February 6th



~337 - Julius I was elected pope.

~891 – Died this day: St. Photius I the Great, Patriarch of Constantinople. (b. 820)

~1685 - Died this day: Charles II, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

~1685 – James II of England and VII of Scotland ascended the throne King upon the death of his brother Charles II. He was the last Catholic monarch to reign over the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

~1778 – In Paris the Treaty of Alliance and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce were signed by the United States and France signaling official recognition of the new republic.

~1788 – Massachusetts ratified the United States Constitution and was admitted as the 6th state of the Union.

~1806 - The Battle of San Domingo: This was the last fleet action of the Napoleonic Wars. French and British squadrons of ships of the line met off the southern coast of the French occupied Spanish Colony of Santo Domingo in the Caribbean. The French squadron, led by Vice-Admiral Corentin Urbain Leissègues was defeated by a British squadron commanded by Vice-Admiral Sir John Thomas Duckworth.

~1815 – The first railroad charter in the United States was issued to the New Jersey Railroad Company on behalf of John Stevens and others. Based on turnpike charters, it allowed the company to build between New Brunswick and Trenton, and became a model for railroad charters in the future. That company never did anything, but the idea evolved into the later New Jersey Rail Road and Transportation Company (NJRR), chartered in 1832.

~1819 – British official Stamford Raffles signed a treaty with Sultan Hussein Shah of Johor, establishing Singapore as a new trading post for the British East India Company.

~1840 – The signing of the Treaty of Waitangi established New Zealand as a British colony. The Treaty established a British governor in New Zealand, recognised Māori ownership of their lands and other properties, and gave Māori the rights of British subjects. (It didn't quite turn out like that, however...)

~1862 – The Battle of Fort Henry: Union General Ulysses S. Grant gave the United States its first significant victory of the Civil War, when his troops captured Fort Henry, Tennessee from the Confederates.

~1899 – The Spanish-American War: The Treaty of Paris (1 of at least 24 Treaties of Paris), a peace treaty between the United States and Spain, was ratified by the United States Senate by a 1 vote margin.

~1911 - Born this day: Ronald Wilson Reagan, 40th President of the United States. (d. 2004)

~1922 – The Washington Naval Treaty is signed in Washington, D.C., limiting the naval armaments of United States, Britain, Japan, France, and Italy. (What a bloody joke that was as it didn't cover aircraft carriers.)

~1922 - Pius XI was elected pope.

~1934 – The far right leagues rallied in front of the Palais Bourbon in an attempted coup against the French Third Republic, creating a political crisis in France. The event finished in a riot on Place de la Concorde near the seat of the National Assembly.

~1936 - The IV Olympic Winter Games opened in the market town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria, Germany.

~1951 – The Broker, a Pennsylvania Railroad passenger train derailed near Woodbridge Township, New Jersey. The accident killed 85 people and injured over 500 more. The wreck is one of the worst rail disasters in American history.

~1952 – Died this day: George VI, King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions.

~1952 - Elizabeth II ascended the British throne upon the death of her father George VI. At the exact moment of succession, she was in a treehouse at the Treetops Hotel in Kenya.

~1958 – British European Airways Flt. 609, an Airspeed AS-57 Ambassador, crashed on its 3rd attempt to take off from a slush covered runway at Munich Riem Airport in Munich, West Germany. 23 of the 44 onboard died and none of the survivors escaped without injuries.

~1959 – The first patent for an integrated circuit, U.S. Patent 3,138,743 for "Miniaturized Electronic Circuits", was filed by Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments.

~1959 – At Cape Canaveral, Florida, the first successful test launch of a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile took place.

~1968 - The X Olympic Winter Games opened in Grenoble, France.

~1978 – The Northeast Blizzard of '78: The second day of the storm produced the most snowfall (4" per hour) and the highest sustained winds (65 mph). New England and Metro New York came to a virtual standstill.

~1987 – Mary Gaudron was appointed the first woman Justice to the High Court of Australia. (Good on you, Mary G!)

~1989 – The Roundtable talks start in Poland, thus marking the beginning of overthrow of communism in Eastern Europe. The Polish Round Table Talks began in Warsaw, Poland. The government initiated the discussion with the banned trade union Solidarność and other opposition groups in an attempt to defuse growing social unrest. (It didn't work.)

~1998 – Washington National Airport was renamed Ronald Reagan National Airport. US President Bill Clinton signed legislation changing the airport's name to honor the former president on his 87th birthday.

~1998 – In Corsica, the prefect Claude Erignac was assassinated in Ajaccio.

~2004 - The Moscow Metro Bombing: A suicide bomb attack aboard a Moscow metro killed 41 commuters, and injured 129 more. The blast occurred near Avtozavodskaya subway station on the Zamoskvoretskaya Line.

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February 7th



~457 – Leo I became emperor of the Byzantine Empire. He was known as Magnus Thrax (the "Great Thracian") by his supporters, and Macellus ("the Butcher") by his enemies. Leo proved to be a capable head of state, ruling the Eastern Empire for nearly 20 years from 457 to 474. He oversaw many ambitious political and military plans, aimed mostly for the aid of the faltering Western Roman Empire and recovering its former territories.

~1074 – Pandulf IV of Benevento was killed while battling the invading Normans at the Battle of Montesarchio.

~1301 – Edward of Caernarvon (later King Edward II of England) becomes the first English Prince of Wales.

~1497 – The most famous Bonfire of the Vanities occurred when supporters of the Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola collected and publicly burned thousands of objects of cosmetics, art, and books in Florence, Italy on the Mardi Gras festival.

~1550 - Julius III was elected Pope.

~1795 – The 11th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. It deals with each state's sovereign immunity from being sued in federal court by someone of another state or country. This amendment was adopted in response to, and in order to overrule, the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Chisholm v. Georgia in 1793.

~1807 – The Battle of Eylau began. It was a bloody and inconclusive 2 day battle between Napoléon's Grande Armée and a mostly Russian army under General Bennigsen near the town of Preußisch Eylau in East Prussia. Eylau was the first serious check to the Grande Armée, which in the previous two campaigns had carried all battles before it demolishing the armies of the established great powers of Europe. This was particularly true at the battles of Ulm, Austerlitz, and Jena-Auerstedt.

~1812 – The strongest in a series of over 1,000 earthquakes in 1811 and 1812 struck New Madrid, Missouri. The magnitude 8.0 shaker the most powerful non-subduction zone earthquake ever recorded in the United States.

~1842 – Battle of Debre Tabor: The forces of Warlord Wube Haile Maryam of Semien engaged the troops of Ras Ali Alula, Regent of the Emperor of Ethiopia. This confused battle was won by the army of Ras Ali but at a steep price and this victory failed to cement his position as the most powerful warlord of his time.

~1856 – The Kingdom of Awadh was annexed by the British East India Company after a peaceful abdication of Wajid Ali Shah, the king of Awadh.

~1863 – HMS Orpheus, a Jason class Royal Navy corvette that served as the flagship of the Australian squadron, sank off the west coast of Auckland, New Zealand after stiking a sand bar. 189 crewmembers out of the ship's complement of 259 died in the disaster. To date this is still the worst maritime tragedy to occur in New Zealand waters.

~1882 – John L. Sullivan defeated Paddy Ryan in Mississippi City to become the American Heavyweight Boxing Champion.

~1894 – The 5 month long Cripple Creek miner's strike, led by the Western Federation of Miners, began in Cripple Creek, Colorado.

~1898 – Émile Zola was brought to trial for criminal libel for publishing J'Accuse. (The French government has always hated it whenever someone tells the truth about them...)

~1904 – The Great Baltimore Fire: 1,231 firefighters were required to bring the 30 hour long blaze under control. It destroyed a major part of central Baltimore, including over 1,500 buildings covering an area of some 140 acres.

~1907 – The Mud March: The first large procession organized by the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) took place in London.

~1940 – The second film of the Walt Disney Animated Classics, Pinocchio, premiered.

~1943 - In the United States it was announced that shoe rationing would take effect on February 9th due to wartime shortages.

~1943 – Imperial Japanese naval forces completed the evacuation of the Imperial Japanese Army troops from Guadalcanal during Operation Ke, ending Japanese attempts to retake the island from Allied forces in the Guadalcanal Campaign.

~1944 – In Anzio, Italy, German forces renewed their counteroffensive during the Allies Operation Shingle.

~1962 – In response to the Cuban alignment with the Soviet Union during the Cold War US President John F. Kennedy extended, by Executive Order, the scope of existing US trade restrictions against Cuba.

~1964 - The Beatles arrived to much fanfare at John F Kennedy International Airport on their first visit to the United States.

~1967 – The Tasmanian Fires, an event which became known as the Black Tuesday bushfires, were the most deadly bushfires that Tasmania has ever experienced. The flames, which charred 2,642.7 square kilometres (653,025.4 acres), claimed 62 lives and injured 900 more while leaving over 7,000 homeless.

~1974 – Grenada was granted its independence from Great Britain.

~1977 - The Soviet Union launched Soyuz 24, a mission to the Salyut 5 space station, the 3rd and final mission to that station and the last purely military crew for the Soviets as well as the final mission to a military Salyut. Cosmonauts Viktor Gorbatko and Yuri Glazkov re-activated the station after toxic fumes had apparently terminated the mission of Soyuz 21, the previous crew.

~1979 – Pluto moved inside Neptune's orbit for the first time since either planet was discovered. (Yeah, I still call Pluto a planet...so shoot me!)

~1984 – Space Shuttle program: On mission STS-41-B, astronauts Bruce McCandless and Robert Stewart made the first untethered space walk using the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU).

~1986 – 28 years of single family rule ended in Haiti when ousted President Jean-Claude Duvalier fled the Caribbean nation for France. (Who else would take the scumbag...?)

~1990 – The Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party agreed to give up its monopoly on power.

~1991 – Haiti's first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was sworn into office.

~1992 – The Maastricht Treaty was signed, leading to the creation of the European Union on November 1st, 1993.

~1995 – Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was arrested in Islamabad. He was captured because of a man Yousef had tried to recruit, who was paid $2 million for the information leading to Yousef's capture.

~1998 - The XVIII Olympic Winter Games opened in Nagano, Japan.

~1999 - Died this day: Hussein bin Talal, King of Jordan. Hussein guided his country in the context of the Cold War, and through 4 decades of Arab-Israeli conflict, balancing the pressures of Arab nationalism and the allure of Western style development against the stark reality of Jordan's geographic location. His commitment to democracy, civil liberties and human rights helped to make Jordan a model state for the Middle East and the kingdom is internationally recognized for having the most exemplary human rights record in that region.

~1999 – Crown Prince Abdullah ascended the throne of Jordan upon the death of his father, King Hussein.

~2003 – The last contact from NASA’s Pioneer 10 was replied to, it was unsuccessful.

~2009 – The Black Saturday Bushfires: A series of bushfires ignited (or were burning) across the Australian state of Victoria during extreme bushfire-weather conditions. This resulted in Australia's highest ever loss of life from bushfires. 173 people died as a result of the blazes and 414 more were injured. As many as 400 individual fires were recorded on this single day alone.

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February 8th



~421 – Constantius III became co-Emperor of the Western Roman Empire alongside Honorius. During his brief reign Constantius reportedly complained about the loss of personal freedom and privacy that came with the imperial office.

~1555 - Laurence Saunders was burned at the stake for preaching against "the errors of the popish religion".

~1575 – Universiteit Leiden was founded in the Netherlands. It was given the motto Praesidium Libertatis (Bastion of Freedom).

~1587 – Mary, Queen of Scots was executed on suspicion of having been involved in the Babington Plot to murder her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I of England.

~1601 – Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, rebelled against Queen Elizabeth I. The revolt was quickly brought to a halt.

~1693 – The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia was granted its charter by King William III and Queen Mary II.

~1726 – The Supreme Privy Council is established in Russia.

~1807 – The Battle of Eylau – On the 2nd day of the battle Napoleon's Grande Armee fought the Russians, under General Benigssen, to an inconclusive end.

~1817 – The army of José de San Martin completed its crossing of the Andes on its mission to liberate Chile from Spain.

~1837 – Richard Johnson became the first, and to date only, Vice President of the United States to be chosen by the United States Senate.

~1855 – The Devil's Footprints mysteriously appeared in southern Devon after a snowfall.

~1865 – Delaware voters rejected the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and voted to continue the practice of slavery. Delaware finally ratified the amendment on February 12, 1901.

~1879 – Sandford Fleming first proposed adoption of Universal Standard Time at a meeting of the Royal Canadian Institute.

~1887 – The Dawes Act authorized the President of the United States to survey Indiantribal land and divide it into individual allotments. The Dawes Act, with its emphasis on individual land ownership, had a negative impact on the unity, self government and culture of Indian tribes.

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

~1915 – D.W. Griffith's controversial film The Birth of a Nation premiered in Los Angeles.

~1922 – President Warren G. Harding introduced the first radio in the White House. (No doubt following a kickback from RCA.)

~1924 – The first state execution in the United States by gas chamber took place in Nevada.

~1946 - The Loebel Club Fire in Berlin claimed 89 lives.

~1949 – The Trial of the Cardinal: Cardinal Mindszenty of Hungary was sentenced to life imprisonment for treason against the Hungarian government. The government released a book "Documents on the Mindszenty Case" containing evidences against Mindszenty including his (coerced) confession. Mindszenty walked into court and openly confessed to the crimes he was accused of. On February 12th Pope Pius XII announced the excommunication of all persons involved in the trial and conviction of Mindszenty. In his apostolic letter, Acerrimo Moerore, he publicly condemned the jailing of the cardinal and stated he was being mistreated. Mindszenty later said he had been hit with rubber truncheons until he agreed to confess.

~1955 – The Government of Sindh abolished the Jagirdari system in the province. The 1 million acres (4000 km²) of land acquired was to be distributed among the landless peasants.

~1960 – Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom issued an Order in Council, stating that she and her family would be known as the House of Windsor, and that her descendants would take the name "Mountbatten-Windsor".

~1962 – 9 trade unionists were killed by French police at the instigation of former Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon, then chief of the Paris Prefecture of Police. The funerals of the 9 killed, which were held on February 13th, were attended by hundreds of thousands of people.

~1963 – Travel, financial and commercial transactions by United States citizens to Cuba were made illegal by the Kennedy administration.

~1966 – The National Hockey League awarded Pittsburgh an expansion NHL franchise, the Pittsburgh Penguins.

~1968 – Local policemen in Orangeburg, South Carolina fired into a crowd of young people who were protesting local segregation at a bowling alley. They killed 3 and injured 28 others, hitting most of them in their backs. After the shooting stopped 2 others were injured by police in the aftermath and one, a pregnant woman, later had a miscarriage due to the beating.

~1969 – The Allende Meteorite struck: The largest carbonaceous chondrite ever found on Earth, the fireball was witnessed falling over the Mexican state of Chihuahua. After breaking up in the atmosphere, an extensive search for pieces was conducted and this is often described as "the best studied meteorite in history". The Allende meteorite is notable for possessing abundant, large calcium-aluminium rich inclusions, which are among the oldest objects formed in the Solar System.

~1969 - The last weekly issue of the Saturday Evening Post hit the magazine stands.

~1971 – The NASDAQ (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) stock market index opened for the first time. With approximately 3,700 companies and corporations, it has more trading volume than any other stock exchange in the world today.

~1974 – After 84 days in space, the last Skylab crew returned to Earth.

~1978 – Proceedings of the United States Senate were broadcast on radio for the first time.

~1979 – Denis Sassou-Nguesso became the President of the Republic of the Congo.

~1983 – The Melbourne Dust Storm hit Australia's second largest city. The result of the worst drought on record and a day of severe weather conditions, a 320 metres (1,000 ft) deep dust cloud enveloped the city, turning day to night.

~1985 - After 6 years, the television series “The Dukes of Hazzard” went off the air. (Thank the Almighty for blessed mercies!)

~1989 – Independent Air Flt. 1851, a Boeing 707, crashed into Santa Maria mountain in the Azores Islands off the coast of Portugal, killing all 144 aboard.

~1993 – General Motors sued NBC after Dateline NBC rigged 2 crashes intended to demonstrate that some GM pickups can easily catch fire if hit in certain places (aired November 17th, 1992). After announcing the lawsuit GM conducted a highly publicized point by point rebuttal in the Product Exhibit Hall of the General Motors Building in Detroit that lasted nearly 2 hours. The lawsuit was settled the same week by NBC, and Jane Pauley read a 3 minute 30 second on air apology to viewers.

~1996 – US President Bill Clinton signed the Communications Decency Act into law. The CDA imposed criminal sanctions on anyone who:

"Knowingly (A) uses an interactive computer service to send to a specific person or persons under 18 years of age, or (B) uses any interactive computer service to display in a manner available to a person under 18 years of age, any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs."

It further criminalized the transmission of materials that were "obscene or indecent" to persons known to be under 18.

~1996 – The massive Internet collaboration "24 Hours in Cyberspace" took place. The project brought together the world's top photographers, editors, programmers, and interactive designers to create a digital time capsule of online life.

~2001 - “Disney's California Adventure” opened. The 55 acre (220,000 m2) theme park was constructed as part of a major expansion that transformed the Disneyland area and its hotels into the Disneyland Resort and consists of five areas: Sunshine Plaza, Hollywood Pictures Backlot, The Golden State, A Bug's Land and Paradise Pier. Each area is meant to resemble various aspects of California, its culture, landmarks and history.

~2002 - The XIX Olympic Winter Games opened in Salt Lake City, Utah.

