February 5

Today is Superbowl Sunday in the United States. The New England Patriots and the Atlanta Falcons will meet in Houston, Texas to decide the NFL Championship.

Today is also Nat'l Weatherpersons' Day in the U.S., but, I'd still look out the window.;)


Events

1597 – A group of early Japanese Christians are killed by the new government of Japan for being seen as a threat to Japanese society.

1778 – South Carolina becomes the second state to ratify the Articles of Confederation.

1807 – HMS Blenheim (1761) and HMS Java disappear off the coast of Rodrigues.

1852 – The New Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, one of the largest and oldest museums in the world, opens to the public.

1869 – The largest alluvial gold nugget in history, called the "Welcome Stranger", is found in Moliagul, Victoria, Australia.

1909 – Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland announces the creation of Bakelite, the world's first synthetic plastic.

1913 – Greek military aviators, Michael Moutoussis and Aristeidis Moraitinis perform the first naval air mission in history, with a Farman MF.7 hydroplane.

1919 – Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith launch United Artists.

1924 – The Royal Greenwich Observatory begins broadcasting the hourly time signals known as the Greenwich Time Signal.

1945 – World War II: General Douglas MacArthur returns to Manila.

1958 – A hydrogen bomb known as the Tybee Bomb is lost by the US Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, never to be recovered.

1994 – Byron De La Beckwith is convicted of the 1963 murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers.

:knockdup:Births:knockdup:

1840 – John Boyd Dunlop (tires); 1840 – Hiram Maxim; 1878 – André Citroën (Citroën cars); 1900 – Adlai Stevenson II; 1906 – John Carradine; 1914 – William S. Burroughs; 1919 – Red Buttons; 1919 – Tim Holt; 1934 – Hank Aaron; 1940 – H. R. Giger; 1941 – Stephen J. Cannell; 1941 – Cory Wells; 1942 – Roger Staubach; 1943 – Nolan Bushnell (founded Atari); 1943 – Michael Mann; 1944 – Al Kooper; 1946 – Charlotte Rampling; 1947 – Darrell Waltrip; 1948 – Christopher Guest; 1948 – Barbara Hershey; 1948 – Errol Morris; 1961 – Tim Meadows; 1962 – Jennifer Jason Leigh; 1964 – Laura Linney; 1964 – Duff McKagan; 1967 – Chris Parnell; 1969 – Bobby Brown; 1969 – Michael Sheen; 1971 – Sara Evans; 1986 – Reed Sorenson

:skull:Deaths:skull:

1881 – Thomas Carlyle; 1922 – Slavoljub Eduard Penkala (invented the Mechanical pencil); 1967 – Leon Leonwood Bean; 1991 – Dean Jagger; 1995 – Doug McClure; 1998 – Tim Kelly; 2008 – Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

February 6

Today is observed as an (deep breath) International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation (phew, talk about a long day, sheesh).

California, Wisconsin, and 21 other U.S. states celebrate Ronald Reagan Day today.

Meanwhile, the Kiwis observe Waitangi Day, celebrating the founding of New Zealand.

Also, the Sapporo Snow Festival begins today, in Sapporo, Japan.


Events

1685 – James II of England and VII of Scotland becomes King upon the death of his brother Charles II.

1778 – American Revolutionary War: In Paris the Treaty of Alliance and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce are signed by the United States and France signaling official recognition of the new republic.

1788 – Massachusetts becomes the sixth state to ratify the United States Constitution.

1819 – Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles founds Singapore.

1820 – The first 86 African American immigrants sponsored by the American Colonization Society depart New York to start a settlement in present-day Liberia.

1840 – Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, establishing New Zealand as a British colony.

1851 – The largest Australian bushfires in a populous region in recorded history take place in the state of Victoria.

1862 – American Civil War: Forces under the command of Ulysses S. Grant and Andrew H. Foote give the Union its first victory of the war, capturing Fort Henry, Tennessee in the Battle of Fort Henry.

1899 – Spanish–American War: The Treaty of Paris, a peace treaty between the United States and Spain, is ratified by the United States Senate.

1918 – British women over the age of 30 get the right to vote.

1922 – The Washington Naval Treaty is signed in Washington, D.C., limiting the naval armaments of United States, Britain, Japan, France, and Italy.

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

1952 – Elizabeth II becomes queen regnant of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms upon the death of her father, George VI. At the exact moment of succession, she was in a tree house at the Treetops Hotel in Kenya. ("For the first time in the history of the world, a young girl [she was 26:right:] climbed into a tree one day a Princess and after having what she described as her most thrilling experience she climbed down from the tree next day a Queen — God bless her." ~Jim Corbett):queen:

1958 – Eight Manchester United F.C. players and 15 other passengers are killed in the Munich air disaster.

1958 - George Harrison joined Liverpool group The Quarrymen.

1959 – Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments files the first patent for an integrated circuit.

1978 – The Blizzard of 1978, one of the worst Nor'easters in New England history, hit the region, with sustained winds of 65 mph and snowfall of four inches an hour.

1988 – Michael Jordan makes his signature slam dunk from the free throw line inspiring Air Jordan and the Jumpman logo.

1990 - Billy Idol suffered serious injuries when he failed to stop at a stop sign and crashed his Harley-Davidson into a car. Idol had been James Cameron's first choice for the role of the villainous T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day; the role was recast entirely as a result of the accident.

1996 – Willamette Valley Flood: Floods in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, United States, causes over US$500 million in property damage throughout the Pacific Northwest.

1998 – Washington National Airport is renamed Ronald Reagan National Airport.

1998 - American singer and guitarist Carl Wilson of The Beach Boys died, aged 51, after a long battle with lung cancer.

1998, Austrian singer Falco (Johann Holzel) was killed in a road accident after his car collided with a bus. He scored the 1986 UK & US No.1 single 'Rock Me Amadeus' making him the first-ever Austrian act to score a UK and US No.1 hit single.

2001 - Guitarist Don Felder was fired from The Eagles. He would later launch a $50 million law suit against drummer Don Henley and guitarist Glen Frey, alleging wrongful termination and breach of implied-in-fact contract. Henley and Frey then countersued Felder for breach of contract, alleging that Felder had written and attempted to sell the rights to a "tell-all" book. Both parties settled out-of-court for an undisclosed amount.

2011 - Irish guitarist and singer Gary Moore died in his sleep of a heart attack in his hotel room while on holiday in Estepona, Spain.

2012 – A 6.9 magnitude earthquake hits near the central Philippines off the coast of Negros Island causing at least 51 deaths and injuring 112 others.

2013 – A 8.0 magnitude earthquake hits the Solomon Islands killing 10 people and injuring 17 others.

2016 – A 6.4 magnitude earthquake hits southern Taiwan, killing at least 38 people and injuring over 530 more. [I'm making preparations to be somewhere flat with no buildings or cliffs in the future on this date. Helluva day for earthquakes.]

:knockdup:Births:knockdup:

1756 – Aaron Burr (3rd VPOTUS); 1833 – J. E. B. Stuart; 1895 – Babe Ruth; 1911 – Ronald Reagan:devil:(40th POTUS); 1912 – Eva Braun (Adolf's main squeeze); 1913 – Mary Leakey; 1914 – Thurl Ravenscroft (voice of Tony The Tiger "They'rrrrre Grrreat!", sang "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch"); 1917 – Zsa Zsa Gabor; 1922 – Patrick Macnee (The Avengers (1961)); 1931 – Rip Torn; 1932 – François Truffaut (director Fahrenheit 451); 1939 – Mike Farrell ('B.J. Hunnicutt' on M*A*S*H); 1940 – Tom Brokaw (talking head); 1941 – Dave Berry♪ ♫; 1943 – Fabian Forte♪ ♫; 1944 – Michael Tucker (L.A. Law); 1945 – Bob Marley♪ ♫; 1946 – Richie Hayward:drummer:(Little Feat); 1946 – Kate McGarrigle♪ ♫; 1949 – Jim Sheridan (co-writer, director of My Left Foot); 1950 – Natalie Cole♪ ♫; 1957 – Kathy Najimy; 1957 – Robert Townsend; 1962 – Axl Rose (whiny-voiced asshole); 1964 – Gordon Downie♪ ♫(The Tragically Hip); 1966 – Rick Astley♪ ♫

Continued in next post

Continued from previous post

:skull:Deaths:skull:

1918 – Gustav Klimt:artist:; 1952 – George VI; 1958 – victims of the Munich air disaster: Geoff Bent, Roger Byrne, Eddie Colman, Walter Crickmer, Mark Jones, David Pegg, Frank Swift, Tommy Taylor; 1981 – Hugo Montenegro♪ ♫; 1990 – Jimmy Van Heusen:keys:; 1991 – Danny Thomas:turd:; 1993 – Arthur Ashe; 1994 – Joseph Cotten; 1998 - Carl Wilson♪ ♫(The Beach Boys); 1998 - Falco♪ ♫; 1999 – Jimmy Roberts♪ ♫; 2007 – Frankie Laine♪ ♫("He rode a blazing saddle, he wore a shining star, his job, to offer battle to bad men near and far"); 2009 – Philip Carey; 2009 – James Whitmore; 2011 – Gary Moore:shred:(Thin Lizzie)

Also in the Pacific Northwest, especially around the Salish Sea / Puget Sound.

gah.

February 7

1497 – The Bonfire of the Vanities occurs, during which supporters of Girolamo Savonarola burn cosmetics, art, and books in Florence, Italy.

1812 – The strongest in a series of earthquakes strikes New Madrid, Missouri.

1898 – Dreyfus affair: Émile Zola is brought to trial for libel for publishing J'accuse.

1900 – Second Boer War: British troops fail in their third attempt to lift the Siege of Ladysmith.

1904 – A fire in Baltimore, Maryland destroys over 1,500 buildings in 30 hours.

1907 – The Mud March is the first large procession organized by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS).

1940 – The second full-length animated Walt Disney film, Pinocchio, premieres.

1944 – World War II: In Anzio, Italy, German forces launch a counteroffensive during the Allied Operation Shingle.

1962 – The United States bans all Cuban imports and exports.

1974 – Grenada gains independence from the United Kingdom.

1979 - Stephen Stills became the first rock performer to record on digital equipment in Los Angeles' Record Plant Studio.

1984 – Space Shuttle program: Mission STS-41-B: Astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart make the first untethered space walk using the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU).

1986 – Twenty-eight years of one-family rule end in Haiti, when President Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier flees the Caribbean nation.

1990 – Dissolution of the Soviet Union: The Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party agrees to give up its monopoly on power.

1991 – The Troubles: The Provisional IRA launched a mortar attack on 10 Downing Street in London, the headquarters of the British government.

