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February 8th
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. 1932 ~ Birthday of John Williams, Composer & Conductor. 1957 ~ Death of John von Neumann, Mathematician. 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. 1996 ~ The U.S. Congress passed the Communications Decency Act. |
February 9th
1825 ~ After no presidential candidate received a majority of electoral votes, the U.S. House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams President.
1878 ~ Proposed U.S. Federal Income Tax lampooned. 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 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 & Novelist.
1840 ~ Queen Victoria of the UK 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 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. 1949 ~ ”Death of a Salesman” opened at the Morocco Theatre in New York City. 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.
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 ~ China lifts a ban on works by Aristotle, Shakespeare and Dickens. 1979 ~ Ayatollah 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. 1999 ~ Pluto changed from the eighth to ninth planet furthest from the sun. It had been inside Neptune’s orbit since 1979. |
February 12th
1733 ~ James Oglethorpe founded Georgia, the 13th and last American colony.
1804 ~ Death of Immanuel Kant, German Philosopher. 1809 ~ Birthday of Charles Darwin, Naturalist. 1893 ~ Birthday of Omar Bradley, General. 1909 ~ The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded. 1938 ~ Anschluss: German troops entered Austria. 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 Yugoslavia President Slobodan Milosevic began at the UN War Crimes tribunal in The Hague. 2004 ~ Mattel Inc. announces the break up of Barbie and Ken - after dating for 43 years. |
February 13th
1866 ~ Jesse James robbed his first bank.
1883 ~ Death of Richard Wagner, Composer. 1923 ~ Birthday of Chuck Yeager, pilot of first supersonic flight. 1935 ~ A jury in Flemington, New Jersey 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. 1990 ~ An agreement was 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 ~ U.S. Chief Justice John Marshall declared that any act of Congress which conflicts with the Constitution is void. 1895 ~ First showing of Oscar Wilde's last play “The Importance of Being Earnest”. 1943 ~ The Battle of the Kasserine Pass – The Afrika Korps launch an offensive against Allied defenses in Tunisia. 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 Salman Rushdie. 2003 ~ Death of Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal. Feastdays & Holidays Catholicism ~ Feast day of Saint Valentine. |
February 15th
1564 ~ Birthday of Galileo Galilei, Astronomer & Physicist.
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. 1942 ~ 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. 1995 ~ Kevin Mitnick was arrested by the FBI and charged with breaking into some of the more "secure" U.S. computer systems. Feastdays & Holidays Canada ~ Flag Day |
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. 1986 ~ The Soviet liner Mikhail Lermontov ran aground in the Marlborough Sounds, New Zealand. 1989 ~ Investigators announced that the cause of the crash of Pan Am flight 103 was a bomb hidden inside a radio-cassette player. 1999 ~ Kurdish rebels took over embassies and held hostages after Turkey arrested one of their leaders, Abdullah Öcalan. 2005 ~ The Kyoto Protocol came 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 and Burr Vice President by the 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 Tchaikovsky, was first completely performed in Saint Petersburg, Russia. 1909 ~ Death of Geronimo, Apache leader. 1933 ~ The magazine Newsweek began publication. 1947 ~ 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 ~ 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 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. |
February 19th
1473 ~ Birthday of Nicolaus Copernicus, Astronomer.
1743 ~ Birthday of Luigi Boccherini, Italian Composer. 1861 ~ Serfdom was abolished in Russia. 1915 ~ The Battle of Gallipoli began. 1942 ~ Some 250 Japanese warplanes attacked Darwin, Australia. The attack killed at least 243 people. 1945 ~ About 30,000 United States Marines land on Iwo Jima. 1964 ~ Paul Simon wrote "The Sounds of Silence”, the song which would take him and Art Garfunkel to stardom. 1980 ~ Bon Scott, the lead singer of the Australian hard rock band AC/DC, died after a night of heavy drinking. 1986 ~ The Soviet Union launched the Mir space station. 1997 ~ Death of Deng Xiaoping, the last of China's major Communist revolutionaries. |
February 20th
1626 ~ Death of John Dowland, Composer.
1742 ~ The premiere of “Giulio Cesare”, an opera by George Frideric Handel, took place in London. 1835 ~ Concepción, Chile was destroyed by an earthquake. 1902 ~ Birthday of Ansel Adams, Photographer. 1904 ~ Birthday of Alexei Kosygin, Premier of the Soviet Union. 1927 ~ Birthday of Sidney Poitier, Actor. 1952 ~ The film The African Queen opened in New York City. 1962 ~ John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth aboard Friendship 7. 1966 ~ Death of Chester Nimitz, American admiral. 2001 ~ FBI agent Robert Hanssen was arrested and charged with spying for Russia for 15 years. |
February 21st
1875 ~ Birthday of Jeanne Calment. She lived for 122 years 164 days, the longest confirmed lifespan for any human being in history.
1893 ~ Birthday of Andrés Segovia, Spanish guitarist. 1903 ~ Birthday of Anaďs Nin, Writer. 1907 ~ Birthday of W. H. Auden, Poet. 1916 ~ The Battle of Verdun began. French casualties during the battle were estimated at 550,000 with German losses set at 434,000, half of the total being fatalities. 1947 ~ Edwin Land demonstrated the first "instant camera", the Polaroid Land Camera, to a meeting of the Optical Society of America. 1965 ~ Malcolm X was assassinated in New York City by members of the Nation of Islam. 1972 ~ President Nixon began his visit to China. 1975 ~ Watergate scandal: Former U.S. Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman were sentenced to prison. 1988 ~ TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart tearfully confessed to his congregation that he was guilty of an unspecified sin, and said he was leaving the pulpit temporarily. |
February 22nd
1732 ~ Birthday of George Washington, 1st U.S. President.
1819 ~ Spain ceded Florida to the U.S. 1857 ~ Birthday of Robert Baden-Powell, Chief Scout of the World. 1879 ~ Frank Woolworth opened his first "Five Cent Store" in Utica, NY. 1935 ~ Airplanes were no longer permitted to fly over the White House. 1946 ~ George Kennan, the American charge d'affaires in Moscow, sent an 8,000-word telegram to the Department of State detailing his views on the Soviet Union, and U.S. policy toward the communist state. Kennan's analysis provided one of the more influential underpinnings for America's Cold War policy of containment. 1967 ~ General Suharto assumed control of Indonesia 1980 ~ The U.S. Olympic hockey team defeated the Soviets 4–3 at Lake Placid, NY. 1994 ~ Double agent Aldrich Ames was arrested. 1997 ~ Ian Wilmut and his colleagues at the Roslin Institute announced that a sheep named Dolly had been successfully cloned. |
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