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February 9th



~474 – Zeno became co-emperor of the Byzantine Empire alongside his son. Since 7 year old Leo II was too young to rule by himself, Ariadne and her mother Verina prevailed upon him to crown Zeno, his father, as co-emperor.

~1555 – John Hooper Bishop of Gloucester was burned at the stake for having religious views not in synch with prevailing accepted theology. (What else...?)

~1621 – Gregory XV became Pope, the last Pope to be elected by acclamation.

~1775 – The British Parliament declared Massachusetts to be in rebellion. (Very observant there, old chaps! What was your first hint?)

~1825 – After no presidential candidate received a majority of electoral votes in the election of 1824, the United States House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams the 6th President of the United States.

~1849 – The Roman Republic was declared when the government of Papal States was temporarily substituted by a republican government due by the pope's flight to Gaeta. The republic was led by Carlo Armellini, Giuseppe Mazzini and Aurelio Saffi. Together they formed a triumvirate, a reflection of a form of government seen in the ancient Roman Republic.

~1861 – Jefferson Davis was elected the Provisional President of the Confederate States of America by the Confederate convention at Montgomery, Alabama.

~1870 – The U.S. Weather Bureau was established. it would later become the National Weather Service (NWS).

~1889 – US President Grover Cleveland signed a bill into law elevating the Department of Agriculture to Cabinet level.

~1895 – William G. Morgan created a game called Mintonette, which soon became referred to as volleyball.

~1904 – The Battle of Port Arthur: The Russo-Japanese War began when, shortly after midnight, Japanese destroyers under the command of Admiral Togo launched a torpedo attack on the Russian fleet inside Port Arthur, China. The main naval battle later that the day had inconclusive results.

~1920 – Under the terms of the Spitsbergen Treaty, international diplomacy recognized Norwegian sovereignty over the Arctic archipelago Svalbard, and designated it as demilitarized.

~1934 – The Balkan Entente was formed. The pact was a treaty signed by Greece, Turkey, Romania and Yugoslavia, aimed at maintaining the geopolitical status quo in the region following World War I. The signatories agreed to suspend all disputed territorial claims against each other and their immediate neighbors following the aftermath of the war and a rise in various regional ethnic minority tensions. Other nations in the region that had been involved in related diplomacy refused to sign the document, including Italy, Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and the Soviet Union. Nonsignatories were mostly those governments with territorial expansion in mind.

~1941 - The first "as produced" de Havilland Mosquito (prototype #W4050) fighter-bomber took to the air on its maiden flight. The "ultra-fast and ultra-maneuverable" mosquito played a major role in the RAF's war effort.

~1942 – Top United States military leaders held their first formal meeting to discuss American military strategy in the Second World War.

~1942 - In New York, the luxury trans-Atlantic French liner SS Normandie caught fire while moored at Manhattan's Pier 88. As firefighters on shore and in fire boats poured water on the blaze, the ship developed a dangerous list to port due to the greater amount of water being pumped into the seaward side of the vessel by fireboats. Around 2:45 A.M. on February 10th, Normandie capsized, nearly crushing a fire boat.

~1942 – Year round Daylight saving time was re-instated in the United States as a wartime measure to help conserve energy resources.

~1945 – The Battle of the Atlantic: In a rare instance of submarine vs submarine combat, HMS Venturer sank U-864 off the coast of Fedje, Norway by guessing at the other sub's location and firing a blind salvo.

~1950 – US Senator Joseph McCarthy gave a speech in which he claimed to have a list of 205 names of communists working within the US State Department.

~1960 – The Hollywood Walk of Fame was dedicated and its first stars awarded.

~1963 - The Boeing 727, one of the greatest commercial airliners ever built, took off from Everett Field on her maiden flight. She would go on to revolutionize modern air travel.

~1964 – The Beatles made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. The broadcast drew an estimated 73 million viewers, at the time a record for US television, and was characterized by an audience composed largely of screaming hysterical teenage girls in tears.

~1969 – The Boeing 747, the first widebody commercial airliner, took to the skies over Western Washington on her maiden flight.

~1971 – The Sylmar Earthquake: A magnitude 6.6 earthquake struck the San Fernando Valley area of California causing widespread damage and leaving 65 dead.

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

~1971 – Apollo 14 returned to Earth after the third successful manned moon landing.

~1975 – The Soyuz 17 Soviet spacecraft returned to Earth. It was the first of 2 long duration missions to the Soviet Union's Salyut 4 space station that year. The flight set a Soviet mission duration record of 29 days, surpassing the 23 day record set by the ill-fated Soyuz 11 crew aboard Salyut 1 in 1971.

~1977 - Died this day: Sergey Ilyushin Russian aircraft designer who founded the Ilyushin aircraft design bureau. (b. 1894)

~1981 – Died this day: Bill Haley, pioneer rock and roll musician ("Bill Haley and the Comets"), aged 55.

~1994 – Yet another in a long list of similar schemes, the so called Vance-Owen Peace Plan for Bosnia and Herzegovina was announced. The proposal involved the division of Bosnia into 10 semi-autonomous regions and received the backing of the UN. On 5 May, however, the self proclaimed Bosnian Serb assembly rejected the Vance-Owen plan; and on 18 June, Lord Owen declared that the plan was "dead". Given the pace at which territorial division, fragmentation and ethnic cleansing had occurred, the plan was already obsolete by the time it was announced. It became the last proposal that sought to salvage a mixed, united Bosnia-Herzegovina; subsequent proposals either re-enforced or contained elements of partition.

~1996 – The Irish Republican Army declared its 17 month ceasefire at an end. This was quickly followed up by the explosion of a large bomb in London's Canary Wharf.

~2001 – The American submarine USS Greeneville accidentally struck the Ehime-Maru, a Japanese training vessel operated by the Uwajima Fishery High School. Ehime Maru sank and 9 of its crewmembers were killed, including 4 high school students.

~2002 – Died this day: Princess Margaret of the United Kingdom (b. 1930)

~2009 - The Beijing Television Cultural Center Fire: A massive blaze occurred, in the centre of Beijing, involving the uncompleted Television Cultural Center (TVCC) building. The building, adjacent to the CCTV Headquarters, is owned by China Central Television, and was scheduled for completion in May 2009. Currently, the BTCC is being rebuilt. The fire was caused by a nearby unauthorized fireworks display on the last day of the festivities marking the Chinese new year.

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February 10th



~1162 – Died this day: King Baldwin III of Jerusalem (b. 1130)

~1242 – Died this day: Emperor Shijō of Japan (b. 1231)

~1258 - The Seige of Baghdad: The Mongols were successful in bringing about the fall of Baghdad. They proceeded to overrun the city, sacking and burning it to the ground while killing at least 100,000 citizens.

~1306 – In front of the high altar of Greyfriars Church in Dumfries, Robert the Bruce murdered John Comyn, his leading political rival, sparking revolution in the Scottish Wars of Independence.

~1355 – In England the St. Scholastica's Day Riot broke out at Oxford, one of the most notorious events in the history of the university. Following a dispute about beer in the Swindlestock Tavern between townspeople and 2 students of the University of Oxford, the insults that were exchanged grew into armed clashes between locals and students over the next 2 days which left 63 scholars and around 30 locals dead. The scholars were eventually routed. It was not until 600 years had passed that the hatchet was finally and formally buried, when (on 10th February 1955) at a commemoration of the events of 1355 the Mayor was given an honorary degree and the Vice-Chancellor was made an Honorary Freeman.

~1567 – An explosion destroyed the Kirk o' Field house in Edinburgh, Scotland. The second husband of Mary Queen of Scots, Henry Stuart (Lord Darnley) was found strangled in a nearby orchard, in an apparent assassination.

~1763 – The (1763) Treaty of Paris ended the French and Indian War with France ceding Quebec to Great Britain.

~1798 – French forces led by Louis Alexandre Berthier invaded Rome, proclaimed a Roman Republic on February 15th and then, on February 20th, took Pope Pius VI prisoner. The pope died thereafter while Berthier's custody.

~1814 – The Battle of Champaubert: This was the opening engagement of the Six Days Campaign. It was fought by a French force under Napoleon I against Russian and Prussian troops under General Olssufiev, ending with a decisive French victory. The battle of Champaubert was one of the few times during the War of the Sixth Coalition that France was able to take to the field with a considerable numerical advantage.

~1840 – Queen Victoria of the Britain married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. They remained happily married until Albert's death in December 1861. (What can you say? She honestly loved the guy, he was a lucky man in that respect.)

~1846 - The majority of the Latter Day Saints left the city of Nauvoo, Illinois to begin their migration west to Salt Lake City, Utah via the Mormon Trail.

~1846 – At the Battle of Sobraon, during the First Anglo-Sikh War, the British won a decisive victory against the Sikhs in what was to be the final battle of the war.

~1863 - The world famous dwarfs, General Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren, were married at Grace Episcopal Church in New York City.

~1863 - Alanson Crane received the first American patent for the fire extinguisher.

~1870 - The City of Anaheim was incorporated by act of the California State Legislature.

~1906 – HMS Dreadnought was launched. The battleship revolutionised naval power when she entered service representing such a marked advance in naval technology that her name came to be associated with an entire generation of battleships, the "dreadnoughts", as well as the class of ships named after her, while the generation of ships she made obsolete became known as "pre-dreadnoughts". Dreadnought was the first battleship of her era to have a uniform main battery, rather than having a few large guns complemented by a heavy secondary battery of somewhat smaller guns. She was also the first capital ship to be powered by steam turbines, making her the fastest battleship in the world at the time of her completion.

~1920 – General Jozef Haller de Hallenburg performed the symbolic Poland's Wedding to the Sea, a ceremony symbolizing restored Polish access to the Baltic Sea that was lost in 1793 by the Partitions of Poland. (Yet another slow news day...)

~1923 – Texas Tech University was founded as Texas Technological College in Lubbock, Texas.

~1933 – In round 13 of a boxing match at New York City's Madison Square Garden, future heavyweight champion Primo Carnera knocked out Ernie Schaaf. Schaaf fell into a coma and died 4 days later.

~1939 – Died this day: Pope Pius XI (b. 1857)

~1945 - The SS General von Steuben, a liner converted by the Kreigsmarine to a transport ship, was torpedoed in the Baltic Sea by the Soviet submarine S-13 while evacuating refugees and war wounded from the path of the advancing Red Army. Over 3,000 perished in the sinking.

~1947 – Italy ceded most of Venezia Giulia to Yugoslavia.

~1949 – Arthur Miller's Pulitzer Prize winning play "Death of a Salesman" premiered at the Morosco Theatre in New York City.

~1962 – Captured American U2 spy plane pilot Gary Powers was exchanged along with American student Frederic Pryor in a spy swap for Soviet KGB Colonel Vilyam Fisher (aka Rudolf Abel) at the Glienicke Bridge in Berlin, Germany.

~1964 – The Voyager Incident: A collision between two warships of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) the aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne and the destroyer HMAS Voyager resulted in 82 of Voyager’s crew being killed. The two ships were performing manoeuvres in Jervis Bay when Voyager sailed under Melbourne’s bow, she was cut in two and sunk. Two Royal Commissions were held to investigate the incident; the first studying the events of the collision, while the second focused on claims by a former Voyager officer that the destroyer's captain was unfit for command. It is the only time in Australian history two Royal Commissions have been held for a single incident.

~1967 – The 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. It deals with succession to the Presidency and establishes procedures both for filling a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, as well as responding to Presidential disabilities. It supersedes the ambiguous wording of Article II, Section 1, Clause 6 of the Constitution, which does not expressly state whether the Vice President becomes the President, as opposed to an Acting President, if the President dies, resigns, is removed from office or is otherwise unable to discharge the powers of the presidency.

~1981 – An arson fire at the Las Vegas Hilton hotel casino killed 8 and injured 198, just 3 months after the devastating MGM Grand Fire. In 1982, the convicted arsonist was sentenced to 8 life sentences for his role in starting the fire.

~1982 – "Das Boot" opened in United States theaters. The story of a single patrol of one World War II U-boat (U-96) and its crew, it depicts both the excitement of battle and the tedium of the fruitless hunt while showing the men serving aboard U-boats as ordinary individuals with a desire to do their best for their comrades and their country. The story is based on an amalgamation of the exploits of the real U-96, a Type VIIC-class U-boat commanded by Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock, one of Germany's top U-boat "tonnage aces" during the war.

~1989 – Ron Brown was elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee becoming the first black person to lead a major American political party.

~1996 – The IBM supercomputer Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov in Game 1 of their 6 game set. It was the first time that a chess playing computer defeated a reigning world champion under normal chess tournament conditions (in particular, normal time controls).

~1998 – Voters in Maine repealed a gay rights law passed in 1997 becoming the first U.S. state to abandon such legislation.

~2003 – France and Belgium break the NATO procedure of silent approval concerning the timing of protective measures for Turkey in case of a possible war with Iraq. (And we'd expect anything less from that pair?)

~2008 - The Namdaemun Fire: The historic gate Namdaemun located in the heart of Seoul, South Korea was severely damaged in an arson fire. It is the first among the National Treasures of South Korea.


...

February 11th



~660 BC – This is the traditional date for the foundation of Japan by Emperor Jimmu.

~55 – Tiberius Claudius Caesar Britannicus, heir to the Roman Emperorship, was murdered upon orders of the opportunistic Nero. (It's too bad that bastard didn't die a dog's death at a very young age.)

~731 - Died this day: Pope Saint Gregory II.

~824 - Died this day: Pope Paschal I.

~1659 – The Assault on Copenhagen by Swedish forces was beaten back with heavy losses by the Swedes.

~1752 – Pennsylvania Hospital, the first hospital in the United States, was opened by Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Bond.

~1808 – Anthracite coal was first experimentally burned as a residential heating fuel by Judge Jesse Fell in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on an open grate in a fireplace. Anthracite differs from wood in that it needs a draft from the bottom, and Judge Fell proved with his grate design that it was a viable heating fuel.

~1809 – In New York, crews working under Robert Fulton launched the North River Steamboat. She was America's first steam ship and entered service the following August.

~1812 – Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry, by supporting the redistricting bill, "gerrymandered" for the first time.

~1826 – University College London was founded under the name University of London.

~1826 – Swaminarayan completed writing the Shikshapatri. It is a dharma text, providing detailed instructions on how to live.

~1840 – Gaetano Donizetti's opera La Fille du Régiment was first performed, at the Opéra-Comique in Paris.

~1843 – Giuseppe Verdi's opera I Lombardi was first performed, at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan.

~1855 – Following the defeat of Dejazmach Wube, Kassa Hailu was crowned Tewodros II, Emperor by Abuna Salama III in a ceremony at the church of Derasge Maryam.

~1858 - The Blessed Virgin Mary reputedly appeared to Saint Bernadette Soubirous of Lourdes. (And old Bernadette reputedly spent the whole day in the bar just before that...)

~1873 – The Spanish Abdication: The artillery corps of the Spanish army went on strike, and the government instructed King Amadeo I of Spain to discipline them. With the possibility of reigning without popular support, Amadeo issued an order against the artillery corps and then immediately abdicated from the Spanish throne. At 10 o'clock that same night, Spain was proclaimed a republic. At this time Amadeo made an appearance before the Cortes, proclaiming the Spanish people ungovernable.

~1889 – Japn's Meiji Constitution was promulgated by Emperor Meiji but only came into effect on November 29th, 1890. The first Imperial Diet of Japan, a new representative assembly, convened on the day the Meiji Constitution came into force.

~1903 – Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, the last Symphony upon which he worked, was premiered under Ferdinand Löwe in Vienna, after Bruckner's death. Bruckner dedicated this symphony "to the beloved God" (in German, "dem lieben Gott").

~1916 – Emma Goldman was arrested and charged with violation of the Comstock Law for lecturing on birth control.

~1919 – Friedrich Ebert (SPD), was elected the first President of Germany in the Weimar Republic.

~1928 - The II Olympic Winter Games opened in St. Moritz, Switzerland.

~1929 – Fascist Italy and the Vatican signed the Lateran Treaty, ending the "Roman Question". It was ratified on June 7th of that year.

~1937 – The Flint Sit Down Strike ended when General Motors agreed to recognize the United Auto Workers Union as the exclusive bargaining representative for GM's employees who were members of the union.

~1938 – BBC Television produced the world's first ever science fiction television program, a 35 minute long adaptation of a section of the Karel Capek play R.U.R., which coined the term "robot".

~1939 – A Lockheed XP-38 set a speed record by flying from California to New York in 7 hours and 2 minutes, but was downed by carburetor icing just short of the Mitchel Field runway in Hempstead, New York, and was wrecked.

~1941 – The first gold record is presented to Glenn Miller, celebrating 1,200,000 sales of "Chattanooga Choo Choo".

~1942 – The Battle of Bukit Timah was fought in Singapore between Allied troops and Japanese forces. By February 10th the Japanese had landed in full force on Singapore Island. They controlled the entire western part of the island, and much of the north. Their next objective was Bukit Timah and the capture of vital water, food, ammunition, vehicles, machine parts and other supplies. Now, flushed with success, the Japanese again advanced in full force. By midnight, the Japanese had overwhelmed the defenders and captured Bukit Timah.

~1943 – US General Dwight Eisenhower was selected to command the allied armies in Europe.

~1945 – The Yalta Conference concluded.

~1953 – President Dwight Eisenhower refused a clemency appeal from Pope Pius XII for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.

~1963 - The Beatles taped 10 tracks for their first album, including "Please, Please Me" at EMI Studios in London.