1992 – The Maastricht Treaty is signed, leading to the creation of the European Union.

1994 - Blind Melon's lead singer Shannon Hoon was forced to leave the American Music Awards ceremony for his loud and disruptive behaviour. Hoon was later charged with battery, assault, resisting arrest, and destroying a police station phone.

1995 – Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, is arrested in Islamabad, Pakistan.

2009 – Bushfires in Victoria leave 173 dead in the worst natural disaster in Australia's history.

2013 – Mississippi officially certifies the Thirteenth Amendment, becoming the last state to approve the abolition of slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment was formally ratified by Mississippi in 1995.

:knockdup:Births:knockdup:

1804 – John Deere; 1812 – Charles Dickens; 1867 – Laura Ingalls Wilder (author Little House On The Prairie book series); 1873 – Thomas Andrews (designer of the RMS Titanic); 1885 – Sinclair Lewis (author Elmer Gantry); 1887 – Eubie Blake:keys:; 1906 – Puyi; 1906 – Oleg Konstantinovich Antonov (Antonov Aircraft Company); 1908 – Buster Crabbe; 1915 – Eddie Bracken; 1919 – Jock Mahoney; 1920 – Oscar Brand♪ ♫; 1922 – Hattie Jacques; 1932 – Gay Talese; 1934 – Earl King♪ ♫; 1946 – Sammy Johns (sang "Chevy Van", and that's alright with me); 1946 – Pete Postlethwaite; 1949 – Joe English:drummer:(Wings); 1955 – Miguel Ferrer; 1956 – Mark St. John:shred:(KISS); 1960 – Robert Smigel (puppeteer and voice behind Triumph, The Insult Comic Dog); 1960 – James Spader; 1962 – Garth Brooks♪ ♫; 1962 – David Bryan:keys:(Bon Jovi); 1962 – Eddie Izzard; 1965 – Chris Rock; 1972 – Robyn Lively; 1975 – Wes Borland:shred:(Limp Bizkit); 1978 – Ashton Kutcher; 1985 – Tina Majorino (ther little girl with a map of Dry Land tattooed on her back 'Enola' in Waterworld); 1999 – Bea Miller♪ ♫:love:

:skull:Deaths:skull:

1871 – Henry E. Steinway♪ ♫; 1938 – Harvey Samuel Firestone (founded the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company); 1959 – Guitar Slim♪ ♫; 1979 – Josef Mengele; 1999 – King Hussein of Jordan; 2000 – Doug Henning; 2001 – Dale Evans; 2015 – Billy Casper

This is the kind of thing that you read and you just kind of skim over it.

But can you imagine? Where do 1,500 families live while they rebuild? And how do you rebuild that many houses? How do you afford it if you are one of those families? Did they have insurance then?

How many families lived in those formaldehyde FEMA trailers after Katrina? Was it like that?

In less than 30 hours the fire lasted...

By railroad? Wow, clear the tracks. Philly, NYC, Wilmington, and Washington are on the main line but like Atlantic City, others would have to change tracks.

February 8

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

1693 – The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, is granted a charter by King William III and Queen Mary II.

1865 – Delaware refuses to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Slavery was outlawed in the United States, including Delaware, when the Amendment was ratified by the requisite number of states on December 6, 1865. Delaware ratified the Thirteenth Amendment on February 12, 1901, which was the ninety-second anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.

1887 – The Dawes Act authorizes the President of the United States to survey Native American tribal land and divide it into individual allotments.

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

1922 – United States President Warren G. Harding introduces the first radio set in the White House.

1924 – Capital punishment: The first state execution in the United States by gas chamber takes place in Nevada.

1950 – The Stasi, the secret police of East Germany, is established.

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

1971 – The NASDAQ stock market index opens for the first time.

1973 - Max Yasgur died of a heart attack, aged 53. He was the owner of the dairy farm in Bethel, New York at which the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was held between August 15 - 18, 1969.

1974 – After 84 days in space, the crew of Skylab 4, the last crew to visit American space station Skylab, returns to Earth.

1983 – The Melbourne dust storm hits Australia's second largest city. The result of the worst drought on record and a day of severe weather conditions, a 320 metres (1,050 ft) deep dust cloud envelops the city, turning day to night.

1986 – Hinton train collision: Twenty-three people are killed when a VIA Rail passenger train collides with a 118-car Canadian National freight train near the town of Hinton, Alberta, west of Edmonton.

1990 - Suffering from depression, American singer/songwriter Del Shannon died of self inflicted gunshot wounds.

1993 – General Motors sues NBC after Dateline NBC allegedly rigs two crashes intended to demonstrate that some GM pickups can easily catch fire if hit in certain places. NBC settles the lawsuit the next day.

1996 – The U.S. Congress passes the Communications Decency Act.

2013 – A blizzard disrupts transportation and leaves hundreds of thousands of people without electricity in the Northeastern United States and parts of Canada.

:knockdup:Births:knockdup:

1700 – Daniel Bernoulli; 1820 – William Tecumseh Sherman; 1828 – Jules Verne; 1906 – Chester Carlson (invented Xerography); 1914 – Bill Finger (co-created Batman); 1921 – Lana Turner; 1922 – Audrey Meadows; 1925 – Jack Lemmon; 1930 – Alejandro Rey; 1931 – James Dean; 1932 – John Williams♪ ♫; 1940 – Ted Koppel; 1941 – Nick Nolte; 1941 – Tom Rush♪ ♫; 1942 – Robert Klein; 1942 – Terry Melcher♪ ♫(record producer, only child of Doris Day); 1944 – Roger Lloyd-Pack; 1948 – Dan Seals♪ ♫(England Dan & John Ford Coley, younger brother of Jim Seals of Seals & Crofts); 1949 – Brooke Adams; 1950 – Cristina Ferrare; 1953 – Mary Steenburgen; 1955 – John Grisham; 1955 – Jim 'The Anvil' Neidhart; 1960 – Stu Hamm:bass:; 1961 – Vince Neil♪ ♫(Motely Crue); 1968 – Gary Coleman ("Watchoo talkin' 'bout, Willis?"); 1969 – Mary McCormack (In Plain Sight); 1974 – Seth Green

:skull:Deaths:skull:

1587 – Mary, Queen of Scots:behead:; 1725 – Peter the Great; 1936 – Charles Curtis (31st VPOTUS); 1956 – Connie Mack; 1960 – Giles Gilbert Scott (designed the Red telephone box & Liverpool Cathedral); 1973 - Max Yasgur♪ ♫(owned the farm where Woodstock was held); 1990 – Del Shannon♪ ♫; 1994 – Raymond Scott♪ ♫; 1999 – Iris Murdoch; 2007 – Anna Nicole Smith:ggw:

February 9

474 – Zeno crowned as co-emperor of the Byzantine Empire.

1775 – American Revolutionary War: The British Parliament declares Massachusetts [to be] in rebellion.

1825 – After no candidate receives a majority of electoral votes in the US presidential election of 1824, the United States House of Representatives elects John Quincy Adams as the sixth President of the United States.

1861 – American Civil War: Jefferson Davis is elected the Provisional President of the Confederate States of America by the Confederate Convention at Montgomery, Alabama.

1870 – US president Ulysses S. Grant signs a joint resolution of Congress establishing the U.S. Weather Bureau.

1889 – US president Grover Cleveland signs a bill elevating the United States Department of Agriculture to a Cabinet-level agency.

1895 – William G. Morgan creates a game called Mintonette, which soon comes to be referred to as volleyball.

1913 – A group of meteors is visible across much of the eastern seaboard of North and South America, leading astronomers to conclude the source had been a small, short-lived natural satellite of the Earth.

1941 – World War II: The Cathedral of San Lorenzo in Genoa, Italy is struck by a bomb, which fails to detonate.

1942 – Year-round Daylight Saving Time is re-instated in the United States as a wartime measure to help conserve energy resources.

1943 – World War II: Allied authorities declare Guadalcanal secure after Imperial Japan evacuates its remaining forces from the island, ending the Battle of Guadalcanal.

1950 – Second Red Scare: US Senator Joseph McCarthy accuses the United States Department of State of being filled with Communists.

1964 – The Beatles make their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, performing before a "record-busting" audience of 73 million viewers across the USA.

1965 – The United States Marine Corps sends a MIM-23 Hawk missile battalion to South Vietnam, the first American troops in-country without an official advisory or training mission.

1971 – Satchel Paige becomes the first Negro League player to be voted into the USA's Baseball Hall of Fame.

1986 – Halley's Comet last appeared in the inner Solar System.

1991 – Voters in Lithuania vote for independence.

:knockdup:Births:knockdup:

1737 – Thomas Paine; 1773 – William Henry Harrison (9th POTUS); 1846 – Wilhelm Maybach (of the Mercedes tuning Maybachs); 1874 – Amy Lowell; 1901 – Brian Donlevy (Beau Geste); 1909 – Heather Angel (Hound of the Baskervilles); 1909 – Carmen Miranda♪ ♫; 1909 – Dean Rusk; 1914 – Ernest Tubb♪ ♫; 1922 – Kathryn Grayson (Showboat, Anchors Aweigh, Kiss Me Kate); 1928 – Frank Frazetta:artist::devil:; 1928 – Roger Mudd; 1930 – Garner Ted Armstrong; 1941 – Sheila Kuehl ('Zelda' on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis); 1942 – Carole King♪ ♫; 1943 – Joe Pesci; 1945 – Mia Farrow; 1947 – Joe Ely♪ ♫; 1947 – Major Harris♪ ♫; 1949 – Judith Light (Who's the Boss?); 1953 – Ciarán Hinds; 1955 – Charles Shaughnessy (The Nanny); 1960 – Holly Johnson♪ ♫(Frankie Goes To Hollywood); 1963 – Travis Tritt♪ ♫; 1976 – Charlie Day (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia); 1981 – Tom Hiddleston; 1987 – Michael B. Jordan (Fantastic Four, Creed)

:skull:Deaths:skull:

1555 – John Hooper; 1881 – Fyodor Dostoyevsky (The Brothers Karamazov, Crime & Punishment); 1969 – George "Gabby" Hayes; 1981 – Bill Haley♪ ♫; 1984 – Yuri Andropov; 1995 – David Wayne (The Tender Trap, The Andromeda Strain); 2005 – Robert Kearns (invented the windscreen wiper); 2007 – Ian Richardson (House of Cards (British series), Grey Poupon commercials); 2010 – Walter Frederick Morrison (invented the Frisbee); 2012 – Joe Moretti♪ ♫; 2015 – Ed Sabol (co-founded NFL Films)

February 10

1258 – Baghdad falls to the Mongols, and the Abbasid Caliphate is destroyed.

