January 7
 

2004 ~ IowaMan decides to join Pixies Place so he can look at the pics as well as read the stories. :p

A day to remember, that's for sure!! :thumbs:

January 8th
 

1642 ~ Death of Galileo Galilei, Astronomer.

1735 ~ Birthday of John Carroll, first Roman Catholic Archbishop in the U.S.

1918 ~ President Wilson announced his "Fourteen Points" for the aftermath of World War I.

1925 ~ Birthday of Gerald Durrell, Naturalist & Writer.

1926 ~ Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud became the King of Saudi Arabia.

1942 ~ Birthday of Stephen Hawking, English theoretical physicist.

1958 ~ Bobby Fischer won the U.S. Chess Championship.

1994 ~ Valeri Polyakov began his record setting 437 days in space.

1996 ~ Death of Francois Mitterrand, French president.

1999 ~ Cosmologists announced that the expansion rate of the universe is increasing.

January 9th
 

1793 ~ Jean-Pierre Blanchard became the first person to fly in a balloon in the U.S.

1839 ~ The Daguerreotype photography process publicly demonstrated.

1861 ~ The "Star of the West" was fired upon as it attempted to deliver supplies to Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. This was the "Casus belli" of the American Civil War.

1861 ~ Mississippi became the second state to secede from the Union.

1903 ~ Hallam Tennyson, son of the poet Alfred Tennyson, became the second Governor-General of Australia.

1913 ~ Birthday of Richard Nixon, U.S. President.

1941 ~ Birthday of Joan Baez, Singer & Activist.

1951 ~ United Nations headquarters officially opened.

1968 ~ The Surveyor 7 space probe made a soft landing on the moon,.

2005 ~ Mahmoud Abbas won the election for a successor to Yasser Arafat.

January 10th
 

1776 ~ Thomas Paine published Common Sense.

1862 ~ Death of Samuel Colt, Inventor.

1927 ~ The film Metropolis by Fritz Lang premiered.

1929 ~ Tintin, a comic book character created by Hergé, made his debut.

1945 ~ Birthday of Rod Stewart, English Rocker.

1946 ~ The first General Assembly of the United Nations convened in London.

1949 ~ Birthday of Linda Lovelace, Pornographic Actress.

1951 ~ Death of Sinclair Lewis, Author.

1994 ~ Lorena Bobbitt went on trial for cutting off the penis of her husband John.

2003 ~ North Korea withdrew from a global treaty barring it from making nuclear weapons.

January 11th
 

1787 ~ William Herschel discovered the first two moons of Uranus, Titania & Oberon.

1801 ~ Death of Domenico Cimarosa, Italian Composer.

1843 ~ Death of Francis Scott Key, Lawyer.

1935 ~ Amelia Earhart began a trip from Honolulu to Oakland, Calif., becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean.

1938 ~ Birthday of Arthur Scargill, Union Leader.

1962 ~ An avalanche in Peru killed some 4,000 people.

1964 ~ U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry issued the first government report saying smoking may be hazardous to one's health.

1973 ~ American League baseball teams voted to adopt the designated-hitter rule on a trial basis.

1980 ~ Nigel Short became the youngest chess player, at 14 years old, to be awarded the degree of International Master.

2008 ~ Death of Sir Edmund Hillary, New Zealand mountaineer, the first man to climb Mt. Everest .

January 12th
 

1665 ~ Death of Pierre de Fermat, Mathematician.

1893 ~ Birthday of Hermann Göring, Nazi official.

1915 ~ The U.S. House of Representatives defeated a proposal to give women the right to vote.

1969 ~ On a day that will be long remembered in infamy, Joe Namath and the New York Jets defeated the Baltimore Colts 16-7 in Super Bowl III, and became the first team from the American Football League to win American Football's championship.

1976 ~ Death of Agatha Christie, Mystery Writer.

1991 ~ U.S. Congress authorized the use of military force to drive Iraq out of Kuwait.

1992 ~ In the film ”2001: A Space Odyssey”, the computer HAL 9000 was activated on this date.

2003 ~ Death of Maurice Gibb, Bee Gee.

2003 ~ Death of Leopoldo Galtieri, Dictator of Argentina.

2006 ~ A stampede broke out during the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, killing 363 people.

January 13th
 

1599 ~ Death of Edmund Spenser, Poet (The Faerie Queene).

1929 ~ Death of Wyatt Earp.