~1964 – The Republic of China (Taiwan) breoke off diplomatic relations with France. (Probably a good move on the Taiwanese side...)

~1968 – Border clashes erupted between Israelis and Jordanians.

~1971 – 87 countries, including the US, UK, and USSR, began signing the Seabed Treaty outlawing nuclear weapons on the ocean floor of international waters.

~1979 – The Iranian Revolution: The royal regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran collapsed when guerrillas and rebel troops overwhelmed troops loyal to the Shah in armed street fighting. An Islamic theocracy under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was established in its place.

~1981 – 100,000 US gallons of radioactive coolant leaked into the containment building of the TVA Sequoyah 1 nuclear plant in Tennessee, contaminating 8 workers.

~1987 – The current Philippines constitution was proclaimed ratified and took effect.

~1990 – After 27 years as a political prisoner, Nelson Mandela was released from Victor Verster Prison outside Cape Town, South Africa. The event was broadcast live all over the world.

~1990 – James Buster Douglas, a 42 to 1 underdog, dealt Mike Tyson his first professional loss with one of the biggest upsets in boxing history and became the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.

~1997 – Space Shuttle Discovery was launched on mission STS-82, to service the Hubble Space Telescope.

~1999 - Pluto, a planet with an irregular orbit, changed from the 8th to 9th planet furthest from the sun. It had been the 8th furthest since 1979.

~2006 – US Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot Harry Whittington in the face, neck, and upper torso with a shotgun while hunting quail on a ranch in Kenedy County, Texas. On February 14th Whittington suffered a non fatal "silent" heart attack and atrial fibrillation due to at least one lead shot pellet lodged in or near his heart. Cheney did not speak publicly about the incident until February 15th in an interview with Fox News.

...

February 12th



~881 – Pope John VIII crowned Charles the Fat, the King of Italy, Holy Roman as Emperor. ("Charles the Fat"...Oh, I could have SO much fun with this one!)

~1354 – The "Treaty of Stralsund" was signed, settling border disputes resulting from the wars for Rugian succession between the duchies of Mecklenburg and Pomerania.

~1429 – Hundred Years' War: During the Seige of Orleans, English forces under Sir John Fastolf successfully defended a supply convoy carrying rations to the besieging army from attack by the Comte de Clermont and John Stuart in the Battle of Rouvray (also known as the Battle of the Herrings).

~1502 – Vasco da Gama set sail from Lisbon, Portugal, on his second voyage to India with a fleet of twenty warships, the object of his mission being the enforcing of Portuguese interests in the east.

~1541 – Santiago, Chile was founded by Spanish Conquistador Pedro de Valdivia with the name Santiago del Nuevo Extremo, as a homage to Saint James and Extremadura, Valdivia's birth place in Spain. The founding ceremony was held on Huelén Hill (later renamed Cerro Santa Lucía). Valdivia chose the location of Santiago because of its climate, abundant vegetation and the ease with which it could be defended.

~1554 – 7 months after claiming the throne of England (for 9 days) Lady Jane Grey was beheaded for treason.

~1689 – The Convention Parliament convened and declared that the flight of King James II to France in 1688 constituted an abdication of the throne.

~1719 – The Onderlinge van 1719 u.a., the oldest existing life insurance company in the Netherlands was founded, originally as "Begrafenisbos De Vrijwillige Liefdebeurs", with the motto "In Alles Ghetrou" (faithful in everything).

~1733 – 113 settlers aboard the ship Anne landed at what was to become the city of Savannah in the newly founded (13th) colony of Georgia. This day is now known as Georgia Day, it is not an official public holiday but is observed in schools and by some local civic groups.

~1771 - Died this day: King Adolf Frederick of Sweden.

~1771 – Gustav III ascended the throne of Sweden upon the death of his father King Adolf Frederick.

~1809 – Born this day: Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States (d. 1865)

~1809 – Also born this day: Charles Darwin, English naturalist descended from apes, created the Theory of Evolution (d. 1882)

~1816 – The Teatro di San Carlo, the oldest working opera house in Europe, was destroyed by fire.

~1817 – An Argentine-Chilean patriotic army, after crossing the Andes, defeated Spanish troops at the Battle of Chacabuco.

~1818 – Supreme Director (Chilean President) Bernardo O'Higgins formally approved the Chilean Declaration of Independence near Concepción, Chile.

~1825 – The Muskogee Indians ceded the last of their lands in Georgia to the United States government, and accepted relocation west of the Mississippi River to an equivalent parcel of land along the Arkansas River.

~1832 – Ecuador annexed the Galápagos Islands, naming them the Archipelago of Ecuador.

~1855 – Michigan State University was founded in East Lansing, Michigan.

~1894 – Anarchist Émile Henry hurled a bomb into Paris's Cafe Terminus, killing 1 and wounding 20 others.

~1909 – The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded, in New York City.

~1912 – The Last Emperor: 6 year old Puyi, Xuantong Emperor of the Manchu Qing dynasty, was forced to abdicate.

~1914 – In Washington, D.C., the first stone of the Lincoln Memorial was put into place.

~1934 – The February Uprising: The first of a series of skirmishes lasting 5 days broke out between socialist and conservative-fascist forces in Austria. The clashes started in Linz and took place principally in the cities of Vienna, Graz, Bruck an der Mur, Judenburg, Wiener Neustadt and Steyr, but also in some other industrial cities of eastern and central Austria.

~1934 – In Spain the national council of Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista formulated its intention to merge with the Falange Española of José Antonio Primo de Rivera. The merger formed the Falange Española de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista, or FE-JONS.

~1946 – Operation Deadlight ended after the scuttling 121 of 154 surrendered U-boats. U 3514 had the dubious honor of being the last U-boat sunk in the excercise. (And the purpose of destroying all these ships was...?)

~1951 - Soraya Esfandiary Bakhtiari married the Shah of Iran Reza Pahlavi at Golestan Palace in Teheran, at theage of 18. (I'll bet you never thought you'd live to see THAT one blow up in your face, did you, girl!)

~1961 – The U.S.S.R. launched Venera 1, the first planetary probe, towards Venus. Its 11D33 engine was the world's first staged combustion cycle rocket engine, and also the first use of a ullage engine to allow a liquid fuel rocket to start under the weightlessness of space.

~1966 – Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, announced the Six Points in Karachi as the election manifesto of the Awami League, that later led to formation of Bangladesh.

~1974 – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1970, was arrested because the KGB had found the manuscript for the first part of his book The Gulag Archipelago. The next day he was deported from the Soviet Union to Frankfurt, West Germany and stripped of his Soviet citizenship. (Pinkos Inc. didn't like it when the truth was told about them...)

~1976 – Actor Sal Mineo, The Switchblade Kid, was stabbed to death in West Hollywood.

~1990 – Dr. Carmen Lawrence became Premier of Western Australia. She was the first female Premier in Australian history.

~1994 - the XVII Olympic Winter Games opened in Lillehammer, Norway.

~1997 – Hwang Jang-yop, secretary in the Workers' Party of Korea and a prime architect of North Korea's Juche doctrine, defects at the South Korean embassy in Beijing along with his aide, Kim Dok-hong.

~1998 - The presidential "line-item veto" was declared unconstitutional by U.S. District Court Judge Thomas F. Hogan.

~1999 – President Bill Clinton was acquitted by the United States Senate in his impeachment trial.

~2001 – The spacecraft NEAR Shoemaker made a slow controlled descent to the surface of 433 Eros, just to the south of the saddle-shaped feature Himeros, becoming the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.

2002 – The trial of former President of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milošević began at the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague, with Milošević defending himself while refusing to recognize the legality of the court's jurisdiction. The trial would still be ongoing 4 years later when the "Butcher of the Balkans" died of natural causes.

~2002 – US Secretary of Energy made the decision that Yucca Mountain was a suitable site for the second deep geological repository for the United States. The project is still on hold.

~2002 – An Iran Air Tours Tupolev Tu-154 crashed into the Sefid Kouh mountains outside Khorramabad, Iran. The aircraft hit high ground in the mountains with adverse rain, snow and dense fog at the time of the crash, while descending for Khorramabad. All 12 crew members and 107 passengers were killed.

~2004 – The city of San Francisco, California began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in response to a directive from Mayor Gavin Newsom.

~2004 - Mattel Inc. spokespeople announced the sorrowful break up of Barbara Millicent Roberts and Ken Carson after 43 years of dating. (Barbie finally discovered that Ken wasn't anatomically equipped to fulfill his husbandly duties...)

~2006 – The Blizzard of 2006: A powerful winter storm blanketed the Northeastern United States and Canada's Maritime Provinces dropping from 1 to 2 feet of snow from Washington D.C. to Boston, Massachusetts. The storm dumped a record 26.9 inches of snow in New York City.

~2007 – The Trolley Square Shooting: A gunman opened fire in a mall in Salt Lake City, killing 5 people wounding 4 others.

~2009 – Colgan Air Flight 3407 crashed into a house near Buffalo, New York. 50 people were killed in the incident including 1 on the ground.

...

February 13th



~711 BC – Born this day: Japanese emperor Jimmu (d. 585 DC)

~858 - Died this day: Cináed mac Ailpín (Kenneth MacAlpin/Kenneth I) the first king of Scots. (born c. 810 )

~1130 - Died this day: Pope Honorius II (b. 1036)

~1503 – Disfida di Barletta (The Challenge of Barletta) took place near Barletta. It was a famous challenge where 13 Italian and 13 French knights fought it out over an insult made by one of the French knights. The Italians won the engagement.

~1542 – Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII of England, was executed for adultery. (As Henry would say: "NEXT!!!")

~1575 – Henry III of France was crowned at Rheims.

~1660 - Died this day: King Charles X of Sweden.

~1660 - Charles XI ascended the throne of Sweden upon the death of his father Charles X.

~1668 – The 1668 Treaty of Lisbon: A peace treaty between Portugal and Spain was concluded at Lisbon, through the mediation of England, in which Spain recognized the sovereignty of Portugal's new ruling dynasty, the House of Braganza.

~1689 – William and Mary were proclaimed co-rulers of England.

~1692 – Mort Ghlinne Comhann (Murder of Glen Coe): The massacre began simultaneously in three settlements along the glen—Invercoe, Inverrigan, and Achnacon—although the killing took place all over the glen as fleeing MacDonalds were pursued. 38 MacDonalds from the Clan MacDonald of Glencoe were killed by the guests who had accepted their hospitality, on the grounds that the MacDonalds had not been prompt in pledging allegiance to the new monarchs, Mary II and William III. Another 40 women and children died of exposure after their homes were burned.

~1815 – The Cambridge Union Society was founded as a union of three debating societies, the Union quickly rose to prominence in university life. Amongst the early officers is included historian and essayist Thomas Macaulay, many subsequent officers have gone on to become influential leaders in a wide variety of fields and professions.

~1866 - The first daylight armed bank robbery in the United States in peacetime took place with the robbery of the Clay County Savings Association in the town of Liberty, Missouri. The James brothers may have been part of the gang who pulled off the job.

~1867 – Work began on the covering of the Senne, burying Brussels's primary river and creating the modern central boulevards.

~1880 – Thomas Edison first observed Thermionic Emission, the heat induced flow of charge carriers from a surface or over a potential energy barrier.

~1881 – The feminist newspaper La Citoyenne was first published in Paris by the activist Hubertine Auclert and appeared bi-monthly after that. The paper was a forceful and unrelenting advocate for women's enfranchisement, demanding changes to the Napoleonic Code that relegated women to a vastly inferior status. It further demanded that women be given the right to run for public office, claiming that the unfair laws would never have been passed had the views of female legislators been heard. In its heyday notable feminists such as Marie Bashkirtseff wrote articles for the paper.

~1914 – American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) was founded by composer Victor Herbert in New York City to protect the copyrighted musical compositions of its members. Most of the initial members were writers and publishers associated with New York’s Tin Pan Alley. ASCAP’s earliest members included the era’s most active songwriters – Irving Berlin, Otto Harbach, James Weldon Johnson, Jerome Kern and John Philip Sousa. Subsequently, many other prominent songwriters became members.

~1920 – The Negro National League was formed. This during the period in the US when organized baseball was segregated. Led by Rube Foster, owner and manager of the Chicago American Giants, the NNL was established by a coalition of team owners at a meeting in a Kansas City YMCA.

~1934 – The Soviet steamship Cheliuskin sank in the Arctic Ocean when she was crushed by ice packs. The Cheliuskin was a steamship reinforced to navigate polar ice. She became ice-bound in Arctic waters during navigation along the Northern Maritime Route from Murmansk to Vladivostok. The expedition's task was to determine possibility of travel by non-icebreakers through Northern Maritime Route in a single navigation season. (OUCH! And she was only 9 months old at the time...THAT must have hurt the old pocketbook!)

~1935 – A jury in Flemington, New Jersey found Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of aviation pioneers Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. (Certainly one of history's most blatant frame ups...)

~1937 - In China, 658 people died in the Antoung Movie Theater Fire.

~1945 – The siege of Budapest concluded with the unconditional surrender of German and Hungarian forces to the Red Army. The Soviet forces besieging the city were part of Rodion Malinovsky's 2nd Ukrainian Front. Arrayed against the Soviets was a conglomeration of German Army (Wehrmacht Heer), Waffen-SS, and Hungarian Army (Honvédség) forces. The Siege of Budapest was one of the bloodiest sieges of World War II, with the total number of casualties, including wounded, in excess of 510,000.

~1945 – The Destruction of Dresden: The RAF and the USAAF begin bombing the city of Dresden, Germany. 3 days later more than 60,000 German civilians were dead and the world’s largest city of Teutonic and medieval architecture lay in ruins.

~1960 – Black college students staged the first of the ultimately successful Nashville sit-ins at three lunch counters in Nashville, protesting racial segregation. (Sometimes you have to raise a little hell to get things done...)

~1970 – Black Sabbath, arguably the very first heavy metal album, was released on Vertigo Records. (I'd argue for Led Zepplin released a year earlier.)

~1971 – Although, backed by American air and artillery support, the advance into Laos by South Vietnamese troops stalled.

~1975 – At the World Trade Center in New York a 3 alarm fire broke out on the 11th floor of the North Tower. Fire spread through the core to the 9th and 14th floors by igniting the insulation of telephone cables in a utility shaft that ran vertically between floors. Areas at the furthest extent of the fire were extinguished almost immediately and the original fire was put out in a few hours. Most of the damage was concentrated on the 11th floor, fueled by cabinets filled with paper, alcohol-based fluid for office machines, and other office equipment. Fireproofing protected the steel from melting and there was no structural damage to the tower.

~1978 – The Hilton Bombing: A bomb exploded inside a garbage truck outside the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, Australia, killing two garbage collectors and a police officer.

~1979 – Washington state's Hood Canal Bridge suffered catastrophic failure during the infamous February 13th Windstorm. During the night the bridge had withstood sustained winds of up to 85 mph (137 km/h) and gusts estimated at 120 mph (193 km/h) befgore finally finally succumbing at about 7:00 a.m. the following morning. The western drawspan and the pontoons of the western half had broken loose and a 1/2-mile-long section sank, despite the drawspan being opened to relieve lateral pressure.

~1981 – A series of sewer explosions destroyed more than 2 miles of streets in Louisville, Kentucky. The blasts were caused by the ignition of hexane vapors which had been illegally discharged from a Ralston-Purina soybean processing plant located near the University of Louisville.

~1982 – The first of the Río Negro Massacres occurred in Guatemala. 74 people from Río Negro, 55 men and 19 women, went to Xococ to recover their identity cards. Once there, they were executed by government patrollers.

~1983 - The Cinema Statuto Fire: A movie theater located in Turin, Italy erupted into flame during the showing of the film La Chèvre. The fire caused the death of 64 people as a result of smoke inhalation. According to statements by Raimondo Cappella, the owner of the cinema, the flames spread from an old curtain. The victims tried to escape but found the exits closed and locked. No one inside could could not avoid the fumes of Hydrogen cyanide, a product of combustion of fire-resistant fabric chairs. Cappella was sentenced to 8 years ordered to compensate the relatives of the victims with a sum of 3 billion lire. All his assets were seized.

~1984 – Konstantin Chernenko succeeded the late Yuri Andropov as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Chernenko was also Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from April 11th, 1984 until his death 13 months later.

~1985 - The rebuilt Semperoper opened in Dresden, exactly 40 years after it was destroyed during the World War II bombing of Dresden. It is the opera house of the Saxon State Opera Dresden (Sächsische Staatsoper Dresden) and the concert hall of the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden. It was first built in 1841, by architect Gottfried Semper.

~1988 - The XV Olympic Winter Games opened in Calgary, Alberta.

~1991 – During the Gulf War, 2 US laser-guided "smart bombs" destroyed the Amiriyah shelter in Baghdad. Allied forces claimed the bunker was being used as a military communications outpost, but over 400 Iraqi civilians inside were killed. The dead were overwhelmingly women and children because men and boys over the age of 15 had left the shelter to give the women and children some privacy. The blast sent shrapnel into surrounding buildings, shattering glass windows and splintering their foundations.

~1996 - The Nepalese People's War was started by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) with the aim of overthrowing the Nepalese monarchy and establishing the "People's Republic of Nepal." It ended with the removal of the monarchy and a a Comprehensive Peace Accord signed on November 21st, 2006 which is now monitored by United Nations Mission in Nepal.

~2000 – The last original "Peanuts" comic strip appeared in newspapers one day after Charles Schulz died.