1306 – In front of the high altar of Greyfriar's Church in Dumfries, Robert the Bruce murders John Comyn sparking revolution in the Wars of Scottish Independence.

1567 – Lord Darnley, second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, is found strangled following an explosion at the Kirk o' Field house in Edinburgh, Scotland, a suspected assassination.

1763 – French and Indian War: The Treaty of Paris ends the war and France cedes Quebec to Great Britain.

1840 – Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom marries Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

1861 – Jefferson Davis is notified by telegraph that he has been chosen as provisional President of the Confederate States of America.

1870 – The YWCA is founded in New York City.

1906 – The Royal Navy battleship HMS Dreadnought was launched, representing such a marked advance in naval technology that her name came to be associated with an entire generation of battleships.

1933 – In round 13 of a boxing match at New York City's Madison Square Garden, Primo Carnera knocks out Ernie Schaaf. Schaaf dies four days later.

1942 – The first gold record is presented to Glenn Miller for "Chattanooga Choo Choo".

1943 – World War II: Attempting to completely lift the Siege of Leningrad, the Soviet Red Army engages German troops and Spanish volunteers in the Battle of Krasny Bor.

1954 – United States President Dwight Eisenhower warns against United States intervention in Vietnam.

1962 – Captured American U2 spy-plane pilot Gary Powers is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.

1962 – Roy Lichtenstein's first solo exhibition opened, and it included Look Mickey, which featured his first employment of Ben-Day dots, speech balloons and comic imagery sourcing, all of which he is now known for.

1996 – IBM supercomputer Deep Blue defeats Garry Kasparov in chess for the first time.

2009 – The first accidental hypervelocity collision between two intact satellites in low Earth orbit took place when Iridium 33 and Kosmos-2251 collided and destroyed each other.

:knockdup:Births:knockdup:

1775 – Charles Lamb; 1846 – Lord Charles Beresford; 1890 – Boris Pasternak; 1892 – Alan Hale, Sr.; 1893 – Jimmy Durante; 1898 – Bertolt Brecht; 1901 – Stella Adler; 1905 – Chick Webb; 1906 – Lon Chaney, Jr. (he was seen walking with the Queen, doin the werewolves of London); 1927 – Leontyne Price; 1929 – Jerry Goldsmith; 1930 – Robert Wagner; 1939 – Roberta Flack; 1944 – Peter Allen; 1950 – Mark Spitz; 1955 – Jim Cramer; 1955 – Greg Norman; 1959 – John Calipari; 1961 – George Stephanopoulos; 1962 – Cliff Burton:bass:(Metallica); 1964 – Glenn Beck:cry:; 1967 – Laura Dern; 1967 – Vince Gilligan; 1974 – Elizabeth Banks; 1982 – Justin Gatlin:bolt:; 1991 – Emma Roberts; 1997 – Chloë Grace Moretz

:skull:Deaths:skull:

1837 – Alexander Pushkin; 1923 – Wilhelm Röntgen; 1957 – Laura Ingalls Wilder; 1966 – Billy Rose; 1992 – Alex Haley; 2000 – Jim Varney; 2005 – Arthur Miller; 2008 – Roy Scheider; 2010 – Charles Wilson; 2014 – Shirley Temple; 2015 - Slick W. Cat:blackr:

:idea: Aha, that's why the Comet channel is running a Shirley Temple marathon.

February 11

World Day of the Sick, a feast day of the Roman Catholic Church, is observed on this date.

Today is Inventors' Day, in the U.S.


Events

660 BC – According to tradition, Emperor Jimmu founded Japan and established his capital in Yamato.

55 – Tiberius Claudius Caesar Britannicus, heir to the Roman emperorship, dies under mysterious circumstances in Rome, clearing the way for Nero :violin: to become Emperor.

1790 – The Religious Society of Friends, also known as Quakers, petitions U.S. Congress for the abolition of slavery.

1794 – First session of United States Senate opens to the public.

1808 – Jesse Fell burns anthracite on an open grate as an experiment in heating homes with coal.

1812 – Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry is accused of "gerrymandering" for the first time.

1840 – Gaetano Donizetti's opera La fille du régiment receives its first performance in Paris, France.

1843 – Giuseppe Verdi's opera I Lombardi alla prima crociata receives its first performance in Milan, Italy.

1858 – Bernadette Soubirous experiences her first vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Lourdes, France.

1861 – American Civil War: The United States House of Representatives unanimously passes a resolution guaranteeing noninterference with slavery in any state.

1903 – Anton Bruckner's 9th Symphony receives its first performance in Vienna, Austria.

1937 – A sit-down strike ends when General Motors recognizes the United Auto Workers.

1938 – BBC Television produces the world's first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of the Karel Čapek play R.U.R., that coined the term "robot".

1939 – A Lockheed P-38 Lightning flies from California to New York in 7 hours 2 minutes.

1943 – World War II: General Dwight D. Eisenhower is selected to command the allied armies in Europe.

1953 – U.S.President Dwight D. Eisenhower denies all appeals for clemency for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

1971 – Eighty-seven countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union, sign the Seabed Arms Control Treaty outlawing nuclear weapons on the ocean floor in international waters.

1973 – Vietnam War: First release of American prisoners of war from Vietnam takes place.

1979 – The Iranian Revolution establishes an Islamic theocracy under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

1981 – Around 100,000 US gallons (380 m3) of radioactive coolant leak into the containment building of TVA Sequoyah 1 nuclear power plant in Tennessee, contaminating eight workers.

1990 – Nelson Mandela is released from Victor Verster Prison outside Cape Town, South Africa after 27 years as a political prisoner.

1990 – Buster Douglas, a 42:1 underdog, knocks out Mike Tyson :eek: in ten rounds at Tokyo to win boxing's World Heavyweight title, and cause the largest upset in sports history.

1992 - Mötley Crüe fired their singer Vince Neil when he turned up for rehearsals, claiming that he had lost his passion for the band and was now more involved with racing cars.

1997 – Space Shuttle Discovery is launched on a mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope.

1998 - The hand-written lyrics to Elton John's hit 'Candle in the Wind' written by Bernie Taupin were auctioned off at Christie's in LA for £278,512.

2001 – A Dutch programmer launched the Anna Kournikova virus infecting millions of emails via a trick photo of the tennis star.:love:

2011 – The first wave of the Egyptian revolution culminates in the resignation of president Hosni Mubarak and the transfer of power to the Supreme Military Council after 18 days of protests.

2012 - Whitney Houston was found dead in suite 434 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, submerged in the bathtub. Beverly Hills paramedics arrived at approximately 3:30 p.m. and found the singer unresponsive and performed CPR. Houston was pronounced dead at 3:55 p.m. Local police said there were "no obvious signs of criminal intent." It was later ruled by the coroner to have been an "accidental drowning".

:knockdup:Births:knockdup:

1466 – Elizabeth of York; 1800 – Henry Fox Talbot; 1812 – Alexander H. Stephens (Vice President of the Confederate States of America); 1847 – Thomas Edison; 1909 – Max Baer:boxers:; 1914 – Josh White♪ ♫; 1917 – Sidney Sheldon; 1919 – Eva Gabor; 1921 – Lloyd Bentsen ("Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."); 1925 – Virginia E. Johnson (Masters & Johnson); 1925 – Kim Stanley (the narrator of To Kill A Mockingbird, 'Pancho Barnes' in The Right Stuff); 1926 – Leslie Nielsen (The Naked Gun movies, Airplane! movies, Police Squad!); 1934 – Tina Louise ('Ginger' on Gilligan's Island); 1934 – Manuel Noriega; 1934 – John Surtees:driving:; 1935 – Gene Vincent:shred:; 1936 – Burt Reynolds; 1937 – Phillip Walker♪ ♫; 1939 – Gerry Goffin♪ ♫(co-wrote "Will You Love Me Tomorrow", "The Loco-Motion", "Theme from Mahogany (Do You Know Where You're Going To)", "Saving All My Love for You", et al); 1941 – Sérgio Mendes:keys:; 1943 – Stan Szelest:keys:(The Band, Ronnie Hawkins, Lonnie Mack); 1953 – Jeb Bush; 1961 – Carey Lowell (Law & Order: Trial by Jury, Licence to Kill ); 1962 – Sheryl Crow♪ ♫; 1964 – Sarah Palin; 1964 – Ken Shamrock; 1969 – Jennifer Aniston; 1971 – Damian Lewis (Life, Homeland, Band of Brothers); 1974 – Isaiah Mustafa (The Man Your Man Could Smell Like); 1976 – Peter Hayes♪ ♫(Black Rebel Motorcycle Club); 1977 – Mike Shinoda♪ ♫(Linkin Park); 1979 – Brandy Norwood♪ ♫(Moesha); 1981 – Kelly Rowland♪ ♫(Destiny's Child); 1982 – Natalie Dormer:love:(Game of Thrones, The Tudors); 1984 – Aubrey O'Day♪ ♫(Danity Kane)

:skull:Deaths:skull:

55 – Tiberius Claudius Caesar Britannicus; 1503 – Elizabeth of York; 1650 – René Descartes; 1868 – Léon Foucault (Foucault pendulum); 1959 – Marshall Teague:driving:; 1963 – Sylvia Plath; 1976 – Lee J. Cobb; 1985 – Henry Hathaway; 1986 – Frank Herbert; 1994 – Neil Bonnett:driving:; 1994 – Sorrell Booke ('Boss Hogg' on The Dukes of Hazzard); 1994 – William Conrad; 2006 – Peter Benchley (author Jaws, The Deep, The Island); 2008 – Frank Piasecki (pioneered tandem rotor helicopter designs, a la Chinook); 2010 – Alexander McQueen (fashion designer); 2012 – Whitney Houston♪ ♫; 2013 – Rick Huxley:bass:(Dave Clark Five); 2015 – Bob Simon; 2015 – Jerry Tarkanian (NCAA basketball coach famous for chewing a towel on the sidelines)

On the upside, Whitney just made five years clean and sober.

World Day of The Sick? Perfect for all the sick fuckers around here. :lol2:

February 12

The U.S. state of Georgia celebrates the arrival of the first colonists to the thirteenth of the original Thirteen Colonies with Georgia Day.

Today is Darwin Day, celebrating the birth date of Charles Darwin and his contributions to science.

Today, is a legal public holiday in the U.S. celebrating the birth date of Abraham Lincoln.

Also observed today is National Freedom to Marry Day, ion the U.S., promoting and bringing awareness to same sex marriage.

Our friends and neighbors in Canadia mark this day as Sexual and Reproductive Health Awareness Day.

