ~ Death of Geronimo, Apache leader. 1934 ~ Birthday of Barry Humphries (aka "Dame Edna Everage"), Actor & Comedian. 1947 ~ Propaganda: The Voice of America began to transmit radio broadcasts into the Soviet Union. 1962 ~ Death of Bruno Walter, Conductor. 1992 ~ A court in Milwaukee, Wisconsin sentenced serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer to life in prison. 1996 ~ World champion Garry Kasparov beat the Deep Blue supercomputer in a chess match. |
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 published for the first time. 1930 ~ While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto. 1933 ~ Birthday of Yoko Ono, Singer, Artist, wife of John Lennon. 1965 ~ The Gambia became independent from the United Kingdom. 1967 ~ Death of J. Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist. 2005 ~ The United Kingdom law banning fox hunting, hare coursing and other sports which kill wild mammals is enforced from this date. |
February 19th
1473 ~ Birthday of Nicolaus Copernicus, Astronomer.
1743 ~ Birthday of Luigi Boccherini, Italian Composer. 1847 ~ The Donner Party was rescued. It was noted that some of the survivors seemed to be remarkably well-fed considering their ordeal. 1861 ~ Serfdom was abolished in Russia. 1878 ~ The phonograph was patented by Thomas Edison. 1915 ~ World War I: The Battle of Gallipoli began. 1942 ~ World War II: About 150 Japanese warplanes attacked Darwin, Australia. 1964 ~ Paul Simon wrote "The Sounds of Silence," the song which, in a year and a half, catapulted him and Art Garfunkel to stardom as Simon & Garfunkel. 1986 ~ The Soviet Union launched the Mir space station. 1997 ~ Death of Deng Xiaoping, Chinese Communist political leader and revolutionary |
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