~2001 – An earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter Scale struck El Salvador, exactly 1 month after a devasting magnitude 7.8 hit the region. In this quake the death toll was (minimum) 315 with a further 3,400 injured. There was extensive damage and numerous landslides, especially in the San Juan Tepezontes-San Vicente-Cojutepeque area.

~2002 - Elizabeth II of the Britain Kingdom granted former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani an honorary knighthood for his leadership on and after the September 11th, 2001 attacks. (I dunno, there's just something about "Sir Rudolph" that doesn't sound right to me...)

~2004 – The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced the discovery of the universe's largest known diamond, white dwarf star BPM 37093. Astronomers named this star "Lucy" after The Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".

~2007 – Taiwan opposition leader Ma Ying-jeou resigned as the chairman of the Kuomintang party after being indicted by the Taiwan High Prosecutors Office on charges of embezzlement during his tenure as the mayor of Taipei. Ma subsequently announced his candidacy for the 2008 presidential election. (Ma has been cleared of all charges.)

~2008 – As the parliament's first order of business, newly elected Australian Prime Minister KevinRudd read an apology directed to "Indigenous Australians" for the stolen generations. The apology, for the policies of successive parliaments and governments, was passed unanimously as a motion by both houses of parliament.

...

February 14th



~1009 - The first written mention of Lithuania was made in the Quedlinburg Chronicle, a medieval German manuscript.

~1014 – Pope Benedict VIII crowned Henry of Bavaria the fifth and last Holy Roman Emperor of the Ottonian dynasty.

~1349 – The Strasbourg Pogrom: Over 2,000 Jews were burned to death by mobs or forcibly removed from the city of Strasbourg.

~1556 – Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, was declared a heretic.

~1778 – The United States Flag was formally recognized by a foreign naval vessel for the first time, when French Admiral Toussaint-Guillaume Picquet de la Motte rendered a nine gun salute to USS Ranger, commanded by John Paul Jones.

~1779 – British explorer Captain James Cook was killed by native Hawaiians near Kealakekua in the Sandwich Islands. (Thus becoming the first tourist to be murdered in Hawaii.)

~1797 – The Battle of Cape St. Vincent: John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent and Horatio Nelson (later 1st Viscount Nelson) led the British Royal Navy to victory over a Spanish fleet in an action near Gibraltar.

~1803 – During the landmark Marbury v. Madison case, Chief Justice John Marshall declared that any act of the U.S. Congress that conflicts with the Constitution is void.

~1804 – The First Serb Uprising: In the small Šumadija village of Orašac, nearby modern Aranđelovac, Serbia, in Marićevića jaruga, the Serbs gathered and decided to undertake an uprising. Karađorđe Petrović was elected as the leader of the uprising, which started immediately. That afternoon, a Turkish inn (caravanserai) in Orašac was burned and its residents fled or were killed. Similar actions were undertaken in surrounding villages and then spread further. Soon the cities Valjevo and Požarevac were taken, and the siege of Belgrade began.

~1831 –The Battle of Debre Abbay: An engagement between the forces under Ras Marye of Yejju, Regent of the Emperor of Ethiopia, and those led by his rival from Tigray, Dejazmach Sabagadis of Agame. Although Ras Marye lost his life in this battle, Dejazmach Sabagadis was defeated, and after surrendering was executed by Ras Marye's Oromo followers.

~1835 – The original Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was formed in Kirtland, Ohio.

~1849 – In New York City, James Knox Polk became the first serving President of the United States to have his photograph taken. (This is where the quote "I don't like cheese" originated...and no, I'm not kidding.)

~1855 – Texas was linked by its first telegraph to the rest of the United States, with the completion of a connection between New Orleans and Marshall, Texas.

~1859 – Oregon was admitted as the 33rd state of the Union.

~1876 – Alexander Graham Bell applied for a patent for the telephone on the same day as Elisha Gray did.

~1879 – The War of the Pacific broke out when Chilean armed forces occupied the Bolivian port city of Antofagasta without a prior declaration of war.

~1895 - Oscar Wilde's last play The Importance of Being Earnest premiered at St James's Theatre in London.

~1900 – The Second Boer War: 20,000 British troops attacked the Boer army of Louis Botha at the Battle of Tugela Heights, which ultimately resulted in lifting the Seige of Ladysmith.

~1900 – The Second Boer War: A British cavalry division under Major General John French launched a major attack to relieve Kimberley. Although encountering severe fire, a massed cavalry charge split the Boer defences the following day, opening the way for French to enter Kimberley that evening and ending its 124 day siege.

~1903 – The United States Department of Commerce and Labor was established. It was later split into the Department of Commerce and the Department of Labor.

~1912 – Arizona was admitted as the 48th state of the Union.

~1919 – The Polish-Soviet War began with the Skirmish of Bereza Kartuska, the first armed conflict between the organised forces of the Second Polish Republic and Soviet Russia. It is generally considered by historians as the first battle of the Polish-Soviet War. 57 Polish soldiers and 5 officers attacked Soviet forces in the town of Biaroza (Polish: Bereza), a small city to the east of Brzesc. They captured 80 soldiers of the Red Army in the raid.

~1929 – The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre: 7 people, 6 of them rivals of Al Capone's gang from the North Side Irish gang led by Bugs Moran, were machine gunned into oblivion in a Chicago garage.

~1942 – The Battle of Pasir Panjang: Japanese forces were victorious in several engagements which would contribute to the fall of Singapore.

~1943 – After a 7 month occupation, the devastated city of Rostov-on-Don in Russia was liberated from the German army. It took 10 years to raise the city from the ruins and restore it.

~1943 – The Tunisia Campaign: At the Battle of Sidi Bou Zid the 10th Panzer Division and the 21st Panzer Division of the Fifth Panzer Army commanded by Colonel General (Generaloberst) Hans-Jurgen von Arnim, launched a concerted attack against US held positions in Tunisia. The mission resulted in a German victory 3 days later, due in large part to the ill conceived plans of the seriously outclassed US General Lloyd Fredendall.

~1945 – On the first full day of the bombing of Dresden, the RAF and the USAAF began fire bombing the German city into an inferno.

~1945 – Prague was bombed, this probably due to a mistake in the orientation of the pilots bombing Dresden.

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

~1946 – Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), the first general purpose electronic computer, was unveiled at the University of Pennsylvania, having cost almost $500,000.

~1949 – The Israeli Knesset convened for the first time.

~1949 – The Asbestos Strike began in Quebec. Miners walked off the job at 4 asbestos mines in the Eastern Townships, near Asbestos, Quebec and Thetford Mines. Although these mines were owned by either American or English-Canadian companies, almost all the workers were francophones. The strike marked the beginning of the Quiet Revolution.

~1952 - The VI Olympic Winter Games opened in Oslo, Norway.

~1956 – The landmark XX Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union began in Moscow. A speech made by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev would change history.

~1961 – Element 103, Lawrencium, was made by Albert Ghiorso, Torbjørn Sikkeland, Almon Larsh, and Robert M. Latimer at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (now called Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) on the University of California, Berkeley campus. It was produced by bombarding a 3 milligram target composed of 3 isotopes of californium with boron-10 and B-11 ions in the Heavy Ion Linear Accelerator (HILAC).

~1962 – First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy took television viewers on a tour of the White House with Charles Collingwood of CBS.

~1966 – The Australian dollar was introduced, replacing the Australian pound with a decimal currency.

~1979 – In Kabul, Muslims kidnapped the American ambassador to Afghanistan, Adolph Dubs. He was later killed during a gunfight between his kidnappers and Afghan security forces.

~1980 - The XIII Olympic Winter Games opened in Lake Placid, New York. This was the second time the upstate New York village hosted the Games, after 1932. The only other candidate city to bid for the Games was Vancouver-Garibaldi, British Columbia; they withdrew before the final vote. (Hmmm...I wonder if they'll ever get around to hosting the games.)

~1980 - Walter Cronkite announced his retirement from the CBS Evening News.

~1981 – The Stardust Disaster: A fire broke out at the Stardust nightclub in Artane, Dublin, Ireland in the early morning hours. Some 841 people had attended a disco there and of these 48 died while 214 were injured due to the blaze. The cause of the inferno has never been fully determined but it is believed that an arsonist was to blame.

~1983 – The United American Bank of Knoxville, Tennessee collapsed. It was the 4th largest bank failure in US history up to that time. Its president, Jake Butcher was later convicted of fraud.

~1985 - American journalist Jeremy Levin escaped from his captors in the Beqaa Valley. Shia militants claimed they had allowed him to escape and the U.S. publicly thanked Syria for intervening on his behalf

~1989 – On Radio Tehran, Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa encouraging Muslims to kill the author of The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie.

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

~1990 – Indian Airlines Flt. 605, an Airbus A-320, crashed on final approach to Bangalore Airport, killing 92 of the 146 people aboard.

~1996 – China launched a Long March 3 rocket carrying the Intelsat 708 satellite. The rocket flew off course 2 seconds after liftoff and crashed into a rural village, killing many.

~2004 – In a suburb of Moscow, Russia, the roof of the Transvaal water park collapsed, killing more than 25 people and injuring more than 100 others. Engineer Nodar Kancheli, who had designed the structure, claimed that terrorists likely attacked the attraction but the cause turned out to be a faulty design.

~2005 – Lebanese self made billionaire, business tycoon, and former Prime Minister of Lebanon Rafik Hariri was killed along with 21 others when explosives equivalent to around 1,000 kg of TNT were detonated as his motorcade drove near the St. George Hotel in Beirut.

~2008 – The Northern Illinois University Shooting took place. A gunman opened fire in a lecture hall of the DeKalb County, Illinois university. 5 people died and 18 others were wounded in the incident. The shooter turned a gun on himself before police arrived. (He'd gone off his meds.)

...

February 15th



~1145 – Died this day: Pope Lucius II

~1637 - Died this day: Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor

~1637 – Ferdinand III became Holy Roman Emperor.

~1805 – The Harmony Society, a Christian theosophy and pietist society, was officially formed.

~1835 – The first constitutional law in modern Serbia was adopted. Deemed radical by many, it was replaced by a more conservative Constitution in 1838.

~1852 – Great Ormond St. Hospital for Sick Children, London, admitted its first patient.

~1862 – Union troops under General Ulysses S. Grant mounted a counter-attack on rebel forces attempting to open an avenue of escape at Fort Donelson, Tennessee.

~1879 – US President Rutherford B. Hayes signed a bill allowing female attorneys to argue cases before the Supreme Court of the United States.

~1898 – Spanish-American War: The USS Maine exploded and sank in Havana harbor in Cuba, killing 274 of the 363 aboard. The event led the United States to declare war on Spain. Advocates of the war used the rallying cry, "Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!"

~1906 – In Britain, the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) formally adopted the name "The British Labour Party".

~1909 – In Acapulco, the Flores Theater Fire left more than 250 dead.

~1933 – In Miami, an assassin attempted to kill President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. Unable to get a clear shot he fired his revolver wildly and hit other 5 people. One of these 5 was Chicago, Illinois Mayor Anton J. Cermak, who died of his wounds the following March 6th.

~1942 – The Fall of Singapore: Unable to launch a counter-attack following an assault by Japanese forces, the British General Arthur Percival surrendered. Over 80,000 Indian, United Kingdom and Australian soldiers become prisoners of war, the largest surrender of British led military personnel in history.

~1944 – The Bombing of Monte Cassino: 142 B-17 Flying Fortresses together with 47 B-25 Mitchell and 40 B-26 Marauder medium bombers dropped 1,150 tons of high explosives and incendiary bombs on the abbey, reducing the entire top of Monte Cassino to a smoking mass of rubble. Between bomb runs, the II Corps artillery pounded the mountain. Pope Pius XII was to remain silent after the bombing; however, his secretary of state, Cardinal Maglione, bluntly stated to the senior U.S. diplomat to the Vatican, Harold Tittmann, that the bombing was "a colossal blunder...a piece of a gross stupidity." What is certain from every investigation that followed since the event, is the fact that the only people killed in the monastery by the bombing were Italian civilians seeking refuge in the abbey. There has never been any evidence that the bombs dropped on the Monte Cassino monastery that day ever killed any German troops.

~1950 – The Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China signed the Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance.

~1952 – The funeral for King George VI of Britain took place in St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle.

~1961 – Sabena Flt. 548, a Boeing 707, crashed on final approach to Brussels Airport, killing all 72 aboard, including the entire United States figure skating team, and 1 person on the ground.

~1965 – The new red and white Maple Leaf was adopted as the flag of Canada, replacing the old Canadian Red Ensign banner. (A great many of us still flip it the finger every chance we get.)

~1970 – The Dominicana DC-9 Disaster A Douglas DC-9 crashed into the sea when both engines failed during takeoff from Santo Domingo. The cause was later determined to be due to contaminated fuel. All 102 aboard perished.

~1970 - Died this day: Sir Hugh Dowding, commander of RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain (b. 1882)

~1971 – The decimalisation of British currency was completed on Decimal Day.

~1972 - The Sound Recording Amendment of 1971 came into effect, granting sound recordings U.S. federal copyright protection for the first time.

~1982 – The drilling rig Ocean Ranger sank during a fierce storm off the coast of Newfoundland, killing 84 rig workers.

~1989 – The Soviet War in Afghanistan: The last Soviet soldier left Afghanistan, returning to Soviet soil.

~1991 – The Visegrád Agreement, establishing cooperation to move toward free market systems, was signed at a summit meeting of the heads of state of Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland.

~1995 - After a well publicized pursuit, the FBI arrested Kevin Mitnick at his apartment in Raleigh, North Carolina on federal offenses related to a 2½-year computer hacking spree.

~1999 – Abdullah Öcalan, leader of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), was captured in Kenya by Turkish agents.

~2002 - At the Tri-State Crematory in La Fayette, Georgia, investigators find that bodies that were supposed to have been cremated were in fact disposed of in the woods and buildings on the crematorium's property. The discovery revealed one of the worst incidents of abuse in the funeral service industry.

~2003 – Protests against the Iraq war occurred in over 600 cities worldwide. It is estimated that as many as 30 million people took part, making it the largest peace demonstration in the history of the world.

~2005 - YouTube: www.youtube.com was activated and the website was developed over the subsequent months. The first YouTube video was entitled "Me at the zoo" and shows founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. The video was uploaded on April 23rd, 2005 and can still be viewed on the site. (It's a lame video...)

...

February 16th



~1279 - Died this day: Afonso III, the fifth King of Portugal. (b. 1210)

~1279 - Denis I ascended the throne of Portugal upon the death of his father Afonso III.

~1646 – At the Battle of Great Torrington, in Devon, the last major battle of the first English Civil War was fought. The Parliamentary victory the marked the end of Royalist resistance in the west country.

~1742 – Spencer Compton, 1st Earl of Wilmington, became Britain's (puppet) Prime Minister. (Yes, Massuh Carteret...whudebber youze sayez, Massuh Carteret!!!)

~1804 – Stephen Decatur led a successful raid to burn the pirate held frigate the USS Philadelphia which had run aground in October 1803.

~1838 – The Weenen Massacre: Hundreds of Voortrekkers along the Blaukraans River in Natal were killed by Zulus.

~1852 – Studebaker Brothers wagon company, precursor of the automobile manufacturer, opened its doors for business.

~1857 - Columbia Institution for the Deaf (later renamed Gallaudet University) was established in Washington, DC becoming the first school for the advanced education of the deaf.

~1859 – The French Government passes a law to set the A-note above middle C to a frequency of 435 Hz, in an attempt to standardize the pitch. (Well, there ya go...I guess they had bothing better to do that day.)

~1862 – Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant captured Fort Donelson in Tennessee.

~1883 - Ladies Home Journal is published for the first time. It became one of the leading women's magazines of the 20th century in the United States. It is currently published by the Meredith Corporation.

~1899 – The President of France, Félix Faure, died while in office. (Now that wasn't very considerate on his part.)

~1918 – The Act of Independence of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Lietuvos Nepriklausomybės Aktas) was signed by the Council of Lithuania proclaiming the restoration of an independent State of Lithuania, governed by democratic principles, with Vilnius as its capital. The Act was signed by all 20 representatives, chaired by Jonas Basanavičius.

~1923 – Howard Carter unsealed the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, where he got his first glimpse of the sarcophagus.

~1934 – The Austrian Civil War ended on the 5th day with the defeat of the Social Democrats and the Republican Schutzbund by the Austrofascists.

~1934 – The Commission of Government was sworn in as form of direct (non-elected) rule for the Dominion of Newfoundland, replacing the failed (elected) House of Assembly.

~1940 - Altmark Incident: The German tanker Altmark, with 299 British prisoners aboard, was boarded in neutral Norwegian waters by sailors from the British destroyer HMS Cossack and the prisoners set free, a breach of Norwegian neutrality at the beginning of World War II.

~1943 – The city of Kharkov was successfully retaken by Soviet troops. They would hold it for exactly 1 month before German forces would capture it again.

~1945 – American and Filipino liberation forces landed on Corregidor in the Philippines. They would recapture the island from the defending Japanese garrison 10 days later.

~1957 – The "Toddlers' Truce", a controversial television shutdown between 6:00 PM and 7:00 PM was abolished in Britain.

~1959 – Fidel Castro was sworn in as Prime Minister of Cuba after dictator Fulgencio Batista was overthrown on January 1st.

~1961 – Explorer program: Explorer 9 (S-56a) was launched on a mision to take atmospheric density measurements.

~1968 – In Haleyville, Alabama, the first 9-1-1 emergency telephone system went into service.