And, finally, the General Assembly of the United Nations has adopted this date as Red Hand Day, drawing attention to the fates of child soldiers in war and armed conflict.


Events

1502 – Vasco da Gama sets sail from Lisbon, Portugal, on his second voyage to India.

1554 – A year after claiming the throne of England for nine days, Lady Jane Grey is beheaded for treason.

1593 – Japanese invasion of Korea: Approximately 3,000 Joseon defenders led by general Kwon Yul successfully repel more than 30,000 Japanese forces in the Siege of Haengju.

1733 – Englishman James Oglethorpe founds Georgia, the 13th colony of the Thirteen Colonies, and its first city at Savannah (known as Georgia Day).

1855 – Michigan State University is established.

1909 – The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded.

1915 – In Washington, D.C., the first stone of the Lincoln Memorial is put into place.

1924 – George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue received its premiere in a concert titled "An Experiment in Modern Music", in Aeolian Hall, New York, by Paul Whiteman and his band, with Gershwin playing the piano.

1946 – World War II: Operation Deadlight ends after scuttling 121 of 154 captured German U-boats.

1947 – The largest observed iron meteorite until that time creates an impact crater in Sikhote-Alin, in the Soviet Union.

1963 – Construction begins on the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.

1967 - 15 police officers raided Redlands, the West Sussex home of The Rolling Stones' Keith Richards during a weekend party. The police who were armed with a warrant issued under the dangerous drugs act took away various substances for forensic tests. George and Pattie Harrison had been at the house, but it was said that the police waited for them to leave before they raided the house in order not to bust the holder of an MBE.

1974 – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970, is exiled from the Soviet Union.

1977 - Pink Floyd released their tenth studio album Animals in the US, where it reached No.3 in the charts. The album's cover image, a pig floating between two chimneys on Battersea Power Station, was conceived by bassist Roger Waters and realised by long-time design and photographic collaborators Hipgnosis.

1989 - Aretha Franklin lost a court case against Broadway producer Ashton Springer, who sued for $1 million (£0.58 million) when Aretha failed to turn up for rehearsals for the stage show Sing Mahalia Sing, blaming her fear of flying on the non appearance.

1993 – Two-year-old James Bulger is abducted from New Strand Shopping Centre by two ten-year-old boys, who later torture and murder him.

1994 – Four thieves break into the National Gallery of Norway and steal Edvard Munch's iconic painting The Scream.

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

2001 – NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft touches down in the "saddle" region of 433 Eros, becoming the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.

2003 - Former Doors drummer John Densmore took out legal action against The Doors keyboard player Ray Manzarek and guitarist Robby Krieger for breach of contract, trademark infringement and unfair competition. The band had reformed with Ex- Cult singer Ian Astbury and former Police drummer Stewart Copeland. Densmore said "It shouldn't be called The Doors if it's someone other than Jim Morrison singing."

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

2009 – Colgan Air Flight 3407 crashes into a house in Clarence Center, New York while on approach to Buffalo Niagara International Airport, killing all on board and one on the ground.

2016 – Pope Francis met Patriarch Kirill at José Martí International Airport in Cuba, the first meeting between the pontiff of the Catholic Church and the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, together they signed the Havana Declaration.

:knockdup:Births:knockdup:

41 - Tiberius Claudius Caesar Britannicus; 1663 – Cotton Mather; 1775 – Louisa Adams (6th FLOTUS); 1809 – Charles Darwin; 1809 – Abraham Lincoln (16th POTUS); 1876 – 13th Dalai Lama; 1877 – Louis Renault (founded Renault automobiles); 1893 – Omar Bradley; 1904 – Ted Mack; 1915 – Lorne Greene; 1919 – Forrest Tucker; 1923 – Franco Zeffirelli; 1926 – Joe Garagiola, Sr.; 1926 – Charles Van Doren (quiz show cheater); 1928 – Vincent Montana, Jr.:drummer:(MFSB); 1930 – Arlen Specter; 1936 – Joe Don Baker; 1938 – Judy Blume; 1939 – Ray Manzarek:keys:(The Doors); 1942 – Ehud Barak; 1944 – Moe Bandy♪ ♫; 1945 – Maud Adams; 1948 – Ray Kurzweil; 1950 – Steve Hackett:shred:(Genesis); 1950 – Michael Ironside (B-movies); 1952 – Simon MacCorkindale; 1952 – Michael McDonald:keys:(Steely Dan, Doobie Bros); 1953 – Joanna Kerns; 1956 – Arsenio Hall; 1956 – Brian Robertson:shred:(Thin Lizzy, Motorhead); 1966 – Paul Crook♪ ♫(Meat Loaf, Anthrax, Sebastian Bach); 1968 – Josh Brolin; 1968 – Chynna Phillips♪ ♫; 1969 – Darren Aronofsky; 1974 – 'Prince' Naseem Hamed:boxers:; 1980 – Christina Ricci:love:; 1984 – Brad Keselowski:driving:

Continued in next post

Continued from previous post

:skull:Deaths:skull:

1554 – Lady Jane Grey:behead:; 1789 – Ethan Allen; 1804 – Immanuel Kant (he probably could, if he'd apply himself); 1929 – Lillie Langtry; 1942 – Grant Wood:artist:; 1971 – James Cash Penney (founded J.C. Penney dept store); 1976 – Sal Mineo; 1982 – Victor Jory; 1983 – Eubie Blake:keys:; 1985 – Nicholas Colasanto ('Coach' on Cheers); 1995 – Philip Taylor Kramer:bass:(Iron Butterfly); 2000 – Screamin' Jay Hawkins♪ ♫; 2000 – Tom Landry (must've been a sad for LumberJim); 2000 – Charles M. Schulz (Peanuts); 2008 – David Groh (Rhoda); 2011 – Betty Garrett (All In The Family, Laverne & Shirley); 2011 – Kenneth Mars (that guy who was in that thing); 2012 – David Kelly ('Granpa Joe,' in Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, Waking Ned Devine); 2014 – Sid Caesar; 2015 – Gary Owens

February 13

Today is World Radio Day. Really? Ya want me, ME, to celebrate radio?! Nice try. Fuck you, radio.


Events

1322 – The central tower of Ely Cathedral collapses on the night of 12th–13th.

1542 – Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII of England, is executed for adultery.

1633 – Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition.

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

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

1880 – Thomas Edison observes the Edison effect.

1913 – The 13th Dalai Lama proclaims Tibetan independence following a period of domination by Manchu Qing dynasty and initiated a period of almost four decades of independence.

1914 – Copyright: In New York City the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) is established to protect the copyrighted musical compositions of its members.

1935 – A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh.

1945 – World War II: Royal Air Force bombers are dispatched to Dresden, Germany to attack the city with a massive aerial bombardment.

1954 – Frank Selvy becomes the only NCAA Division I basketball player ever to score 100 points in a single game.

1955 – Israel obtains four of the seven Dead Sea Scrolls.

1960 – With the success of a nuclear test codenamed "Gerboise Bleue", France becomes the fourth country to possess nuclear weapons.

1960 – Black college students stage the first of the Nashville sit-ins at three lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee.

1961 - Frank Sinatra launched his own record label, Reprise Records, in order to allow more artistic freedom for his own recordings. Hence, he garnered the nickname “The Chairman of the Board.” One of the label’s founding principles under Sinatra’s leadership was that each artist would have full creative freedom, and, at some point, complete ownership of their work.

1961 – An allegedly 500,000-year-old rock is discovered near Olancha, California, US, that appears to anachronistically encase a spark plug.

1967 – American researchers discover the Madrid Codices by Leonardo da Vinci in the National Library of Spain.

1970 - On this day, Friday the 13th, Black Sabbath released their debut self-titled studio album on Vertigo records in the UK. Peaking at No.8 on the charts, the album has been recognized as the first main album to be credited with the development of the heavy metal genre.

1979 – An intense windstorm strikes western Washington and sinks a 1/2-mile-long section of the Hood Canal Bridge.

1981 – A series of sewer explosions destroys more than two miles of streets in Louisville, Kentucky.

1982 - The marble slab was stolen from the grave of Lynyrd Skynyrd's singer Ronnie Van Zant, police found it two weeks later in a dried up river bed.

1983 – Two US Marshals are killed in a shootout with tax protester Gordon Kahl (<--Interesting read.) in Medina, North Dakota.

1990 – German reunification: An agreement is reached on a two-stage plan to reunite Germany.

2004 – The Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announces 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 - Rod Stewart was paid $1,000,000 when he performed at a billionaire's birthday bash. Stewart was booked to play a half-hour gig to help Steve Schwarzman celebrate his 60th birthday held at New York's Park Avenue Armory.

2008 – Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd makes a historic apology to the Indigenous Australians and the Stolen Generations.

2011 – For the first time in more than 100 years the Umatilla, an American Indian tribe, are able to hunt and harvest a bison just outside Yellowstone National Park, restoring a centuries-old tradition guaranteed by a treaty signed in 1855.

:knockdup:Births:knockdup:

1885 – Bess Truman (35th FLOTUS); 1891 – Grant Wood:artist:; 1919 – Tennessee Ernie Ford♪ ♫; 1920 – Boudleaux Bryant♪ ♫(wrote "Rocky Top", Nazareth hit "Love Hurts", Everly Bros hits "All I Have to Do Is Dream", "Bye Bye Love" et al); 1923 – Chuck Yeager:devil:; 1932 – Susan Oliver; 1933 – Kim Novak; 1934 – George Segal; 1938 – Oliver Reed; 1941 – Bo Svenson; 1942 – Carol Lynley; 1942 – Peter Tork:bass:(The Monkees); 1943 - Bill Szymczyk♪ ♫; 1944 – Stockard Channing; 1944 – Jerry Springer ("Jerr-EE!, Jerr-EE!, Jerr-EE!"); 1947 – Stephen Hadley; 1947 – Mike 'Coach K' Krzyzewski; 1947 – Kevin Bloody Wilson♪ ♫; 1950 – Peter Gabriel♪ ♫(Genesis); 1951 – David Naughton (An American Werewolf In London, Dr. Pepper commercials); 1952 – Ed Gagliardi:bass:(Foreigner); 1955 – Scott Smith:bass:(Loverboy); 1956 – Peter Hook:bass:(Joy Division); 1957 – Tony Butler:bass:(Big Country); 1961 – Henry Rollins♪ ♫(Black Flag, Rollins Band); 1966 – Neal McDonough (Band Of Brothers, Desperate Housewives, Suits); 1974 – Robbie Williams♪ ♫; 1976 – Feist♪ ♫; 1979 – Mena Suvari (American Beauty, American Pie movies)

:skull:Deaths:skull:

1542 – Catherine Howard ("Hassaaaaan chop!"; 1728 – Cotton Mather; 1818 – George Rogers Clark; 1883 – Richard Wagner♪ ♫; 1976 – Lily Pons♪ ♫; 1996 – Martin Balsam; 2002 – Waylon 'Watasha' Jennings♪ ♫; 2014 – Ralph Waite (The Waltons, NCIS); 2016 – Antonin Scalia

February 14

Today is :heartpumpValentine's Day:heartpump. So, smell a rose, eat a piece of chocolate, get some...As for me:sadpace:

IIIIIIIIIIIIII ain't got nobooooooody
Nobody cares for me
Nobody cares for me
IIIIIIIIIIIIII'm so sad and looooooonely
Sad and lonely, sad and lonely
Won't some sweet mama come and take a chance with me?
'Cause I ain't so bad:cool:

Today is also V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls.