1941 ~ Death of James Joyce, Writer.

1942 ~ The United States began Japanese American internment.

1948 ~ Death of James Joyce, Irish novelist (Dubliners, Ulysses, Finnegans Wake).

1966 ~ Robert Weaver became the first black Cabinet member as he was appointed Secretary of Housing and Urban Development by President Johnson.

1978 ~ Death of Hubert H. Humphrey, U.S. Vice President & Minnesota Senator.

1990 ~ Douglas Wilder took office as the first elected African American governor.

1992 ~ Japan apologized for forcing tens of thousands of Korean women to serve as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during World War II.

1993 ~ American, British and French fighter jets bomb Iraq.

January 14th
 

83 BC ~ Birthday of Marcus Antonius (Marc Anthony), Roman politician.

1784 ~ The Continental Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris, formally ending the American War of Independence.

1857 ~ Birthday of Albert Schweitzer, Christian Missionary & winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 1952.

1898 ~ Death of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson - who wrote ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' under the pen name Lewis Carroll, Writer & Mathematician.

1943 ~ President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill opened a wartime conference in Casablanca.

1954 ~ Baseball player Joe Dimaggio and actress Marilyn Monroe were married at San Francisco City Hall.

1957 ~ Death of Humphrey Bogart, Actor.

1978 ~ Death of Kurt Gödel, Mathematician.

1993 ~ Whitewater prosecutors questioned first lady Hillary Clinton at the White House about the gathering of FBI background files on past Republican political appointees.

2005 ~ The Huygens probe landed on Saturn's moon Titan.

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.

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

1967 ~ The first Super Bowl was played.

1972 ~ Birthday of Kobe Tai, Porn actress.

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

1996 ~ Death of Minnesota Fats, American Billiards player.

2001 ~ Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia, formally put online.

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.

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

2008 ~ Death of Bobby Fischer, chess master.

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.

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.

2008 ~ Death of Suzanne Pleshette, Actress.

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.

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.

1987 ~ Terry Waite was kidnapped in Lebanon.

1993 ~ Death of Audrey Hepburn, actress.

2009-First black president of the United States sworn in

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.

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.

1862 ~ Birthday of David Hilbert, Mathematician.

1879 ~ The Battle of Rorke's Drift, immortalized in the film "Zulu".

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”.

Makes me think of a paper I wrote my freshman year of college for a "History of Catholicism in America" class. I was absolutely lost and must've included that fact about Georgetown and Archbishop Carroll a dozen times in 10 pages. :rofl:

Father McDaniel commented at the end, "So, Georgetown was the first catholic institute of higher learning in the country huh?" :p

January 24th
 

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

1888 ~ Birthday of Ernst Heinkel, aircraft designer.

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.

1971 ~ Death of Bill W., co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.

1984 ~ The Apple Macintosh went on sale. Only 25 years ago!

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

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

January 25th
 

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.

2006 ~ Death of Anna Malle, Porn Actress.

Isn't the story of "Spirit" and "Opportunity" on Mars amazing. Two little rovers are still working ... after 5 years and at least one dust storm. Fantastic. I know who I want to build our next car. :)

dicksbro,

Yes it is! The engineers excelled. :)

January 26th
 

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.

1965 ~ Hindi became the official language of India.

1972 ~ Death of Mahalia Jackson, Gospel Music singer.

1980 ~ Israel and Egypt established diplomatic relations.

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.

Feastdays & Holidays

Australia~ Australia Day

January 27th
 

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.

1987 ~ Birthday of Zuleidy Spanish Porn Actress.

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
 

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.

1916 ~ Louis Brandeis became the first Jew appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. .

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.

1948 ~ Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated.

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

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.

1994 ~ Péter Lékó became the youngest chess Grand Master.

1995 ~ Death of Gerald Durrell, Naturalist, Author, & Zookeeper.

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

January 31st
 

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.

1606 ~ Eddie Slovik was executed.

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.

1976 ~ Death of Werner Heisenberg, German physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1932.

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 ~ 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
 

1789 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court convened for the first time.

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.

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.

1982 ~ Birthday of Brandy Talore, Porn Actress.

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.

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.

2006 ~ Death of Betty Friedan, American Feminist.

Apparently, neither did God on that day!

Perhaps God had a taste for mutton that day?

February 5th
 

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.

1988 ~ Panamanian President Manuel Noriega was indicted on drug smuggling and money laundering charges.

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.