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

~1983 – The Ash Wednesday bushfires erupted in Victoria and South Australia. Years of severe drought and extreme weather combined to create one of Australia’s worst fire days in a century. With 75 dead the bushfires became the deadliest in Australian history until the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009.

~1986 – The Soviet liner MS Mikhail Lermontov struck submerged rocks and sank in New Zealand's Marlborough Sounds.

~1991 – Nicaraguan Contras leader Enrique Bermúdez was gunned down after being lured to a meeting at Managua's InterContinental Hotel. He was shot in the hotel's parking lot as he departed the hotel after those with whom he was meeting failed to show.

~1993 – Western Australia's and Australia's first female Premier, Carmen Lawrence, left office after an election defeat.

~1998 - China Airlines Flt 676, an Airbus A300-622R, crashed after a failed missed approach at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport. 205 people were killed, including 6 on the ground.

~2005 – The Kyoto Protocol came into force, following its ratification by Russia.

~2006 – The last Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) was decommissioned by the United States Army.

...

February 17th



~364 - Died this day: Roman Emperor Flavius Iovianus (Jovian). (b. 331)

~1370 – The Battle of Rudau: The Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Teutonic Knights fought a pitched medieval battle near Rudau village north of Königsberg. According to the Teutonic chronicler Wigand of Marburg and the Livonian chronicle of Hermann de Wartberge the Lithuanians suffered a great defeat.

~1500 – The Battle of Hemmingstedt was fought south of the village of Hemmingstedt in the western part of present day Schleswig-Holstein in Germany. It was an attempt by Duke Friedrich and Duke Johann King of the Kalmar Union to subdue the peasantry of Dithmarschen who had established a peasants' republic on the coast of the North Sea. The peasant defenders achieved a decisive victory by opening at least one dike sluice, flooding the land and drowning more than 7,000 of the Dutch and Danish troops.

~1600 – Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer Giordano Bruno who is best known as a proponent of the acentrism and the infinity of the universe, was burnt at the stake at Campo de' Fiori in Rome after the Roman Inquisition found him guilty of heresy. His cosmological theories went beyond the Copernican model in identifying the sun as just one of an infinite number of independently moving heavenly bodies. He was the first man to have conceptualized the universe as a continuum where the stars we see at night are identical in nature to the Sun. After his death he gained considerable fame; in the 19th and early 20th centuries, commentators focusing on his astronomical beliefs regarded him as a martyr for free thought and modern scientific ideas.

~1621 – Myles Standish was appointed as the first commander of Plymouth colony.

~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 United States House of Representatives.

~1809 – Miami University was chartered by the State of Ohio.

~1814 – The War of the Sixth Coalition: At the Battle of Mormans, Napoleon's army defeated the Russians and Württembergers led by the treacherous Count Pahlen.

~1819 – The United States House of Representatives passes the Missouri Compromise.

~1838 - The Weenen Massacre: After the murder of Piet Retief and his delegation, the Zulu chief Dingane sent his impis to exterminate the remaining voortrekkers who were camped at Doringkop, Bloukrans, Moordspruit, Rensburgspruit and other sites along the Bushman River, in the present province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Of the Voortrekkers, 41 men, 56 women and 185 children were killed. In addition another 250 plus Hottentot and Basuto that accompanied the Voortrekkers were wiped out.

~1854 – Britain recognized the independence of the Orange Free State.

~1864 – The H. L. Hunley became the first submarine to engage and sink a warship, the screw sloop of war USS Housatonic, by utilizing a spar torpedo.

~1865 – Columbia, South Carolina, was destroyed by fire while being occupied by Union troops under the command of General William Tecumseh Sherman.

~1867 – According to 2 different sources, the first ship passed through the Suez Canal. (I find this interesting since the canal didn't open to shipping until more than 2 1/2 years later on November 17th, 1869.)

~1871 – The victorious Prussian Army paraded though Paris, France after the Siege of Paris ended with the city's surrender. Otto von Bismarck honored the armistice by sending train loads of food into Paris and withdrawing Prussian forces to the east of the city.

~1904 – Giacomo Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly premièred at La Scala in Milan. Surprisingly, the first show was poorly received in spite of some big names in the cast.

~1909 – Died this day: Geronimo, the great Apache leader (b. 1829)

~1913 – The Armory Show (International Exhibition of Modern Art), organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors, opened in New York City's 69th Regiment Armory, on Lexington Avenue. It became a legendary watershed event in the history of American art, introducing astonished New Yorkers who were accustomed to realistic art, to modern art.

~1924 – In Miami, Florida, Johnny Weissmuller sets a new world record in the 100-yard freestyle swimming competition with a time of 52.4 seconds. Weissmuller, winner of 5 Olympic gold medals, never lost a race and retired from his amateur swimming career undefeated.

~1933 – The first edition of Newsweek magazine was published.

~1933 – The Blaine Act, sponsored by Wisconsin senator John J. Blaine, was passed by the United States Senate. It repealed the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (also known as the Prohibition of alcohol). The repeal was formally adopted as the 21st Amendment to the Constitution on December 5, 1933.

~1944 – The Battle of Eniwetok Atoll began in the Marshall Islands. The object of the attack was to seize an airfield and harbour to support attacks on the Mariana Islands to the northwest. Earlier that day Vice Admiral Raymond Spruance preceded the invasion by Operation Hailstone, a carrier strike against the Japanese base at Truk in the Caroline Islands. This raid destroyed 15 warships and more than 250 planes, cutting off Eniwetok from support and supply.

~1957 – The Warrenton Nursing Home fire took place at the Katie Jane Memorial Home for the Aged in Warrenton, Missouri and killed 72 people. The 2 1/2 story facility, located 60 miles west of St. Louis, housed 155 elderly people and had been converted just two years earlier after having previously served as the site of Central Wesleyan College.

~1958 – Pope Pius XII declared Saint Clare of Assisi (1193~1253) the patron saint of television. (Got into the communion wine a little too much that day, Popesy?)

~1959 – Project Vanguard: Vanguard 2, the first weather satellite, was launched. The satellite was designed to measure cloud cover distribution over the daylight portion of its orbit for a period of 19 days, and to provide information on the density of the atmosphere for the lifetime of its orbit (~300 years).

~1962 – A European windstorm with peak wind speeds of 200 km/h pushed water into the German Bight, leading to a water surge the dykes could not withstand. Breaches along the coast and the rivers Elbe and Weser led to widespread flooding of huge areas. In Hamburg, on the river Elbe, ( a full 100 km away from the coast) the residential area of Wilhelmsburg was most affected. 315 people died in this area alone.

~1964 – In Wesberry v. Sanders the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that congressional districts have to be approximately equal in population.

~1964 – Gabonese president Leon M'ba was toppled by a coup and his rival, Jean-Hilaire Aubame, was installed in his place. The French military, however, intervened and restored M'ba to power.

~1965 – Project Ranger: The Ranger 8 probe was launched on its mission to photograph the Mare Tranquillitatis region of the Moon in preparation for the manned Apollo missions. Mare Tranquillitatis or the "Sea of Tranquility" would become the site chosen for the Apollo 11 lunar landing.

~1972 – Volkswagen Beetle No. 15,007,034 was produced. With this Beetle production surpassed that of the previous record holder, the Ford Model T.

~1974 – Robert K. Preston, a disgruntled U.S. Army private, stole a United States Army helicopter from Fort Meade, Maryland and flew it to Washington, D.C. where he hovered for 6 minutes over the White House before descending on the south lawn about 100 yards from the West Wing. There was no initial attempt from the Executive Protective Service to shoot the helicopter down and he later took off, being chased by 2 Maryland State Police helicopters. Preston forced one of the police helicopters down through his maneuvering of the army helicopter, and then returned to the White House. This time, as he hovered above the south grounds, the Executive Protective Service fired at him with shotguns and submachine guns. Preston was injured slightly, and landed the stolen chopper.

~1978 – The Le Mon Restaurant Bombing: The Provisional IRA detonated an incendiary bomb at the La Mon restaurant, near Belfast, killing 12 people. A further 30 were injured by the blast, many of them critically. Some were still receiving treatment 20 years later.

~1979 – The Sino-Vietnamese War began. The brief but bloody border war which lasted only a month was fought between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The PRC launched the offensive in response to Vietnam's invasion and occupation of Cambodia, which ended the reign of the PRC backed Khmer Rouge.

~1995 – Colin Ferguson was convicted of 6 counts of murder for the December 1993 Long Island Rail Road shootings. He was also convicted of attempted murder for wounding 19 passengers during the shooting spree. He received 315 years and 8 months to life, meaning his current earliest possible parole date is August 6, 2309. Ferguson is currently serving his sentence at the Attica Correctional Facility in western New York. (Finally, some justice.)

~1995 – The Cenepa War between Peru and Ecuador officially ended on a cease fire brokered by the UN. In spite of this fighting continued until February 28th.

~1996 – NASA's Discovery Program began as the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft lifted off on the first mission ever to orbit and land on an asteroid, 433 Eros.

~2003 – The London Congestion Charge scheme came into operation in parts of Central London.

~2006 - The Southern Leyte Mudslide: The deadly landslide followed a 10 day period of heavy rains and a minor earthquake of magnitude 2.6 on the Richter scale. The official death toll was set at 1,126.

~2008 – Kosovo declared its independence. Over the following days, a number of nations, including the United States, Turkey, Albania, Austria, Germany, Italy, France, the United Kingdom, the Republic of China (Taiwan), Australia, Poland and others announced their recognition, despite protests by Russia and others in the UN. Currently, 65 UN states recognise the independence of Kosovo and it has become a member country of the IMF and World Bank as the Republic of Kosovo. (If the UN is against it then it must be a good thing...)

...

February 18th



~3102 BC – The Epoch of the Kali Yuga, the last of the four stages that the world goes through as part of the cycle of yugas described in the Indian scriptures.

~1268 – The Livonian Brothers of the Sword (of the Teutonic Knights) were defeated by Dovmont of Pskov and a coalition of Russian princes at the Battle of Rakvere, in Estonia. The Knights were defeated so thoroughly that they would not undertake a new campaign against Northern Russia for the following 30 years.

~1478 – George, Duke of Clarence, convicted of treason against his older brother Edward IV of England, was executed in private at the Tower of London.

~1745 – The city of Surakarta, Central Java was founded on the banks of Bengawan Solo river, and became the capital of the Kingdom of Surakarta.

1797 – Spanish rule over Trinidad, which nominally began in 1498, ended when the final Spanish Governor (Don José Maria Chacón) surrendered the island to a British fleet of 18 warships under the command of Sir Ralph Abercromby.

~1814 – The Battle of Montereau: A day after Napoleon stopped the advance on Paris at Mormant (about 30 miles from Paris), some French units had to march 60 miles in 36 hours to reach Mormant. In spite of this the engagement resulted in the victory of the French under Bonaparte against the Austrians and the Württembergeois under Royal Prince of Württemberg.

~1846 – The Galician peasant revolt began. It would lead to the "Galician Slaughter," in which many nobles and their families were murdered by the peasants. Szela units surrounded and attacked manor houses and settlements located in three counties: Sanok, Jasło and Tarnów.

~1856 – The Know-Nothings, a nativist American political movement, convened in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to nominate their first Presidential candidate, former President Millard Fillmore. The party was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by German and Irish Catholic immigrants, who were often regarded as hostile to U.S. values and controlled by the Pope in Rome. Mainly active from 1854 to 1856, it strove to curb immigration and naturalization, though its efforts met with little success.

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

~1861 – Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont, Savoy and Sardinia assumed the title King of Italy to become the first king of a united Italy, a title he held until his death in 1878.

~1873 – Bulgarian revolutionary leader Vasil Levski was executed by hanging in Sofia by the Ottoman authorities.

~1878 – John Tunstall was murdered by a posse (probably outlaw Jessie Evans), sparking the Lincoln County War in Lincoln County, New Mexico.

~1885 – Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published for the first time in America (December 10th, 1884 in Canada and England).

~1901 – Winston Churchill, then member for Oldham, made his first speech in the House of Commons.

~1906 – In the Hotel Ravenstein in Brussels, Edouard de Laveleye formed the Belgian Olympic Committee and was elected the group's first president. It was in this role that he posted a bid for Belgium in March, 1912 to host the 1920 Olympics. The games were successfully awarded to Antwerp, much because of his influence and the effect World War I had on the nation. This was the only time the games have been held in Belgium.

~1911 – The first official flight with air mail took place in Allahabad, British India. Henri Pequet, a 23 year old pilot in India for an airshow, delivered about 6,500 letters when he flew from Allahabad to Naini, about 10 kilometers away. He flew a Sommer biplane with about 50 horsepower, and made the journey in 13 minutes. The letters were marked "First Aerial Post, U.P. Exhibition Allahabad 1911." (Whoa! 13 minutes...what an endurance flight!)

~1913 – Raymond Poincaré became President of France. (zzzzzz...)

~1929 – The first Academy Awards were announced. They were presented on May 16th of that year. (They were dismal then and they've been dismal ever since!)

~1930 – While studying photographs taken in January of the same year, Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto.

~1930 – Elm Farm Ollie becomes the first cow to fly in a fixed wing aircraft and also the first cow to be milked in an aircraft. (I suppose this was important enough to somebody back then to make note of it. A St. Louis newspaper trumpeted her mission as being "to blaze a trail for the transportation of livestock by air.")

~1932 – The Empire of Japan declares Manzhouguo (the obsolete Chinese name for Manchuria) independent from the Republic of China. The Manchu State was proclaimed and recognized by Japan on September 16th. The city of Changchun, renamed Xinjing (literally "New Capital"), became the capital of the new entity. Chinese in Manchuria organized volunteer armies to oppose the Japanese and the new state required a war lasting several years to pacify the country.

~1942 - The Sook Ching Massacre began. A systematic extermination of perceived hostile elements among the Chinese in Singapore by the Japanese military took place during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore, after the British colony surrendered. Upwards of 100,000 people were murdered over a 15 day period.

~1943 – The Nazis arrested the members of the White Rose movement. The group became known for an anonymous leaflet campaign, lasting from June 1942 until February 1943, that called for active opposition to dictator Adolf Hitler's regime. The 6 core members of the group were arrested by the Gestapo and they were executed by decapitation in 1943. The text of their sixth leaflet was smuggled by Helmuth James Graf von Moltke out of Germany through Scandinavia to the United Kingdom, and in July 1943 copies of it were dropped over Germany by Allied planes, retitled "The Manifesto of the Students of Munich."

Today, the members of the White Rose are honoured in Germany as amongst its greatest heroes, since they opposed the Third Reich in the face of almost certain death.

~1943 – Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels delivered his Sportpalast speech to a large but carefully selected audience calling for a total war, as the tide of World War II was turning against Nazi Germany and its Axis allies.

~1944 - The Arethusa class light cruiser HMS Penelope was torpedoed and sunk by U-410 while returning from Naples to the Anzio beach-head. 415 seamen were lost in the sinking.

~1955 – Operation Teapot: Teapot test shot "Wasp" was successfully detonated at the Nevada Test Site with a yield of 1.2 kilotons. Wasp was the first of 14 shots of the Teapot series.

~1957 – Kenyan rebel leader Dedan Kimathi was executed by the British colonial government. The colonial government that ruled Kenya at the time considered him a terrorist, as did "loyalist" Kenyans who supported the British occupation and seizure of Kikuyu lands and opposed the Mau Mau Uprising.

~1965 – Gambia was granted independence from the United Kingdom and joined The Commonwealth.

~1969 – Hawthorne Nevada Airlines Flt. 708, a Douglas DC-3, crashed into Mount Whitney while enroute from Hawthorne, Nevada to Burbank, California. At 5:10 A.M., the plane hit a sheer cliff face on the East side of Mount Whitney at 11,770 feet. The main body of the wreckage then slid down the cliff and stopped some 500 feet back from the cliff, where it caught fire. All 32 passengers and 3 crew were killed.

~1970 – The Chicago Seven were found not guilty of conspiring to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

~1972 – The California Supreme Court, in the case of People v. Anderson, invalidated the state's death penalty and commuted the sentences of all death row inmates to life imprisonment.

~1974 - The game show Tattletales debuted on CBS television in the slot vacated by the long running soap opera The Secret Storm.

~1977 – The Space Shuttle Enterprise test vehicle was carried on its maiden "flight" atop a Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft.

~1979 – Snow fell in the Sahara Desert in southern Algeria for the only time in recorded history. The storm lasted only half an hour and the snow was gone within hours.

~1983 – 13 people died and 1 was seriously injured during the Wah Mee Massacre in Seattle, Washington. It is believed to be the largest robbery motivated mass murder in U.S. history. It also remains the deadliest mass murder in Washington state's history. (Jesse James would’ve been proud!)

~1985 - The famous "mirror globe" ident, first used in 1969, was seen for the last time in regular rotation on BBC1.

~1991 – The IRA detonated bombs in the early morning at Paddington station and Victoria station in London.

~2001 – FBI agent Robert Hanssen was arrested for spying for the Soviet Union and Russia over a 22 year period. He was ultimately convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

~2001 – Dale Earnhardt. was killed when his stock car crashed into the wall on the final lap of the Daytona 500.

~2003 – The Daegu Subway Fire: An arsonist set fire to a train stopped at the Jungangno Station of the Daegu Metropolitan Subway in Daegu, South Korea. The fire then spread to a second train which had entered the station from the opposite direction. The blaze killed at least 198 people and injured no less than 147 others.