Concurrently with Valentine's Day, Singles Awareness Day (SAD) is a made up thing observed today by sad, envious people no one wants to be around, who feel left out.


Events

1349 – Several hundred Jews are burned to death by mobs while the remaining Jews are forcibly removed from Strasbourg.

1400 – Richard II of England dies, most probably from starvation, in Pontefract Castle, on the orders of Henry Bolingbroke.

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

1779 – James Cook is killed by Native Hawaiians near Kealakekua on the Island of Hawaii.

1849 – In New York City, James Knox Polk becomes the first serving President of the United States to have his photograph taken.

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

1859 – Oregon is admitted as the 33rd U.S. state.

1899 – Voting machines are approved by the U.S. Congress for use in federal elections.

1900 – British forces begin the Battle of the Tugela Heights in an effort to lift the Siege of Ladysmith.

1912 – Arizona is admitted as the 48th U.S. state. It is the last state formed in the continental U.S.

1912 – The US Navy commissions its first class of diesel-powered submarines.

1924 – The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company changes its name to International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).

1929 – Saint Valentine's Day Massacre: Seven people, six of them gangster rivals of Al Capone's gang, are murdered in Chicago.

1945 – World War II: On the first day of the bombing of Dresden, the British Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Forces begin fire-bombing Dresden. In 3 days of bombing, 722 RAF, and 527 USAAF heavy bombers drop 3900 tons of bombs and incendiary devices, destroying 1600 acres of central Dresden.
_______________________________________________

Apologies, but I will have to delay the rest of today's entry. Buddy has a minor emergency. Gravdigr to the rescue!

But two guys got away, disguised themselves as women, and took a train to Florida.

That's hot; I like it!

Well, I just finished finishing yesterday's post.

And because someone somewhere doesn't want you to have it, it's floating about in the ether somewhere right fucking now, giving you and me the finger. Laughing.

So.

Fuck you. And fuck me. You don't get the post. And me? I get fucked twice because I wasted my fucking time making the motherfucker, and I wasted my fucking time yesterday helping out a man who is damn near 60 years old and can't manage his fucking life. So much for good deeds.

And you don't get links, or funny, happy, little smilies today, either. Wanna fight about it? Stick your head up your ass and fight for air.

Now let's see if this one flies off into the ether, too.

February 15

1493 – While on board the Niña, Christopher Columbus writes an open letter (widely distributed upon his return to Portugal) describing his discoveries and the unexpected items he came across in the New World.

1764 – The city of St. Louis is established in Spanish Louisiana (now in Missouri, USA).

1879 – Women's rights: US President Rutherford B. Hayes signs a bill allowing female attorneys to argue cases before the Supreme Court of the United States.

1898 – The battleship USS Maine explodes and sinks in Havana harbor in Cuba, killing 274. This event leads the United States to declare war on Spain.;

1925 – The 1925 serum run to Nome: The second delivery of serum arrives in Nome, Alaska.

1933 – In Miami, Giuseppe Zangara attempts to assassinate US President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, but instead shoots Chicago mayor Anton J. Cermak, who dies of his wounds on March 6, 1933.

1944 – World War II: The assault on Monte Cassino, Italy begins.

1946 – ENIAC, the first electronic general-purpose computer, is formally dedicated at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

1949 – Gerald Lankester Harding and Roland de Vaux begin excavations at Cave 1 of the Qumran Caves, where they will eventually discover the first seven Dead Sea Scrolls.

1954 – Canada and the United States agree to construct the Distant Early Warning Line, a system of radar stations in the far northern Arctic regions of Canada and Alaska.

1965 – A new red-and-white maple leaf design is adopted as the flag of Canada, replacing the old Canadian Red Ensign banner.

1971 – The decimalisation of British coinage is completed on Decimal Day.

1972 – Sound recordings are granted U.S. federal copyright protection for the first time.

1989 – Soviet war in Afghanistan: The Soviet Union officially announces that all of its troops have left Afghanistan.

2001 – The first draft of the complete human genome is published in Nature.

2012 – Three hundred sixty people die in a fire at a Honduran prison in the city of Comayagua.

2013 – A meteor explodes over Russia, injuring 1,500 people as a shock wave blows out windows and rocks buildings. This happens unexpectedly only hours before the expected closest ever approach of the larger and unrelated asteroid 2012 DA14.

Births

1564 – Galileo Galilei, 1797 – Henry E. Steinway, 1809 – Cyrus McCormick, 1812 – Charles Lewis Tiffany, 1820 – Susan B. Anthony, 1874 – Ernest Shackleton, 1892 – James Forrestal, 1907 – Cesar Romero, 1914 – Hale Boggs, 1914 – Kevin McCarthy, 1918 – Allan Arbus, 1918 – Hank Locklin, 1927 – Harvey Korman, 1928 – Norman Bridwell, 1931 – Claire Bloom, 1935 – Roger B. Chaffee, 1951 – Melissa Manchester, 1951 – Jane Seymour, 1954 – Matt Groening, 1955 – Janice Dickinson, 1955 – Christopher McDonald, 1957 – Jake E. Lee, 1957 – Jimmy Spencer, 1964 – Chris Farley, 1971 – Alex Borstein

Deaths

1965 – Nat King Cole, 1973 – Wally Cox, 1981 – Mike Bloomfield, 1984 – Ethel Merman, 1988 – Richard Feynman, 1996 – McLean Stevenson, 2016 – Vanity

I'm so confused.

I see yesterday's post, posted yesterday. And I see today's post, posted today.

So what got lost?

Your deeds have been confirmed as good, as no good deed goes unpunished. ;)

Well, now looking more closely, I see yesterday's post ends in 1945.

I just assumed not much of note happened after that. I guess you were adding more. Sorry!
_______________________________________________________________________________
And I ignored the bit after the line because I assumed it was a signature.

Do try to keep up.

:p:

you crack me up man.

:D

February 16

Today the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea;))celebrates Day Of The Shining Star, marking the birth of the Eternal Illustrious Supreme Leader, and greatest golfer in the history of the planet, Kim Jong-il.

There are 318 days remaining in 2017.

There are 311 days until Christmas.


Events

1646 – Battle of Torrington, Devon: The last major battle of the first English Civil War.

1804 – First Barbary War: Stephen Decatur leads a raid to burn the pirate-held frigate USS Philadelphia.

1852 – Studebaker Brothers wagon company, precursor of the automobile manufacturer, is established.

1874 – The Silver Dollar becomes legal US tender.

1923 – Howard Carter unseals the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, King Tut.

1933 – The Blaine Act ends Prohibition in the United States. And there was much rejoicing.

1937 – Wallace H. Carothers receives a United States patent for nylon.

1940 – World War II: Altmark Incident: The German tanker Altmark is boarded by sailors from the British destroyer HMS Cossack. 299 British prisoners are freed.

1945 – World War II: American forces land on Corregidor Island in the Philippines.

1959 – Fidel Castro becomes Premier of Cuba after dictator Fulgencio Batista was overthrown on January 1.

1960 – The U.S. Navy submarine USS Triton begins Operation Sandblast, setting sail from New London, Connecticut, to begin the first submerged circumnavigation of the globe.

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

1978 – The first computer bulletin board system is created (CBBS in Chicago).

1983 – The Ash Wednesday bushfires in Victoria and South Australia kill 75.

1985 – Hezbollah (Party of God) is founded.

1986 – The Soviet liner MS Mikhail Lermontov runs aground in the Marlborough Sounds, New Zealand.

1987 – The trial of John Demjanjuk, accused of being a Nazi guard dubbed "Ivan the Terrible" in Treblinka extermination camp, starts in Jerusalem.

1991 - The Simpsons were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with 'Do The Bartman'. The song was written by Michael Jackson and Bryan Lorenand, The Simpsons became the first cartoon characters to make No.1 since The Archies' hit 'Sugar Sugar' in 1969. Jackson was a massive fan of The Simpsons and had called the producers one night offering to write Bart a number one single and do a guest spot on the show.

2005 – The National Hockey League cancels the entire 2004–05 regular season and playoffs.

2006 – The last Mobile army surgical hospital (MASH) is decommissioned by the United States Army.

:knockdup:Births:knockdup:

1812 – Henry Wilson (18th VPOTUS); 1843 – Henry M. Leland (founded Cadillac and Lincoln); 1898 – Katharine Cornell; 1901 – Chester Morris (played Boston Blackie); 1903 – Edgar Bergen; 1909 – Hugh Beaumont ('Ward Cleaver' on Leave It To Beaver); 1909 – Richard McDonald (co-founded McDonald's); 1914 – Jimmy Wakely♪ ♫(one of the last singing cowboys); 1920 – Anna Mae Hays (1st female General in US Armed Forces); 1926 – Margot Frank (older sister of Anne Frank); 1935 – Brian Bedford; 1935 – Sonny Bono♪ ♫; 1941 – Kim Jong-il; 1952 – William Katt; 1952 – James Ingram♪ ♫; 1954 – Margaux Hemingway:love:; 1957 – LeVar Burton; 1958 - Ice-T (Tracy Marrow)♪ ♫; 1959 – John McEnroe; 1960 – Pete Willis:shred:(Def Leppard); 1961 – Andy Taylor:shred:(Duran Duran, Power Station); 1964 – Christopher Eccleston (the 9th Doctor Who); 1972 – Jerome Bettis; 1972 – Sarah Clarke; 1977 – Ian Clarke (founded Freenet); 1979 – Valentino Rossi (motorcycle racer)

:skull:Deaths:skull:

1928 – Eddie Foy, Sr.; 1967 – Smiley Burnette♪ ♫; 1974 – John Garand (designed the M1 Garand Rifle); 1996 – Roger Bowen ('Col. Henry Blake' in M*A*S*H (movie); 1996 – Brownie McGhee♪ ♫; 2000 – Lila Kedrova (Zorba The Greek); 2000 – Karsten Solheim (founded PING golf equipment); 2001 – Howard W. Koch (producer The Manchurian Candidate (1962), The Odd Couple (1968), Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Airplane!); 2001 – William Masters (of Masters & Johnson); 2013 – Tony Sheridan♪ ♫(the only non-Beatle to appear as lead singer on a Beatles recording that charted as a single); 2015 – Lesley Gore♪ ♫(sang "It's My Party"); 2016 – Boutros Boutros-Ghali

You mean Fatty II, Fatty I's son and father of Fatty III.

February 17

Today is Random Act Of Kindness Day, so do something nice for someone.


Events

364 – Roman Emperor Jovian dies after a reign of eight months. He is found dead in his tent at Tyana (Asia Minor) en route back to Constantinople in suspicious circumstances.

1621 – Myles Standish is appointed as first commander of the English Plymouth Colony in North America.

1801 – An electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr is resolved when Jefferson is elected President of the United States and Burr, Vice President by the United States House of Representatives.

1819 – The United States House of Representatives passes the Missouri Compromise for the first time.

1863 – A group of citizens of Geneva, Switzerland founded an International Committee for Relief to the Wounded, which later became known as the International Committee of the Red Cross.

1864 – American Civil War: The H. L. Hunley becomes the first submarine to engage and sink a warship, the USS Housatonic.

1865 – American Civil War: Columbia, South Carolina, is burned as Confederate forces flee from advancing Union forces.

1904 – Madama Butterfly receives its première at La Scala in Milan.

1933 – Newsweek magazine is first published.

1944 – World War II: The Battle of Eniwetok begins: The battle ends in an American victory on February 22.

1959 – Project Vanguard: Vanguard 2, the first weather satellite is launched to measure cloud-cover distribution.

1965 – Project Ranger: The Ranger 8 probe launches 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 – Cumulative sales of the Volkswagen Beetle exceed those of the Ford Model T.

1974 – Robert K. Preston, a disgruntled U.S. Army private, buzzes the White House in a stolen helicopter.

1980 – First winter ascent of Mount Everest by Krzysztof Wielicki and Leszek Cichy.

1989 - David Coverdale married actress Tawny Kitaen (known for her provocative appearances in Whitesnake's music videos 'Here I Go Again, 'Is This Love' and 'Still of the Night'). The couple divorced in 1991.

1996 – In Philadelphia, world champion Garry Kasparov beats the Deep Blue supercomputer in a chess match.

:knockdup:Births:knockdup:

1844 – Aaron Montgomery Ward; 1877 – André Maginot (Maginot Line); 1910 – Marc Lawrence; 1914 – Arthur Kennedy; 1916 – Raf Vallone; 1924 – Margaret Truman (author, only child of Harry & Bess Truman); 1925 – Hal Holbrook; 1930 – Ruth Rendell; 1931 – Buddy Ryan; 1934 – Barry Humphries (played Dame Edna Everage); 1935 – Christina Pickles; 1936 – Jim Brown; 1937 – Mary Ann Mobley:love:(Miss America 1959); 1940 – Gene Pitney♪ ♫; 1942 – Huey P. Newton (co-founded the Black Panther Party); 1950 – Rickey Medlocke:shred:(Blackfoot, Lynyrd Skynyrd); 1954 – Lou Ann Barton♪ ♫; 1954 – Rene Russo; 1956 – Richard Karn ('Al Borland' on Home Improvement); 1959 – Rowdy Gaines; 1962 – Lou Diamond Phillips; 1963 – Larry the Cable Guy ("Git r done!"); 1963 – Michael Jordan; 1965 – Michael Bay; 1970 – Dominic Purcell; 1971 – Denise Richards; 1972 – Billie Joe Armstrong♪ ♫(Green Day); 1972 – Taylor Hawkins:drummer:(Foo Fighters, Alanis Morissette); 1974 – Jerry O'Connell; 1981 – Joseph Gordon-Levitt (3rd Rock From The Sun, Looper); 1981 – Paris Hilton (famous for being famous); 1989 – Chord Overstreet (Glee); 1991 – Ed Sheeran♪ ♫

:skull:Deaths:skull:

364 – Jovian; 1909 – Geronimo; 1961 – Nita Naldi; 1982 – Thelonious Monk:keys:; 1982 – Lee Strasberg; 1994 – Randy Shilts; 2005 – Dan O'Herlihy; 2006 – Bill Cowsill♪ ♫(The Cowsills); 2010 – Kathryn Grayson♪ ♫; 2012 – Michael Davis:bass:(MC5); 2013 – Mindy McCready♪ ♫; 2014 – Bob Casale:keys:(Devo)

Spawning the expression, "only in Philadelphia". ;)

February 18

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

1791 – Congress passes a law admitting the state of Vermont to the Union, effective 4 March 1791, after that state had existed for 14 years as a de facto independent largely unrecognized state.

1861 – In Montgomery, Alabama, Jefferson Davis is inaugurated as the provisional President of the Confederate States of America.

1878 – John Tunstall is murdered by outlaw Jesse Evans, sparking the Lincoln County War in Lincoln County, New Mexico.

1885 – Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is published in the United States.

1900 – Second Boer War: Imperial forces suffer their worst single-day loss of life on Bloody Sunday, the first day of the Battle of Paardeberg.

1911 – The first official flight with airmail takes place from Allahabad, United Provinces, British India (now India), when Henri Pequet, a 23-year-old pilot, delivers 6,500 letters to Naini, about 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) away.

1930 – While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh discovers 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. [Wonder how many times that has happened since?]

1954 – The first Church of Scientology is established in Los Angeles.

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

1957 – Walter James Bolton becomes the last person legally executed in New Zealand.

1970 – The Chicago Seven are 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, (6 Cal.3d 628) invalidates the state's death penalty and commutes the sentences of all death row inmates to life imprisonment.

1977 – The Space Shuttle Enterprise test vehicle is carried on its maiden "flight" on top of a Boeing 747.

1983 – Thirteen people die and one is seriously injured in the Wah Mee massacre in Seattle. It is said to be the largest robbery-motivated mass-murder in U.S. history.

1990 - Freddie Mercury made his final public appearance on stage when he joined the rest of Queen to collect the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, held at the Dominion Theatre, London, England.

2001 – FBI agent Robert Hanssen is arrested for spying for the Soviet Union. He is ultimately convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

2001 – Seven-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Dale Earnhardt dies in an accident during the Daytona 500.

2004 – Up to 295 people, including nearly 200 rescue workers, die near Nishapur in Iran when a runaway freight train carrying sulfur, petrol and fertilizer catches fire and explodes.

2013 – Armed robbers steal a haul of diamonds worth $50 million during a raid at Brussels Airport in Belgium.

:knockdup:Births:knockdup:

1745 – Alessandro Volta (invented the battery, namesake of the volt); 1838 – Ernst Mach; 1848 – Louis Comfort Tiffany; 1862 – Charles M. Schwab (co-founded Bethlehem Steel); 1890 – Edward Arnold; 1890 – Adolphe Menjou; 1892 – Wendell Willkie; 1898 – Enzo Ferrari; 1906 – Hans Asperger (namesake of Asperger's Syndrome); 1914 – Pee Wee King♪ ♫; 1919 – Jack Palance; 1920 – Bill Cullen (game show host); 1922 – Allan Melvin; 1925 – George Kennedy (Cool Hand Luke, The Blue Knight, The Sons Of Katie Elder); 1929 – Len Deighton; 1931 – Johnny Hart (co-created The Wizard of Id); 1931 – Toni Morrison; 1933 – Yoko Ono; 1933 – Mary Ure; 1934 – Skip Battin♪ ♫(The Byrds, The New Riders of the Purple Sage, The Flying Burrito Brothers); 1939 – Bobby Hart (co-wrote and performed much of the Monkees' music); 1947 – Dennis DeYoung♪ ♫(Styx); 1948 – Keith Knudsen:drummer:(The Doobie Bros); 1949 – Gary Ridgway (convicted serial killer The Green River Killer); 1950 – John Hughes; 1950 – Cybill Shepherd; 1952 – Juice Newton♪ ♫; 1953 – Robbie Bachman:drummer:(Bachman-Turner Overdrive); 1954 – John Travolta; 1957 – Vanna White; 1960 – Greta Scacchi; 1964 – Matt Dillon; 1965 – Dr. Dre♪ ♫; 1968 – Molly Ringwald; 1974 – Jillian Michaels; 1977 – Sean Watkins♪ ♫(Nickel Creek); 1985 – Lee Boyd Malvo (Beltway Sniper attacks)

:skull:Deaths:skull:

1294 – Kublai Khan; 1405 – Timur; 1546 – Martin Luther; 1564 – Michelangelo:artist:; 1902 – Charles Lewis Tiffany; 1906 – John Batterson Stetson (Stetson Hats); 1933 – James J. 'Gentleman Jim' Corbett:boxers:(Corbett defeated John L. Sullivan:eek:); 1964 – Joseph-Armand Bombardier (founded Bombardier Inc.); 1967 – J. Robert Oppenheimer ("Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."); 1973 – Frank Costello "The Prime Minister of the Underworld"; 1977 – Andy Devine (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Stagecoach); 1981 – Jack Northrop (founded the Northrop Corporation which became Northrup-Grumman); 1998 – Harry Caray; 2006 – Bill Cowsill♪ ♫(The Cowsills); 2014 – Maria Franziska von Trapp

How damn many Cowsills and von Trapps are/were there, anyway? Can we have a week without one being born or dying?

Vermont had their shit together, set up a democratic government, minted currency, told New York and Quebec to fuck off because Vermont would defend it's borders.

February 19

1600 – The Peruvian stratovolcano Huaynaputina explodes in the most violent eruption in the recorded history of South America.

1674 – England and the Netherlands sign the Treaty of Westminster, ending the Third Anglo-Dutch War. A provision of the agreement transfers the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam to England, and it is renamed New York.

1807 – Former Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr is arrested for treason in Wakefield, Alabama and confined to Fort Stoddert.

1846 – In Austin, Texas the newly formed Texas state government is officially installed. The Republic of Texas government officially transfers power to the State of Texas government following the annexation of Texas by the United States.

1878 – Thomas Edison patents the phonograph.

1913 – Pedro Lascuráin becomes President of Mexico for 45 minutes; this is the shortest term to date of any person as president of any country.

1942 – World War II: Nearly 250 Japanese warplanes attack the northern Australian city of Darwin, killing 243 people.