~2003 – Comet C/2002 V1 (NEAT) made perihelion. This was seen by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. (I once had a comet make perihelion in my back yard...I had to go out with a shovel and scoop it into a plastic bag.)

~2004 – A train carrying flammable goods derailed and caught fire near the town of Neyshabur in Iran. 5 hours later, during fire fighting and rescue work, a massive explosion destroyed the train and many nearby buildings. Approximately 300 people were killed, mainly fire and rescue workers but also the local governor and mayor along with the heads of the fire and rail services.

...

February 19th



~197 – The Battle of Lugdunum was fought near present day Lyon, France between the armies of the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus and of the Roman usurper Clodius Albinus. Severus' victory finally established him as the sole emperor of the Roman Empire. This battle is said to be the largest, most hard fought and bloodiest of all clashes ever between Roman forces, with upwards of 100,000 combatants taking part.

~1594 – Having already inherited the throne of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth through his mother Catherine Jagellonica of Poland, Sigismund III of the House of Vasa was crowned King of Sweden, succeeding his father John III of Sweden.

~1600 – The Peruvian stratovolcano Huaynaputina explodes in the most violent eruption in the recorded history of South America. When Huaynaputina exploded, it produced about 30 cubic km of tephra and pyroclastic flows that traveled 13 km to the east and southeast. As well, lahars (volcanic mudflows) destroyed several villages and reached the coast of the Pacific Ocean, a distance of 120 km (74.5 mi) away. The eruption began with a Plinian plume that extended into the stratosphere, and the ashfall and accompanying earthquakes caused substantial damage to the major cities of Arequipa (70 km to the west) and Moquegua. Regional agricultural economies took over 150 years to fully recover.

~1674 – England and the Netherlands signed the Treaty of Westminster, ending the Third Anglo-Dutch War. A provision of the agreement transfered the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam to England, and it was renamed New York.

~1803 - President Jefferson signed the (1802) Ohio Constitution bill into law.

~1807 – In Alabama, Former Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr was arrested for treason and confined to Fort Stoddert.

~1819 – British explorer William Smith discovered the South Shetland Islands. He would later claim them in the name of King George III.

~1831 - The first practical US coal burning locomotive made its first trial run, in Pennsylvania.

~1847 – The first group of rescuers reached the Donner Party.

~1856 - A tin-type camera was patented by Hamilton Smith, of Gambier, Ohio.

~1861 – The Russian Emancipation Reform: The 1861 Emancipation Manifesto proclaimed the emancipation of the serfs on private estates and of the domestic (household) serfs. By this edict more than 23 million people received their liberty. Serfs were granted the full rights of free citizens, gaining the rights to marry without having to gain consent, to own property and to own a business. The Manifesto prescribed that peasants would be able to buy the land from the landlords. Household serfs were the worst affected as they only gained their freedom and no land.

~1864 – The Knights of Pythias, a fraternal organization and secret society, was founded in Washington, DC by Justus H. Rathbone. The Knights of Pythias was the first fraternal organization to receive a charter under an act of the United States Congress.

~1878 – Thomas Edison was issued a patent for an "Improvement in Phonograph or Speaking Machines".

~1884 – The Enigma tornado outbreak occurred. It is thought to be among the largest and most widespread tornado outbreaks in American history with over 60 tornados striking no less than 10 states and leaving as many as 1,200 dead amongst the vast swaths of destruction.

~1906 - William K. Kellogg and Charles D. Bolin formed the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company in Battle Creek, Michigan, to make the breakfast cereal he created as a health food for US mental patients.

~1910 - At a New York dinner party, 'Diamond Jim' Brady amazed his guests by eating 5 helpings of roast beef, gallons of stewed fruit, 84 oysters and 3 gallons of orange juice to wash it all down. (No mention as to how much Alka-Seltzer he took afterwards...)

~1915 - British and French warships began their attacks on the Turkish forts at the mouth of the Dardenelles, in an abortive expedition to force open the straits of Gallipoli.

~1934 - Bob and Dolores Hope were married in Erie, Pennsylvania.

~1937 – During a public ceremony at the Viceregal Palace, the former Imperial residence in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, two Eritrean nationalists attempted to kill viceroy Rodolfo Graziani with a number of grenades. A bloody and indiscriminate repression followed in which Graziani came to be known as "the Butcher of Ethiopia".

~1940 - Born this day, William 'Smokey' Robinson, in Detroit, Michigan, singer, songwriter, producer, The Miracles, 1970 UK and US No.1 single The Tears Of A Clown, solo, 1981 UK No.1 and US No.2 single Being With You, vice President of Motown Records in 1972.

~1940 - The Yakovlev Yak-1 was ordered into production. It would be the only truly up to date single engine fighter in the Soviet Air Force arsenal when the country entered into the Second World War with the German invasion in June, 1941.

~1942 – Nearly 250 Japanese warplanes attacked the northern Australian city of Darwin killing 243 people and causing extensive damage. The Japanese raids on Darwin were the largest attacks ever mounted by a foreign power against Australia. The attacks were the first of almost 100 air raids against Australia during 1942–43. (Ya' shouldn't a oughta pissed off the Auzzies, ya' goofs...it'll come back ta bite ya' in a BIG way!)

~1942 - The New York Yankees announced that 5,000 uniformed soldiers would be admitted free at each of their upcoming home games.

~1942 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed executive order 9066, allowing the United States military to relocate Japanese-Americans to Japanese internment (concentration) camps. (Yup! They haven't done a thing wrong, most of them were born here and they're probably loyal to the country, but DAMMIT...they don't look like us!)

~1943 – Battle of the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia began with the first engagements inside the 2 mile (3 km) wide gap in the Grand Dorsal chain of the Atlas Mountains in west central Tunisia. Significant as the first large scale meeting of American and German forces in World War II, the untested and poorly led American troops suffered heavy casualties and were pushed back over 50 miles (80 km) from their positions west of Faid Pass in a total rout. In the aftermath, the U.S. Army instituted sweeping changes from unit level organization to the replacing of commanders. When they next met, in some cases only weeks later, the U.S. forces were considerably more effective.

~1945 – The Battle of Iwo Jima: Approximately 30,000 United States Marines landed on the Japnese held island of Iwo Jima. The battle produced some of the fiercest fighting in the Pacific Campaign of World War II over its 35 day course.

~1945 - 980 Japanese soldiers were killed by long saltwater crocodiles that went on a killing spree over a period of 2 days in Ramree, Burma.

~1959 – Britain granted Cyprus its independence, which was then formally proclaimed on August 16th, 1960.

~1972 – The Asama-Sansō hostage standoff began in Japan. The hostage crisis and police siege took place in a mountain lodge near Karuizawa, Nagano prefecture, Japan and lasted from February 19th to February 28th. The police rescue operation on the final day of the standoff was the first marathon live broadcast in Japan, lasting 10 hours and 40 minutes.

~1976 – Executive Order 9066 was rescinded by US President Gerald R. Ford's Proclamation 4417, some 30+ years after the Second World War ended. No internee was ever charged with any treasonous or subversive offense.

~1978 – Egyptian forces raid Larnaca International Airport in an attempt to intervene in a hijacking, without authorisation from the Republic of Cyprus authorities. Earlier, 2 assassins had killed prominent Egyptian newspaper editor Youssef Sebai and then rounded up several Arabs who were attending a convention in Nicosia as hostages. As Cypriot forces were trying to negotiate with the hostage takers at the airport, Egyptian troops decided to launch their own assault without authorization from the Cypriots. The unauthorized raid led to the Egyptians and the Cypriots exchanging gunfire, killing or injuring more than 20 of the Egyptian commandos and destroying the Egyptian C-130 transport plane in open combat. As a result, Egypt and Cyprus severed political ties for several years after the incident.

~1982 - The infamous Boeing 757 took off from Seattle's Boeing Field on its maiden flight. Now out of production it remains one of the most reliable workhorses of civil aviation throughout the world.

~1985 – An Iberia Airlines Boeing 747 crashed into Mount Oiz in Spain, killing all 148 aboard.

~1986 – The Akkaraipattu Massacre: In the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka, approximately 80 minority Sri Lankan Tamil farm workers were murdered by Sri Lankan Army personnel. Later the bodies were piled on top of the dry rice harvest and burned.

~1986 – The Soviet Union launched its Mir spacestation. Mir would prove to be extremely successful, remaining in orbit for 15 years and being occupied for 10 of those years.

~1999 – US President Bill Clinton issued a posthumous pardon for U.S. Army Lt. Henry Ossian Flipper.

~2001 – The Oklahoma City National Memorial Bombing Museum was dedicated.

~2002 – NASA's Mars Odyssey space probe began to map the surface of Mars using its thermal emission imaging system.

...

February 20th

~702 – Died this day: K'inich Kan B'alam II, king of the Maya state of Palenque (b. 635)

~1472 – Orkney and Shetland were pledged by Christian I, in his capacity as king of Norway, as security against the payment of the dowry of his daughter Margaret, betrothed to James III of Scotland. As the money was never paid, the islands became the possessions of Scotland.

~1547 – Edward VI of England was crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey. He was 9 years old at the time.

~1673 - The first recorded wine auction took place in London.

~1725 - The first known scalping of Indians by white men was reported in the New Hampshire colony.

~1792 – The Postal Service Act, establishing the United States Post Office Department, was signed into law by President George Washington.

~1810 – Andreas Hofer, Tirolean patriot and leader of the rebellion against Napoleon's forces, was executed.

~1835 – Concepción, Chile was destroyed by a massive earthquake that required the rebuilding of the entire city.

~1864 – The Battle of Olustee: The largest battle fought in Florida during the war took place near Lake City in Baker County and resulted in a decisive Confederate victory.

~1872 – In New York City the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened. It was originally located at 681 Fifth Avenue.

~1872 - Luther Crowell received a patent for a machine that manufactured paper bags.

~1909 – The Futurist Manifesto, written by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, was published in French as "Manifeste du futurisme" in Le Figaro. It launched the art movement futurism, that rejected the past, celebrated speed, machinery, violence, youth and industry while seeking the modernisation and cultural rejuvenation of Italy. (Well, good for Filippo.)

~1913 – King O'Malley drove in the first survey peg to mark commencement of work on the construction of Canberra.

~1931 – The US Congress approved the construction of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge across Yerba Buena Island.

~1933 – The Congress of the United States proposed the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution that would end Prohibition in the United States.

~1935 – Caroline Mikkelsen became the first woman to set foot on Antarctica.

~1942 – Lieutenant Edward O'Hare became the US Navy's first World War II flying ace and Medal of Honor recipient. Edward O'Hare was killed in action on November 26th, 1943. In September, 1949 Chicago's Orchard Depot Airport was renamed O'Hare International Airport in his honor.

~1943 – American movie studio executives agreed to allow the Office of War Information to censor movies for the duration of the World War II.

~1943 – The Parícutin volcano began to form in Parícutin, Mexico. The volcano began as a fissure in a cornfield owned by a P'urhépecha farmer, Dionisio Pulido. Pulido, his wife, and their son all witnessed the initial eruption of ash and stones first hand as they plowed the field. The volcano grew quickly, reaching five stories tall in just a week, and it could be seen from afar in a month.

~1944 – The US Eighth Air Force and Royal Air Force began 'Big Week', a series of heavy bomber attacks against German aircraft production facilities.

~1951 – Emmett Ashford became the first black umpire in organized baseball by being authorized to be a substitute umpire in the Southwestern International League.

~1952 - John Huston's "The African Queen", starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, debuted at the Capitol Theatre in New York City.

~1959 – The Avro Arrow program to design and manufacture supersonic jet fighters in Canada was cancelled by the Diefenbaker government amid much political furor. (John Diefenbaker should have been taken out and stood up against the brick wall of the House of Parliament and shot as a traitor!)

~1962 – Project Mercury: While aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth, making 3 orbits in 4 hours, 55 minutes.

~1965 – Ranger 8 crashed into the moon after a successful mission of photographing possible landing sites for the Apollo program astronauts. (And just who was the DITZ at the controls in mission command that day?)

~1987 – In Salt Lake City, a bomb exploded in a computer store. The device was later traced back to the Unabomber.

~1989 – In Ternhill, England 2 IRA bombers activated 2 bombs within the accommodation barracks at RAF Ternhill. At the time the 2nd Battalion the Parachute Regiment was located at the base. A sentry spotted 2 men behaving suspiciously and raised the alarm, the barracks were evacuated shortly before the bombs exploded and there were no casualties. One of the accommodation blocks was destroyed in the blast. The bombers escaped by hijacking a car from a house down the road from the barracks.

~1993 - Two 10 year old boys were charged by police in Liverpool, England, in the abduction and brutal murder of 2 year old James Bulger. The two boys were later convicted and sentenced to a minimum of 10 years in custody.

~1998 - 15 year old American figure skater Tara Lipinski became the youngest gold medalist in winter Olympics history when she won the ladies' figure skating title at Nagano, Japan.

~2002 – The Al Ayyat Train Disaster: A fire broke out on a train running from Cairo to Luxor. In its 5th carriage a cooking gas cylinder exploded and created a fire which spread as the train ran. Seven of its carriages, all 3rd class, were burnt virtually to cinders. The official figure given by officials at the time was of 383 people dead, all Egyptian. However, considering that 7 carriages were burnt to the chassis rails and each carriage was packed with at least double the maximum carrying capacity of 150, this figure is generally considered to be greatly underestimated.

~2003 – The Station Nightclub Fire: During a Great White concert in West Warwick, Rhode Island, a pyrotechnics display set the club ablaze, killing 100 and injuring over 200 others.

~2005 – Spain became the first country to vote in a referendum on ratification of the proposed Constitution of the European Union, passing it by a substantial margin, but on a low turnout.

~2009 – The Suicide Air Raid on Colombo: 2 Tamil Tigers aircraft packed with C4 explosives enroute to the national airforce headquarters were shot down by the Sri Lankan military before reaching their target, in a kamikaze style attack.

...

February 21st



~1245 – Thomas, the first known Bishop of Finland, was granted resignation by Pope Innocent IV after having confessed to torture and forgery. (I can't believe it! You mean there were corrupt church officials in the past, too?)

~1513 – Died this day: Pope Julius II (b. 1443)

~1543 – The Battle of Wayna Daga: To the east of Lake Tana in Ethiopia, a combined army of Ethiopian and Portuguese troops defeated a Muslim army led by Ahmed Gragn. Ahmad was killed by a Portuguese musketeer, who had charged alone into the Muslim lines. Once his soldiers learned of the Imam's death, they fled the battlefield.

~1613 – Mikhail I was elected unanimously as Tsar by a national assembly, the first Imperial Russian Tsar of the house of Romanov.

~1730 – Died this day: Pope Benedict XIII (b. 1649)

~1804 – The world's first railway journey took place as Richard Trevithick's unnamed steam locomotive hauled a train along the tramway of the Penydarren Ironworks, near Merthyr Tydfil in Wales.

~1842 – John Greenough was granted the first U.S. patent for the sewing machine.

~1848 – Communist theorists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published the Communist Manifesto, one of the world's most influential political manuscripts. Commissioned by the Communist League, it laid out the League's purposes and program.

~1858 - The first electric burglar alarm was installed, in Boston.

~1862 – The Battle of Valverde was fought between Confederate and Union forces near the town of Valverde at a ford of Valverde Creek in Confederate Arizona. It was a major Confederate success in the New Mexico Campaign of the Civil War.

~1874 – The Oakland Daily Tribune was founded by George Staniford and Benet A. Dewes.

~1875 - Born this day: Jeanne Calment, French supercentenarian and the longest lived human on record (d. 1997)

~1878 – The first telephone directory, consisting of a single page, was issued. It covered 50 subscribers in New Haven, Connecticut.

~1885 – The newly completed Washington Monument was dedicated.

~1913 – Ioannina was incorporated into the Greek state following the Balkan Wars.

~1916 – In France, the Battle of Verdun began. It would last until mid December and leave over 306,000 dead and more than 670,000 wounded.

~1918 – The last Carolina Parakeet died in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo.

~1919 – German socialist Kurt Eisner was assassinated. His death resulted in the establishment of the Bavarian Soviet Republic and parliament and government fleeing Munich, Germany.

~1921 – Facing the onset of Soviet military aggression the Constituent Assembly of the Democratic Republic of Georgia adopted the country's first constitution.

~1925 – The New Yorker published its first issue.

~1935 - First run on October 15th, 1933, the legendary Rolls Royce V-12 Merlin took to the air for the first time powering a Hawker Hart. Considered an English icon, the Merlin was one of the most successful aircraft engines of the World War II era. Many variants were built by Rolls Royce in Derby, Crewe and Glasgow, as well as by Ford of Britain in Trafford Park, Manchester. The Packard V-1650 was a licensed version of the Merlin built in the United States. Production finally ceased in 1950 after a total of almost 150,000 engines had been delivered, the later variants being used for airliners and military transport aircraft.

~1937 – The League of Nations banned foreign national "volunteers" in the Spanish Civil War. (And we all know how many bothered paying any attention to that...)

~1941 – Died this day: Dr. Frederick Banting, Canadian physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Best known for the discovery of insulin. (b. 1891)

~1943 - "Free World Theatre" debuted on the NBC Blue network (later became ABC radio).

~1945 – Japanese Kamikaze planes damaged the USS Saratoga and sank the escort carrier USS Bismarck Sea with the loss of 441 servicemen.

~1947 – In New York City, Edwin Land demonstrated the first "instant camera," the Polaroid Land Camera, to a meeting of the Optical Society of America. It was the first camera to take, develop and print a picture on photo paper all in about 60 seconds. The photos were black and white. The camera went on sale the following year.