1942 – World War II: United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs executive order 9066, allowing the United States military to relocate Japanese Americans to internment camps.

1943 – World War II: Battle of Kasserine Pass in Tunisia begins.

1945 – World War II: Battle of Iwo Jima: About 30,000 United States Marines land on the island of Iwo Jima.

1976 – Executive Order 9066, which led to the relocation of Japanese Americans to internment camps, is rescinded by President Gerald Ford's Proclamation 4417.

1985 – William J. Schroeder becomes the first recipient of an artificial heart to leave the hospital.

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

2012 – Forty-four people are killed in a prison brawl in Apodaca, Nuevo León, Mexico.

:knockdup:Births:knockdup:

1473 – Nicolaus Copernicus; 1911 – Merle Oberon; 1916 – Eddie Arcaro:dedhorse:; 1924 – Lee Marvin:boxers:; 1930 – John Frankenheimer; 1940 – Smokey Robinson♪ ♫(The Miracles); 1940 – Bobby Rogers♪ ♫(The Miracles); 1946 – Paul Dean:shred:(Loverboy); 1946 – Karen Silkwood (subject of movie Silkwood, played by Meryl Streep); 1948 – Mark Andes:bass:(Canned Heat, Spirit, Heart); 1948 – Tony Iommi:shred::devil:(Black Sabbath, Heaven & Hell); 1949 – Eddie Hardin:keys:(Spencer Davis Group); 1950 – Andy Powell♪ ♫(Wishbone Ash); 1952 – Amy Tan (author The Joy Luck Club); 1955 – Jeff Daniels (Escanaba in da Moonlight, Dumb And Dumber, Gods & Generals); 1956 – Kathleen Beller; 1957 – Falco♪ ♫; 1957 – Ray Winstone (Tracker); 1959 – Roger Goodell (clown); 1963 – Seal♪ ♫; 1965 – Jon Fishman:drummer:(Phish); 1966 – Justine Bateman:love:; 1967 – Benicio del Toro; 1972 – Sunset Thomas:doit:; 1975 – Daniel Adair:drummer:(Nickelback); 1991 – Trevor Bayne:driving:; 1993 – Victoria Justice:love:

:skull:Deaths:skull:

1916 – Ernst Mach; 1936 – Billy Mitchell; 1980 – Bon Scott♪ ♫:devil::drunk:(AC/DC); 1992 – Tojo Yamamoto; 1997 – Deng Xiaoping; 1998 – Grandpa Jones♪ ♫; 2001 – Stanley Kramer; 2003 – Johnny Paycheck; 2009 – Kelly Groucutt:bass:(ELO); 2016 – Umberto Eco; 2016 – Harper Lee

He's responsible for losing all that slave labor and had to import Mexicans. :p:

February 20

Today the U.S. celebrates Presidents' Day.

The entirety of The Northern Hemisphere unites and comes together today as one people to celebrate Hoodie Hoo Day. So, hoodie hoo to you!

Today is also marked as a World Day of Social Justice. Dear Social Justice Warriors, Instead of celebrating this cause, how about you take the day off, and maybe cut the world just a little fucking slack, mmkay?


Events

1472 – Orkney and Shetland are pawned by Norway to Scotland in lieu of a dowry for Margaret of Denmark.

1547 – Edward VI of England is crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey.

1685 – René-Robert Cavelier establishes Fort St. Louis at Matagorda Bay thus forming the basis for France's claim to Texas.

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

1816 – Rossini's opera The Barber of Seville premieres at the Teatro Argentina in Rome.

1872 – The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens in New York City.

1877 – Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake receives its premiere at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.

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

1931 – The Congress of the United States approves the construction of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge by the state of California.

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

1942 – Lieutenant Edward "Butch" O'Hare becomes America's first World War II flying ace.

1943 – The Saturday Evening Post publishes the first of Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms in support of United States President Franklin Roosevelt's 1941 State of the Union address theme of Four Freedoms.

1952 – Emmett Ashford becomes the first African-American umpire in organized baseball by being authorized to be a substitute umpire in the Southwestern International League.

1956 – The United States Merchant Marine Academy becomes a permanent Service Academy.

1959 - 16 year old Jimi Hendrix made his stage debut when he played a show at the Temple De Hirsch Sinai synagogue in Seattle.

1962 – Mercury program: While aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the earth, making three orbits in four hours, 55 minutes.

1965 – Ranger 8 crashes into the Moon after a successful mission of photographing possible landing sites for the Apollo program.

1971 – The United States Emergency Broadcast System is accidentally activated in an erroneous national alert.

1979 – An earthquake cracks Sinila volcanic crater in Dieng Plateau, releases poisonous hydrogen sulfide gas and kills 149 villagers in Indonesian province of Central Java.

1986 – The Soviet Union launches its Mir spacecraft. Remaining in orbit for 15 years, it is occupied for ten of those years.

2003 – During a Great White concert in West Warwick, Rhode Island, a pyrotechnics display sets the Station nightclub ablaze, killing 100 and injuring over 200 others.

2016 – Six people are killed and two injured in multiple shooting incidents in Kalamazoo County, Michigan.

:knockdup:Births:knockdup:

1902 – Ansel Adams; 1906 – Gale Gordon (Lucy's boss on The Lucy Show); 1921 – Buddy Rogers; 1924 – Gloria Vanderbilt; 1925 – Robert Altman; 1927 – Roy Cohn; 1927 – Sidney Poitier; 1929 – Amanda Blake (Long Branch Saloon owner 'Kitty Russell' on Gunsmoke); 1934 – Bobby Unser:driving:; 1937 – Roger Penske:drivng:; 1937 – Nancy Wilson♪ ♫; 1946 – J. Geils; 1942 – Mitch McConnell; 1946 – Sandy Duncan:eyeball:; 1946 – J. Geils♪ ♫(J. Geils Band); 1947 – Peter Strauss; 1949 – Ivana Trump; 1950 – Walter Becker♪ ♫(Steely Dan); 1951 – Edward Albert; 1951 – Gordon Brown; 1951 – Randy California♪ ♫; 1954 – Patty Hearst; 1963 – Charles Barkley; 1964 – French Stewart ('Harry' on 3rd Rock From The Sun); 1966 – Cindy Crawford; 1967 – Kurt Cobain:greenface; 1967 – Lili Taylor; 1984 – Trevor Noah; 1987 – Miles Teller (Whiplash); 1988 – Rihanna♪ ♫

:skull:Deaths:skull:

1893 – P. G. T. Beauregard; 1900 – Washakie; 1920 – Robert Peary; 1936 – Max Schreck (Nosferatu (1922)); 1966 – Chester W. Nimitz (America's last Fleet Admiral, namesake of the Nimitz-class of supercarrier); 1972 – Walter Winchell; 1992 – Dick York (Bewitched); 1993 – Ferruccio Lamborghini (yeah, that Lamborghini); 1999 – Gene Siskel:thumbsup:; 2005 – Sandra Dee; 2005 – John Raitt♪ ♫(father of Bonnie Raitt); 2005 – Hunter S. Thompson:devil:; 2006 – Curt Gowdy; 2010 – Alexander Haig ("I am in control here.")

His daddy was one of Al Capone's lawyers.

Do I detect a note of ever so slight weariness, good sir? ;)

February21

Today is International Mother Language Day, promoting awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism. PFFT. You want linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism go to Wal-Mart.

Events

1613 – Mikhail I is unanimously elected Tsar by a national assembly, beginning the Romanov dynasty of Imperial Russia.

1804 – The first self-propelling steam locomotive makes its outing at the Pen-y-Darren Ironworks in Wales.

1828 – Initial issue of the Cherokee Phoenix is the first periodical to use the Cherokee syllabary invented by Sequoyah.

1848 – Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish The Communist Manifesto.

1878 – The first telephone directory is issued in New Haven, Connecticut.

1885 – The newly completed Washington Monument is dedicated.

1896 – An Englishman raised in Australia, Bob Fitzsimmons, fought an Irishman, Peter Maher, in an American promoted event which technically took place in Mexico, winning the 1896 World Heavyweight Championship in boxing.

1916 – World War I: In France, the Battle of Verdun begins.

1925 – The New Yorker publishes its first issue.

1947 – In New York City, Edwin Land demonstrates the first "instant camera", the Polaroid Land Camera, to a meeting of the Optical Society of America.

1948 – NASCAR is incorporated.

1958 – The CND symbol, aka peace symbol, commissioned by the Direct Action Committee in protest against the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, is designed and completed by Gerald Holtom.

1965 – Malcolm X is assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City.

1971 – The Convention on Psychotropic Substances is signed at Vienna.

1972 – United States President Richard Nixon visits the People's Republic of China to normalize Sino-American relations.

1975 – Watergate scandal: Former United States Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman are sentenced to prison.

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

Births

1794 – Antonio López de Santa Anna; 1893 – Andrés Segovia; 1903 – Anaïs Nin; 1915 – Ann Sheridan; 1924 – Robert Mugabe; 1925 – Sam Peckinpah; 1927 – Erma Bombeck; 1933 – Nina Simone; 1934 – Rue McClanahan; 1943 – David Geffen; 1946 – Tyne Daly; 1946 – Alan Rickman; 1949 – Larry Drake; 1955 – Kelsey Grammer; 1958 – Mary Chapin Carpenter; 1961 – Christopher Atkins; 1963 – William Baldwin; 1964 – Mark Kelly, Scott Kelly; 1977 – Kevin Rose; 1979 – Jennifer Love Hewitt; 1986 – Charlotte Church; 1987 – Ellen Page; 1996 – Sophie Turner

Deaths

1965 – Malcolm X; 1974 – Tim Horton; 2008 – Ben Chapman (The Creature in The Creature From The Black Lagoon)

I read the other day it was the combined semaphore signs for N and D, Nuclear Disarmament.

February 22

Today is Robert Baden-Powell's birthday, and it is celebrated as Founder's Day/B.-P. Day by The World Organization of The Scout Movement.

Concurrently, The World Organizition of Girl Guides And Girl Scouts celebrates today as World Thinking Day.


Events

1371 – Robert II becomes King of Scotland, beginning the Stuart dynasty.

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

1797 – The last Invasion of Britain begins near Fishguard, Wales.

1819 – By the Adams–Onís Treaty, Spain sells Florida to the United States for five million U.S. dollars.

1855 – The Pennsylvania State University is founded in State College, Pennsylvania (as the Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania).

1879 – In Utica, New York, Frank Woolworth opens the first of many of five-and-dime Woolworth stores.

1904 – The United Kingdom sells a meteorological station on the South Orkney Islands to Argentina; the islands are subsequently claimed by the United Kingdom in 1908.