~1948 – NASCAR was incorporated by William France, Sr. with the help of several other drivers of the time. The points system was written on a bar room napkin.

~1952 – The British government, under Winston Churchill, abolishes identity cards in the UK to "set the people free".

~1952 – In Dhaka, East Pakistan police opened fire on a procession of students that was demanding the establishment of Bengali as the official language, killing 4 people and starting a country wide protest which led to the recognition of Bengali as one of the national languages of Pakistan.

~1958 – The Peace symbol was designed and completed by Gerald Holtom, commissioned by Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, in protest against the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment.

~1965 – Malcolm X was assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City by members of the Nation of Islam.

~1968 - An agreement between baseball players and club owners increased the minimum salary for major league players to $10,000 a year.

~1970 – A bomb exploded aboard Swissair Flt. 330, a Convair CV-990, and caused its subsequent crash near Zürich, Switzerland. All 47 aboard were killed.

~1971 – The Convention on Psychotropic Substances was signed at Vienna. (Ooooooh! That's like, so SURREAL, man!)

~1972 – President Richard Nixon began his groundbreaking visit to the People's Republic of China, in an effort to normalize Sino-American relations.

~1972 – The Soviet unmanned spaceship Luna 20 landed on the Moon.

~1973 – Over the Sinai Desert, 2 Israeli fighter aircraft shot down Libyan Arab Airlines Flt. 114, a Boeing 727, killing 108 of the 113 onboard.

~1975 – Former United States Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman were sentenced to prison over their involvement in the Watergate Scandal.

~1986 – Died this day: Shigechiyo Izumi, Japanese sugarcane farmer and longest lived man on record (b. 1865)

~1988 - In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart gave his now infamous teary eyed "I Have Sinned" speech as he spoke to his family, congregation and audience. While giving no details regarding his transgressions he had been linked to a known prostitute. Swaggart announced that he was leaving the pulpit temporarily. (The reverend Jimmy then went on to found the Hypocrites "R" Us foundation.)

~1995 – Steve Fossett lands in Leader, Saskatchewan, Canada becoming the first person to make a solo flight across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon.

~2000 - David Letterman returned to his Late Night show just 5 weeks after having an emergency quintuple heart bypass operation.

~2004 – The European Green Party was founded at the Fourth Congress of the European Federation of Green Parties in Rome, in a party convention with over 1,000 delegates. 32 Green parties from all over Europe joined this new pan-European party. The foundation of the new party was finished with a signing of the treaty constituting the party in the Capitol of Rome. As such the Greens were the first to form a political party at the European level.

~2007 – Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi resigns from office. His resignation was rejected by the President of Italy, Giorgio Napolitano.

...

February 22nd



~1076 - At Worms, a synod of bishops and princes summoned by Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV declared Pope Gregory VII deposed. Hildebrand replied by excommunicating the emperor and all the bishops named by him. (Play nice now, kiddies!)

~1371 – Died this day: King David II of Scotland (b. 1324)

~1495 – King Charles VIII of France and his forces entered Naples, unopposed, to claim the city's throne. Charles entered Italy with 25,000 men (including 8,000 Swiss mercenaries) in 1494 and marched across the peninsula until he reached Naples. The French army subdued Florence in passing and took Naples without a pitched battle or siege. Alfonso was expelled and Charles was crowned King of Naples.

~1630 - Quadequine introduced popcorn to the English colonists. (I think we should establish a national holiday in honor of that Indian.)

~1632 – Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems was published.

~1732 – Born this day: George Washington, first President of the United States (d. 1799).

~1744 – During the War of the Austrian Succession, the Battle of Toulon took place. A combined Franco-Spanish fleet fought, and beat back, Britain's Mediterranean fleet. The French fleet, officially at peace with Great Britain, only joined the fighting at the end of the battle, forcing the British fleet to withdraw. In Britain the battle was regarded as a national disgrace as the Franco-Spanish fleet successfully ended the British blockade and inflicted more damage than they received to the British, causing the British to withdraw to Minorca in need of heavy repairs. The retreat of Admiral Mathews' fleet left the Mediterranean Sea temporarily under Spanish control allowing the passage of Spanish troops to Italy.

~1784 - The Empress of China, the first American merchant vessel to enter Chinese waters, left New York harbor on Washington's birthday, February 22nd, 1784. The Empress returned to New York on May 11th, 1785 after a round trip voyage of 14 months and 24 days. The success of the voyage encouraged others to invest in further trading with China.

~1797 – The Battle of Fishguard began. This was a military invasion of Great Britain by Revolutionary France during the War of the First Coalition. The brief campaign, which took place between the 22nd and 24th, was the most recent effort by a foreign force that was able to land on Britain, and as such is referred to as the "last invasion of Britain". The discipline of the invaders broke down and they were compelled to surrender to to a smaller British force.

~1819 – The Adams-Onís Treaty was concluded, whereby Spain sold Florida to the United States for $5 million and territorial considerations.

~1855 – The Pennsylvania State University was founded by an of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as the Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania.

~1855 - The U.S. Congress voted to appropriate $200,000 for continuance of the work on the Washington Monument. The next morning the resolution was tabled and it would be 21 years before the Congress would vote on funds again. Work was to be continued by the Know-Nothing Party in charge of the project but virtually nothing was ever done by them.

~1856 – The Republican Party opened its first national meeting (although informal) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

~1859 - U.S. President Buchanan approved an act which incorporated the Washington National Monument Society "for the purpose of completing the erection now in progress of a great National Monument to the memory of Washington at the seat of the Federal Government."

~1865 - Tennessee's legislature approved an amendment to the state constitution prohibiting slavery.

~1889 – Born this day: Olave Baden-Powell, English founder of the Girl Guides (d. 1977).

~1890 – Died this day: John Jacob Astor III, legendary American business tycoon and industrialist (b. 1822)

~1892 - Lady Windermere's Fan: A Play About a Good Woman, a comedy by Oscar Wilde, was first performed at the St. James Theatre in London. Like many of Wilde's comedies, it is a biting satire on the morals of Victorian society, particularly marriage.

~1904 – Britain sold a meteorological station on the South Orkney Islands to Argentina, the islands were subsequently claimed by Britain in 1908.

~1922 – The Egyptian Revolution of 1919: The British were forced to issue a unilateral declaration of Egyptian independence.

~1923 - The first chinchilla farm in the US opened in Los Angeles, California.

~1924 – U.S. President Calvin Coolidge becaqme the first President to deliver a radio broadcast from the White House.

~1943 – Members of the White Rose, a non-violent/intellectual resistance group in Nazi Germany, were found guilty of treason and the three were executed the same day by guillotine.

~1944 – American aircraft mistakenly bombed the Dutch towns of Nijmegen, Arnhem, Enschede and Deventer, resulting in over 1,000 dead.

~1958 – Egypt and Syria joined to form the United Arab Republic. The union lasted only until 1961.

~1959 – Lee Petty won the first Daytona 500, defeating Johnny Beauchamp in a highly unusual manner. Petty and Beauchamp were lapping Joe Weatherly at the finish. Petty, Beauchamp, and Weatherly crossed the finish line 3 abreast with Weatherly blocking NASCAR's photo finish camera. NASCAR initially called Beauchamp the winner. After reviewing photographs and film of the finish for 3 days the call was reversed and Petty was awarded the win. Lee Petty received $19,050 for winning. Ken Marriott was scored as the last place driver having completed just 1 lap and won $100. (So, at $100 per lap, shouldn't Petty have received 20 grand plus the winner's purse?)

~1969 - Barbara Jo Rubin became the first woman to win a U.S. thoroughbred horse race.

~1972 – The IRA detonated a car bomb at Aldershot barracks (mess), killing 7 civilian support staff and injuring 19 others.

~1973 – As a result of US President Richard Nixon's visit to the People's Republic of China, both countries agreed to establish liaison offices.

~1974 – A headcase tried to hijack a Delta Air Lines DC-9 as it prepared to leave the gate at Baltimore/Washington International Airport. He wanted to crash it into the White House and kill US President Richard Nixon, but the attempt failed and the jet never left the gate.

~1979 – Britain granted independence to Saint Lucia. (The place still looks like a quaint British colonial outpost, though.)

~1980 – The Miracle on Ice: In Lake Placid, New York, the United States men's hockey team defeated the Soviet Union hockey team 4-3, in what is considered to be one of the greatest upsets in sports history.

~1983 – The Moose Murders had its only performance at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre on Broadway. The play, by Arthur Bicknell, was self described as a mystery farce. An immediate flop, it is now widely considered the standard of awfulness against which all Broadway failures are judged. Its name has become synonymous with those distinctively bad Broadway plays which open and close on the same night.

~1984 - The U.S. Census Bureau statistics showed that the state of Alaska was the fastest growing state of the decade with an increase in population of 19.2 percent.

~1986 – The People Power Revolution in the Philippines began. The protests, fueled by a resistance and opposition of years of corrupt governance by Ferdinand Marcos, occurred from the 22nd to the 25th, when Marcos fled Malacañang Palace to the United States and conceded to Corazon Aquino as President of the Philippines.

~1987 - The Airbus A320 made its first flight. The A320, still in production 23 years later, is one of the most successful airliners in history with over 4,150 produced as of February, 2010.

~1994 – Central Intelligence Agency counter-intelligence officer and analyst Aldrich Ames, along with his wife were formally charged by the United States Department of Justice with spying for the Soviet Union and Russia. Ames could have faced the death penalty, since his betrayal had resulted in several CIA "assets" being killed. However, he only received a sentence of life imprisonment, and his wife received a 5-year prison sentence for conspiracy to commit espionage and tax evasion as part of a plea bargain by Ames. Rosario Ames was released from federal custody after she completed her full sentence. Ames, federal prisoner #40087-083, is currently housed in the high security US Penitentiary in Allenwood, Pennsylvania as of February, 2010.

~1995 – The Corona reconnaissance satellite program, in existence from 1959 to 1972, was declassified. The imagery acquired by the Corona and 2 contemporary programs (Argon and Lanyard) was made avialiable to the general public and the "obsolete broad area film-return systems other than Corona" mandated by the order led to the 2002 declassification of the imagery from KH-7 and the KH-9 low-resolution camera system. The declassified imagery has since been used for many projects including one by a team of scientists from the Australian National University to locate and explore ancient habitation sites, pottery factories, megalithic tombs, and Palaeolithic remains in northern Syria. (Cool!)

~1997 – In Roslin, Scotland, scientist Ian Wilmut and colleagues announced that an adult sheep had been successfully cloned. Dolly, the first cloned mammal was born in July 1996 and lived for 6 years.

~2002 – Angolan political and rebel leader Jonas Savimbi was killed in a military ambush. Savimbi spent much of his life battling Angola's Marxist-inspired government, which was supported by weapons and military advisers from the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Nicaragua (under the Sandinistas). The war ultimately became one of the most prominent Third World conflicts of the Cold War.

~2006 – At least 6 men staged Britain's biggest robbery ever, stealing £53m (about $92.5 million or 78€ million) from a Securitas depot in Tonbridge, Kent. Securitas reimbursed the Bank of England, to which the money belonged, £25 million the same day, and they assured the public that any additional loss would be made up by Securitas. In July 2007, Securitas announced that it intended to exit the Cash Management market and withdraw from the joint venture with Barclays and HSBC.

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February 23rd



~1100 - Died this day: Emperor Zhezong, 7th emperor of the Song Dynasty of China (b. 1076).

~1455 – The traditional date given for the publication of the Gutenberg Bible, the first Western book printed with movable type.

~1464 – Died this day: Emperor Zhengtong, of the Ming Dynasty of China (b. 1427)

~1739 – Richard Palmer was identified at York Castle, by his former schoolteacher, as the outlaw Dick Turpin.

~1766 - Died this day: Stanisław I, king of Poland (b. 1677)

~1778 – Baron von Steuben arrived at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania to help to train the Continental Army. Steuben spoke little English and he often yelled to his translator, "Here! Come swear for me!"

~1814 - The Boston Manufacturing Company of New England established the first "fully-integrated" cotton mill in America on the Charles River at Waltham, Massachusetts. Despite the ban on exporting technology from Britain one of its proprietors, Francis Cabot Lowell, had travelled to Manchester to study the mill system, and he memorized most of its details.

~1820 – Cato Street Conspiracy: A plot to murder all the British cabinet ministers and Prime Minister Lord Liverpool was ended when the conspiritors were confronted by police in a London pub.

~1836 – The Siege of the Alamo by Mexican forces under the command of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna began in San Antonio, Texas.

~1847 – The Battle of Buena Vista was fought in northern Mexico. American troops led by General Zachary Taylor defeated a much larger army commanded by Mexican General Santa Anna.

~1854 – The official independence of the Orange Free State is declared.

~1861 – President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrived secretly in Washington, D.C. after the thwarting of an alleged assassination plot in Baltimore, Maryland.

~1870 – Post Civil War military control of Mississippi ended and it was readmitted to the Union.

~1875 - Asteroid #143 Adria was discovered by J. Palisa at Pula and named after the Adriatic Sea, on the coast of which the discovery was made.

~1886 - Charles M. Hall produced the first samples of man-made aluminum, after several years of intensive work. He had to fabricate most of his apparatus and prepare his own chemicals. He was assisted in this work by his older sister Julia Brainerd Hall.

~1900 – The Battle of Hart's Hill: At Colenso, on the Tugela River in South Africa, Major-General Fitzroy Hart's 5th Irish Brigade attacked the Boers holding the high ground to the northeast (Hart's Hill). Not waiting for all his battalions to arrive, Hart sent his troops up piecemeal and they were repulsed with almost 500 casualties. 2 battalions of reinforcements arrived in time to prevent a rout. 2 colonels were among the dead and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers lost 72% of their officers and 27% of their rank and file. During this engagement Edgar Thomas Inkson carried a young officer, who was severely wounded and unable to walk, for 300 - 400 yards under very heavy fire to a place of safety. For this act he was awarded the Victoria Cross.

~1903 – Cuba leased Guantánamo Bay to the United States "in perpetuity". (You just KNOW that one has to bite Castro's ass every damned day...!)

~1905 – Chicago attorney Paul Harris and 3 other businessmen met for lunch to form the Rotary Club, the world's first service club.

~1909 – The AEA Silver Dart made the first controlled powered flight in Canada.

~1915 – Born this day: Paul Tibbets, US Air Force retired Brigadier General and pilot of the B-29 "Enola Gay" of Hiroshima fame (d. 2007).

~1918 – The First victory of the Red Army over the Kaiser's German troops took place near Narva and Pskov. In honor of this victory the date has since been celebrated, from 1923 onward, as "Red Army Day". It was renamed "Defender of the Fatherland Day" after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and is colloquially known as "Men's Day".

~1927 – The US Congress passed the Radio Act of 1927 which transferred most of the responsibility for radio to a newly created Federal Radio Commission, today's Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

~1934 – Leopold III ascended the throne of Belgium following the death of his father King Albert I 6 days earlier.

~1941 – Plutonium, first discovered and isolated in Decenber of 1940, was chemically identified by Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg.

~1943 – A fire broke out at St. Joseph's Orphanage in Co Cavan, Ireland. 36 people were killed, 35 of whom were children. The most likely cause of the blaze was determined to be an electrical fault in the laundry housed in the basement of the orphanage.

~1944 – The Soviet Union began the forced deportation of the Chechen and Ingush people from the North Caucasus to Central Asia. The deportation encompassed the entire nation of over 500,000 people. 20-50% of them were killed or died as a result of the Soviet action and the others were not allowed back to Chechnya until 1957.

~1945 – The Iwo Men: During the Battle of Iwo Jima, a group of United States Marines and a U.S. Navy Corpsman, reached the top of Mount Suribachi on the island and were photographed by Associate Press photographer Joe Rosenthal raising the American flag. Known as the most famous photograph of the Second World War, the image would later win a Pulitzer Prize and become the model for the national USMC War Memorial.

~1945 - The University of the Philippines College of Agriculture (UPCA) was sacked by the occupying Japanese troops and razed to the ground.

~1945 – The 11th Airborne Division, with Filipino guerrillas, freed 2,147 captives of the Los Baños internment camp.

~1945 – The Battle of Poznań ended. A massive assault by the Soviet Red Army resulted in the elimination of the Nazi German garrison in the stronghold city of Poznań in occupied Poland. The defeat of the German garrison had required almost an entire month of painstaking reduction of fortified positions, intense urban combat and a final assault on the city's citadel by the Red Army.

~1945 – The German town of Pforzheim was completely destroyed in a raid by 379 British bombers. Over 17,000 people were killed in the attack.

~1945 – In Italy, the Verona Philharmonic Theatre was bombed by Allied air forces. It reopened exactly as it had been before in 1975.

~1947 – The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) was founded.

~1958 – Cuban rebels kidnapped 5 time world driving champion Juan Manuel Fangio but he was later released and remained a good friend of his captors afterwards..

~1966 – In Syria, Baath party member Salah Jadid led an intra-party military coup that replaced the previous government of General Amin Hafiz, also a Baathist.

~1970 - Guyana became a republic.

~1974 – The Symbionese Liberation Army demanded $4 million, in the form of a food distribution program, for the release kidnap victim Patty Hearst.

~1980 – The United States Men's hockey team defeats the Finnish team to claim the gold medal.

~1980 – Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini stated that Iran's parliament would decide the fate of the American embassy hostages. (A outright statement that the Iranian government was a pack of thugs.)

~1981 – In Spain, Lieutenant-Colonel Antonio Tejero attempted a coup d'état by capturing the Spanish Congress of Deputies. The attempted coup failed and Tejero was the last of the coup leaders to be released from incarceration on December 2, 1996 after serving 15 years in the military prison at Alcalá de Henares.

~1983 – The United States Environmental Protection Agency announced its intent to buy out (and evacuate) the dioxin contaminated community of Times Beach, Missouri for $32 million.

~1987 – Light from Supernova 1987A, in the Large Magellanic Cloud, first reached Earth.

~1991 – During the Gulf War, the 1st Marine Division, 2nd Marine Division and the 1st Light Armored Infantry crossed into Kuwait and headed toward Kuwait City. They overran the well designed but poorly defended Iraqi trenches in the first few hours. The Marines crossed Iraqi barbed wire obstacles and mines, then engaged Iraqi tanks which surrendered shortly thereafter. Kuwaiti forces soon attacked Kuwait City, to which the Iraqis offered light resistance. The Kuwaitis lost 1 soldier and an aircraft, quickly liberating the city. Most Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait opted to surrender rather than fight.

~1991 – In Thailand, General Sunthorn Kongsompong and General Suchinda Kraprayoon led a bloodless coup d'état, deposing Prime Minister Chatichai Choonhavan. The generals accused Chatichai of corruption, and established the National Peacekeeping Council (NPKC) as an interim administration, with Sunthorn as chairman.

~1993 - Gary Coleman won a $1,280,000 lawsuit against his parents and former manager over misappropriation of his $3.8 million trust fund. Coleman later filed for bankruptcy in 1999. He attributed his financial problems to mismanagement of his trust.

~1997 - NBC-TV aired "Schindler's List", totally uncensored. (They gave ample warning of the film's graphic content prior to airing.)

~1998 – In the United States, tornadoes in central Florida killed 42 people, injured another 260 and damaged or destroyed more than 2,600 structures.

~1998 – Osama bin Laden published a fatwa declaring jihad against all Jews and "Crusaders". The latter term is commonly interpreted to refer to the people of Europe and the United States.

~1999 – An avalanche destroyed the Austrian village of Galtür, killing 31 and injuring another 26. Due to the continuing danger of avalanches, thousands of tourists had to be evacuated from Galtür and nearby Ischgl via air lift, for which the Austrian government asked for international help. Military and civil helicopters from Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France and the U.S. were engaged in one of the biggest rescue operations of Austria's recent history.

~2005 – In Slovakia, a 2 day meeting dubbed "Slovakia Summit 2005" took place between U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin. This occasion marked the first visit of a sitting American President to the Slovak Republic since its establishment in 1993.

~2005 – The controversial French law on colonialism was passed, requiring teachers to teach the "positive values of colonialism". It was finally repealed by president Jacques Chirac (UMP) at the beginning of 2006, after accusations of historical revisionism from most teachers and historians. Its article 13 was also criticized as it supported former Organisation armée secrète militants.

~2005 - The New York City medical examiner's office annouced that it had exhausted all efforts to identify the remains of the people killed at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, due to the limits of DNA technology at the time. Approximately 1,600 people had been identified leaving more than 1,100 unidentified.

~2006 – Dubai Ports World volunteered to postpone its takeover of significant operations at 6 US ports to give the White House more time to convince lawmakers that the deal posed no increased risks from terrorism.

~2008 – A United States Air Force B-2 Spirit crashed on Guam. It was the first operational loss of a B-2.

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February 24th



~303 – Roman Emperor Diocletian published his edict that began the persecution of Christians in his portion of the Empire.

~1387 – Died this day: King Charles III of Naples and Hungary, assassinated at Buda.

~1538 – The Treaty of Nagyvarad, a secret peace agreement between Ferdinand I of the Holy Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire, was signed in Várad. Through it, John Zápolya was recognized as King of Hungary, while Ferdinand retained the western parts of the Hungarian Kingdom and was recognized as heir to the Hungarian throne. John Zápolya was left with the remaining 2/3 of the Kingdom.

~1582 – Pope Gregory XIII issued the papal bull Inter gravissimas to promulgate the Gregorian calendar. (Well, damned good on you, Greg.)

~1607 – "L'Orfeo" by Claudio Monteverdi, one of the very first operas, was first performed before the Accademia degl'Invaghiti in a now unidentifiable room in the ducal palace at Mantua.

~1711 – The London première of Rinaldo by George Frideric Handel was performed at the Queen's Theatre in The Haymarket. It was the first Italian opera written for the London stage.

~1803 – The Supreme Court of the United States handed down its decision in "Marbury v. Madison". It was the first time the Supreme Court declared something "unconstitutional," and established the concept of judicial review in the U.S. (the idea that courts may oversee and nullify the actions of another branch of government). The landmark decision helped define the "checks and balances" of the American form of government.

~1809 – London's (3rd) Drury Lane Theatre burnt to the ground, leaving owner Richard Brinsley Sheridan destitute.

~1821 - While stationed in the town of Iguala, Agustín de Iturbide promulgated his 3 principles, or "guarantees," for Mexican independence from Spain.

~1822 – The first Swaminarayan temple in the world, Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, at Ahmedabad, was inaugurated.

~1826 – The Treaty of Yandaboo, the peace treaty that ended the First Anglo-Burmese War, was signed. With the British army at Yandabo village, only 50 miles from the capital Ava, the Burmese were forced to accept the British terms without discussion.

~1831 – The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, the first removal treaty in accordance with the Indian Removal Act, was proclaimed. The Choctaws in Mississippi ceded land east of the river in exchange for payment and land in the West. After the treaty was ratified by U.S. Congress, it allowed the Mississippi Choctaws to become the first major non-European ethnic group to officially gain recognition of U.S. citizenship.

~1839 – William Otis received a patent for his invention of the steam shovel.

~1848 – King Louis-Philippe of France abdicated the throne in favor of his 9 year old grandson, Philippe. Fearful of what had happened to Louis XVI, Louis-Philippe quickly disguised himself and fled Paris to England, riding in an ordinary cab under the name of "Mr. Smith". The National Assembly initially planned to accept young Philippe as king, but the strong current of public opinion rejected that. Louis Philippe was the last king to rule France although Napoleon III, styled as an emperor, would serve as its last monarch. (So he split town because he thought his neck was on the line and he left his 9 year old grandson to take the heat...what a pathetic piece of work!)

~1863 – Arizona was declared as a United States territory, in Washington, D.C. It consistedng of the western half of New Mexico Territory. The new boundaries would later form the basis of the state.

~1866 - In Washington, DC, an American flag made entirely of American bunting was displayed for the first time.

~1868 – Andrew Johnson became the first President of the United States to be impeached by the United States House of Representatives on 11 articles of impeachment detailing his "high crimes and misdemeanors". He was later acquitted in the Senate.

~1875 – Due to poor seamanship on the part of her captain during almost cyclonic conditions, the SS Gothenburg struck the Great Barrier Reef and sank off the Australian east coast. Only 22 of the 134 aboard survived.

~1886 - Thomas Edison and Mina Miller were married in Akron, Ohio.

~1890 – Chicago was selected to host the Columbian Exposition.

~1893 – The American University was chartered by an act of the Congress of the United States of America, primarily due to the efforts of Methodist Bishop John Fletcher Hurst.

~1895 – The War of Independence of Cuba started under the intellectual leadership of the writer and philosopher José Martí, who is considered by all Cubans as "Father of the Country". (Although Castro has always wanted that title for himself.)

~1899 – Western Washington University was established in Bellingham, Washington.

~1909 – The Hudson Motor Car Company became a registered company (formed 4 days earlier on February 20th).

~1917 – U.S. ambassador to Britain, Walter Page, met with Foreign Minister Balfour, and was given the ciphertext, the message in German, and the English translation of the Zimmermann Telegram. In it Germany pledged to ensure the return of New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona to Mexico if Mexico declared war on the United States. Page reported the story to President Woodrow Wilson, including details to be verified from telegraph company files in the U.S.

~1918 – The Estonian Declaration of Independence: Originally intended to be proclaimed on February 21st, the proclamation was delayed until the evening of the 23rd, when the manifesto was printed and read out aloud publicly in Pärnu. It took effect on the next day when the manifesto was printed and distributed in the capital, Tallinn.

~1920 – The German Workers' Party renamed itself the Nazi Party. (Certainly one of history's darker days.)

~1942 – The Battle of Los Angeles: a UFO flying over wartime Los Angeles caused a blackout order at 2:25 a.m. and attracted a huge barrage of anti-aircraft fire, ultimately killing 3 civilians. To this day the identity of the arial object(s) fired upon that night remain a mystery.

~1942 - The Voice of America (VOA) aired for the first time.

~1942 - The U.S. Government stopped shipments of all 12-gauge shotguns for sporting use for the wartime effort.

~1944 – Merrill's Marauders: The Marauders begin their 1,000 mile journey over the Patkai region of the Himalayas and into the Burmese jungle behind Japanese lines.

~1945 – Egyptian Premier Ahmed Maher Pasha declared war against the Axis Powers in World War II, primarily to gain a diplomatic advantage at the end of the war which was seen as imminent. Immediately after his announcement, Maher was assassinated at parliament. (I'm guessing that someone didn't like what was said in the announcement...)

~1946 - Juan Peron was elected president of Argentina.

~1956 - The city of Cleveland invoked a 1931 law that barred people under the age of 18 from dancing in public without an adult guardian. (That one wasn't really adhered to by the populace of the fair city...)

~1959- My older sister was born. Happy B-day Kimmy!

~1970 – National Public Radio was founded in the United States. It would first take to the airwaves in April, 1971.

~1971 – The All India Forward Bloc held an emergency central committee meeting after its chairman, Hemantha Kumar Bose, was murdered 3 days earlier. P.K. Mookiah Thevar was appointed as the new chairman.

~1981 – Buckingham Palace announced the engagement of Charles Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer.

~1981 – An earthquake registering 6.7 on the Richter scale hit Athens and Corinth in Greece, killing 20 people while injuring over 100 and destroying buildings in several towns to the west.

~1983 – A special commission of the U.S. Congress released a report that condemned the practice of Japanese internment during World War II. (??? What, we didn't condemn that before?)

~1988 - The U.S. Supreme Court overturned a $200,000 award to Rev. Jerry Falwell that had been won against "Hustler" magazine. The ruling expanded legal protections for parody and satire.

~1989 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini offerered a USD $3 million bounty, sponsored by an Iranian businessman, for the death of The Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie. (Khomeini was SUCH a bloody lowlife!)

~1989 – United Airlines Flt. 811, a Boeing 747, bound for New Zealand from Honolulu, Hawaii, suffered a structural failure at the forward cargo door and ripped open during flight. The resulting decompression blew out several rows of seats, killing 9 passengers in the business class section.

~1999 – The State of Arizona executed Karl LaGrand, a German national convicted of murder during a botched bank robbery, in spite of Germany's legal action filed in an attempt to save him.

~2006 – Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo declared Proclamation 1017 placing the country in a state of emergency in attempt to subdue a possible military coup.

~2007 – Japan launched its 4th spy satellite, stepping up its ability to monitor potential threats such as North Korea.

~2008 – Fidel Castro retired as the President of Cuba after nearly 50 years as Grand Poobah of the island. (Hey, have a cigar, Fidel...)

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February 25th



~138 – The Emperor Hadrian adopted Antoninus Pius, effectively making him his successor.

~1246 – Died this day: Dafydd ap Llywelyn, King of Gwynedd (b. 1215).

~1570 – Pope Pius V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I of England. The Papal bull Regnans in Excelsis was issued and declared "Elizabeth, the the pretended Queen of England and the servant of crime" to be a heretic, released all of her subjects from any allegiance to her, and excommunicated any who obeyed her orders.

~1713 – Died this day: King Frederick I of Prussia (b. 1657).

~1713 - Frederick William I ascended the throne of Prussia upon the death of his father King Frederick I.

~1751 - Edward Willet displayed the first trained monkey act in North America. (The trained monkey later went on to have a very successful career in federal politics...)

~1836 – Samuel Colt was granted a United States patent (# 9430X) for the Colt "revolving gun". Colt has been making its legendary revolvers ever since.

~1850 - Died this day: Daoguang, the 6th Qing emperor to rule over China (b. 1782).

~1870 – Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Mississippi, is sworn into the United States Senate, becoming the first African American ever to sit in the U.S. Congress.

~1901 – J.P. Morgan and attorney, Elbert H. Gary founded U. S. Steel by combining the Andrew Carnegie's Carnegie Steel Company with Gary's Federal Steel Company and William Henry "Judge" Moore's National Steel Company, for $492 million.

~1912 – Marie-Adélaïde, the eldest of 6 daughters of Guillaume IV, becomes the first reigning Grand Duchess of Luxembourg.

~1919 – Oregon placed a 1 cent per U.S. gallon tax on gasoline, becoming the first U.S. state to levy a gas tax.

~1921 – Born this day: Pierre Laporte, Canadian statesman and Quebec Minister of Labour murdered by the FLQ during the October Crisis (d. 1970)

~1921 – Tbilisi, capital of the Democratic Republic of Georgia, was occupied by Bolshevist Russia.

~1925 – Glacier Bay National Monument, now Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, was established in Alaska.

~1928 – Charles Jenkins Laboratories of Washington, D.C. became the first holder of a television license from the Federal Radio Commission.

~1930 - The bank check photographing device was patented.

~1932 – Adolf Hitler obtained German citizenship by naturalization, which allowed him to run in the 1932 election for Reichspräsident. (I dunno...methinks you guys would've done a hell of a lot better if you'd kept that one out.)

~1933 – The USS Ranger was launched. It was the first US Navy ship to be built solely as an aircraft carrier. (For some bizarre reason it was sold for scrap only 12 years later.)

~1938 - The most asymmetrical aircraft to have ever flown, the Blohm & Voss (tactical reconnaissance) BV 141, took to the air over Germany on its maiden flight. (It's 1AngryTaxPayer's FAVORITE warbird!)

~1940 - The New York Rangers and the Montreal Canadiens played in the first hockey game to be televised in the U.S. The game was aired on W2WBS in New York with one camera in a fixed position. The Rangers beat the Canadiens 6-2. (It wasn't often that the Rangers beat the Habs back then...)

~1941 – The February Strike: In occupied Amsterdam, a general strike was declared in response to increasing anti-Jewish measures instituted by the Nazis. The strike was largely struck down the next day.

~1947 – In Law #46 of February 25th, 1947 the Allied Control Council formally proclaimed the dissolution of the state of Prussia.

~1948 – The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia took control of the Czech government and the period of the Third Republic ended.

~1950 - "Your Show of Shows" debuted on NBC television. The 90 minute broadcast would run 139 episodes before the end of its run on June 5th, 1954.

~1951 – The very first Pan American Games opened in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

~1956 – In his speech "On the Personality Cult and its Consequences" Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced the "cult of personality" of Joseph Stalin.

~1965 - The Hotrod of the Skies, McDonnell Douglas' famed DC-9 took to the skies on its maiden flight. Nearly a thousand of the somewhat overpowered yet nimble jetliners were built before production finally ended in 1982. Still in widespread use, the DC-9 went on to spawn several variants such as the McDonnell Douglas MD-80, MD-90, the military version C-9 and the Boeing 717.

~1972 - Germany paid a $5 million ransom to Arab terrorist that had hijacked a commercial jetliner.

~1977 - A massive fire broke out in the Rossiya Hotel in Moscow, the largest hotel in Europe, killing 42 people and injuring 50 others.

~1980 – The Suriname government was overthrown by a military coup which was initiated with the shelling of the police station from an army ship off the coast of the nation's capital, Paramaribo.

~1986 – The People Power Revolution: President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines fled the nation after 20 years of rule. Corazon Aquino then became the first Filipino woman president.

~1991 – During the Gulf War, an Iraqi Scud missile hit an American military barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia killing 28 U.S. Army Reservists from Pennsylvania.

~1992 – Khojaly massacre: During the Nagorno-Karabakh War in Azerbaijan, 613 civilians were slaughtered by Armenian armed forces with help of the Russian 366th Motor Rifle Regiment, apparently not acting on orders from the command, over a 2 day period.

~1994 – The Mosque of Abraham Massacre: In the Cave of the Patriarchs in the West Bank city of Hebron, an Israeli settler and member of the far-right Israeli Kach movement, opened fire with an automatic rifle. He murdered 52 Palestinian worshippers and wounded 125 more before being subdued and beaten to death by survivors.

~1999 - In Moscow, China's Prime Minister Zhu Rongji and Russia's President Boris Yeltsin discussed trade and other issues.
~2000 - In Albany, New York, (after two days of deliberations) a mixed race jury acquitted 4 New York City police officers of second degree murder and lesser charges in the February 4th, 1999 shooting death of Amadou Diallo.

~2009 – The BDR Massacre: In Pilkhana, Dhaka, Bangladesh the regular Bangladesh Rifles(BDR) soldiers mutinied against the senior officials, killing 74 of the high officials of BDR (including 57 Army officers who served in BDR), including the Dhaka BDR Sector Commander and the Director General of BDR. The BDR were outraged that they did not get higher pay and were not able to take part in UN military activities which pay very well. After their demands were not met the unit rebelled. However security forces in Bangladesh rounded up hundreds of fugitive border guards after the 2 day mutiny crumbled in the face of a government show of force. The arrests came a day after army tanks surrounded the border guards’ headquarters in the heart of the crowded capital.

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