1907 – Robert Baden-Powell made the first scouting camp in Brownsea, England.

1909 – The sixteen battleships of the Great White Fleet, led by USS Connecticut, return to the United States after a voyage around the world.

1915 – World War I: The Imperial German Navy institutes unrestricted submarine warfare.

1924 – U.S. President Calvin Coolidge becomes the first President to deliver a radio address from the White House.

1942 – World War II: President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders General Douglas MacArthur out of the Philippines as the Japanese victory becomes inevitable.

1959 – Lee Petty wins the first Daytona 500.

1980 – Miracle on Ice: In Lake Placid, New York, the United States hockey team defeats the Soviet Union hockey team 4–3.

1994 – Aldrich Ames and his wife are charged by the United States Department of Justice with spying for the Soviet Union.

1995 – The Corona reconnaissance satellite program, in existence from 1959 to 1972, is declassified.

1997 – In Roslin, Midlothian, Scottish scientists announce that an adult sheep named Dolly has been successfully cloned.

2006 – At least six men stage Britain's biggest robbery, stealing £53m (about $92.5 million or €78 million) from a Securitas depot in Tonbridge, Kent.

:knockdup:Births:knockdup:

1732 – George Washington (1st POTUS); 1778 – Rembrandt Peale:artist:; 1810 – Frédéric Chopin:keys:; 1857 – Robert Baden-Powell (founded The Scout Association); 1889 – Olave Baden-Powell (founded the Girl Guides); 1892 – Edna St. Vincent Millay; 1907 – Sheldon Leonard; 1907 – Robert Young; 1918 – Don Pardo; 1922 – Marshall Teague:driving:; 1929 – James Hong ("Seinfeld. Party of four."); 1932 – Ted Kennedy; 1933 – Ernie K-Doe♪ ♫; 1934 – Sparky Anderson; 1944 – Jonathan Demme; 1950 – Julius 'Dr. J' Erving; 1952 – Bill Frist; 1962 – Steve Irwin ("Crikey!"); 1963 – Vijay Singh; 1964 – Ed Boon (co-created Mortal Kombat); 1966 – Rachel Dratch; 1968 – Jeri Ryan:love:; 1969 – Thomas Jane; 1973 – Scott Phillips:drummer:(Creed); 1974 – James Blunt♪ ♫; 1975 – Drew Barrymore; 1986 – Rajon Rondo

:skull:Deaths:skull:

1890 – John Jacob A$tor III; 1985 – Efrem Zimbalist:violin:; 1987 – Andy Warhol; 1994 – Papa John Creach:violin:; 2002 – Chuck Jones; 2016 – Sonny James♪ ♫

A Scot and Dolly produce a lamb. Nothing to see here, move along folks. ;)

February 23

Today is Fat Thursday.

There are 47 days until Easter, 304 days until Christmas, and 311 days remaining in 2017.


Events

532 – Byzantine emperor Justinian I orders the building of a new Orthodox Christian basilica in Constantinople – the Hagia Sophia.

1455 – Traditional date for the publication of the Gutenberg Bible, the first Western book printed with movable type.

1739 – At York Castle, the outlaw Dick Turpin is identified by his former schoolteacher. Turpin had been using the name Richard Palmer.

1836 – Texas Revolution: The Siege of the Alamo (prelude to the Battle of the Alamo) begins in San Antonio, Texas.

1847 – Mexican–American War: Battle of Buena Vista: In Mexico, American troops under future president General Zachary Taylor defeat Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna.

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

1870 – Reconstruction Era: Post-U.S. Civil War military control of Mississippi ends and it is readmitted to the Union.

1886 – Charles Martin Hall produced the first samples of man-made aluminum, after several years of intensive work. He was assisted in this project by his older sister, Julia Brainerd Hall.

1898 – Émile Zola is imprisoned in France after writing "J'accuse", a letter accusing the French government of antisemitism and wrongfully imprisoning Captain Alfred Dreyfus.

1903 – Cuba leases Guantánamo Bay (GitMo) to the United States "in perpetuity".

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

1917 – First demonstrations in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The beginning of the February Revolution (March 8th in the Gregorian calendar).

1927 – German theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg writes a letter to fellow physicist Wolfgang Pauli, in which he describes his uncertainty principle for the first time.

1940 - Woody Guthrie wrote the lyrics to 'This Land Is Your Land' in his room at the Hanover House Hotel in New York City.

1941 – Plutonium is first produced and isolated by Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg.

1945 – World War II: During the Battle of Iwo Jima, a group of United States Marines and a U.S. Navy hospital corpsman reach the top of Mount Suribachi on the island and are photographed raising the American flag.:f207:

1945 – World War II: The German town of Pforzheim is annihilated in a raid by 379 British bombers.

1954 – The first mass inoculation of children against polio with the Salk vaccine begins in Pittsburgh.

1974 – The Symbionese Liberation Army demands $4 million more to release kidnap victim Patty Hearst.

1980 – Iran hostage crisis: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini states that Iran's parliament will decide the fate of the American embassy hostages.

1983 – The United States Environmental Protection Agency announces its intent to buy out and evacuate the dioxin-contaminated community of Times Beach, Missouri.<--Interesting read.

1987 – Light from SN 1987A, a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud, reaches the Earth.

1998 – In the United States, tornadoes in central Florida destroy or damage 2,600 structures and kill 42 people.

2002 - The Bee Gees made their last ever concert appearance when they appeared at the Love and Hope Ball, Miami Beach, Florida.

2007 – A train derails on an evening express service near Grayrigg, Cumbria, England, killing one person and injuring 88. This results in hundreds of points being checked over the UK after a few similar accidents.

2008 – A United States Air Force B-2 Spirit bomber crashes on Guam, marking the first operational loss of a B-2.

:knockdup:Births:knockdup:

1685 – George Frideric Handel:keys:; 1868 – W. E. B. Du Bois; 1915 – Paul Tibbets (pilot of the Enola Gay); 1932 – Majel Barrett ('Nurse Chapel' on Star Trek TOS, 'Lwaxana Troi' on Star Trek: TNG, Star Trek: DSN, ship's computer voices throughout); 1940 – Peter Fonda; 1944 – Johnny Winter:shred:; 1948 – Steve Priest:bass:(Sweet); 1951 – Ed "Too Tall" Jones; 1951 – Patricia Richardson (Home Improvement); 1952 – Brad Whitford:shred:(Aerosmith); 1955 – Howard Jones; 1958 – David Sylvian♪ ♫(Japan); 1962 – Michael Wilton:shred:(Queensrÿche); 1965 – Michael Dell (Dell Technologies); 1969 – Daymond John (Shark Tank, founded FUBU); 1994 – Dakota Fanning

:skull:Deaths:skull:

1821 – John Keats; 1848 – John Quincy Adams (6th POTUS); 1931 – Nellie Melba♪ ♫; 1944 – Leo Baekeland (Velox photographic paper, Bakelite); 1965 – Stan Laurel (Laurel & Hardy); 1995 – James Herriot (authored All Creatures Great And Small); 2003 – Howie Epstein:bass:(Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers)

February 24

Carnival begins today.


Events

1607 – L'Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi, one of the first works recognized as an opera, receives its première performance.

1711 – The London première of Rinaldo by George Frideric Handel, the first Italian opera written for the London stage.

1803 – In Marbury v. Madison, the Supreme Court of the United States establishes the principle of judicial review.

1831 – The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, the first removal treaty in accordance with the Indian Removal Act, is proclaimed. The Choctaws in Mississippi cede land east of the river in exchange for payment and land in the West.

1848 – King Louis-Philippe of France abdicates the throne.

1854 – A Penny Red with perforations was the first perforated postage stamp to be officially issued for distribution.

1863 – Arizona is organized as a United States territory.

1868 – Andrew Johnson becomes the first President of the United States to be impeached by the United States House of Representatives. He is later acquitted in the Senate.

1875 – The SS Gothenburg hits the Great Barrier Reef and sinks off the Australian east coast, killing approximately 100, including a number of high-profile civil servants and dignitaries.

1917 – World War I: The U.S. ambassador Walter Hines Page to the United Kingdom is given the Zimmermann Telegram, in which Germany pledges to ensure the return of New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona to Mexico if Mexico declares war on the United States.

1920 – The Nazi Party is founded.

1942 – The Battle of Los Angeles: A false alarm led to an anti-aircraft barrage that lasted into the early hours of February 25.

1944 – Merrill's Marauders: The Marauders begin their 1,000-mile journey through Japanese occupied Burma.

1946 – Colonel Juan Perón, founder of the political movement that became known as Peronism, is elected to his first term as President of Argentina.

1968 – Vietnam War: The Tet Offensive is halted; South Vietnam recaptures Hué.

1984 – Tyrone Mitchell perpetrates the 49th Street Elementary School shooting in Los Angeles, killing two children and injuring 12 more.

1989 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issues a fatwa and offers a USD $3 million bounty for the death of Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses.

1989 – United Airlines Flight 811 experienced an uncontrolled decompression after leaving Honolulu International Airport, Hawaii, killing nine passengers when their seats were sucked out of the plane.

1996 – Two civilian airplanes operated by the Miami-based group Brothers to the Rescue are shot down in international waters by the Cuban Air Force.

2008 – Fidel Castro retires as the President of Cuba and the Council of Ministers after 32 years. He remains as head of the Communist Party for another three years.

Births

1786 – Wilhelm Grimm, 1836 – Winslow Homer, 1874 – Honus Wagner, 1877 – Rudolph Ganz, 1885 – Chester W. Nimitz, 1890 – Marjorie Main, 1921 – Abe Vigoda, 1922 – Steven Hill, 1932 – John Vernon, 1938 – James Farentino, 1938 – Phil Knight, 1942 – Joe Lieberman, 1945 – Barry Bostwick, 1947 – Edward James Olmos, 1950 – George Thorogood, 1951 – Debra Jo Rupp, 1951 – Helen Shaver, 1955 – Steve Jobs, 1955 – Alain Prost, 1956 – Paula Zahn, 1958 – Sammy Kershaw, 1962 – Michelle Shocked, 1966 – Billy Zane, 1968 – Mitch Hedberg, 1977 – Floyd Mayweather, Jr.

Deaths

1815 – Robert Fulton, 1990 – Malcolm Forbes, 1990 – Johnnie Ray, 1991 – George Gobel, 1991 – Webb Pierce, 1994 – Dinah Shore, 1998 – Henny Youngman, 2004 – John Randolph, 2006 – Don Knotts, 2006 – Dennis Weaver, 2014 – Harold Ramis

Every day is carnival in the Cellar. :)

February 25

138 – The Roman emperor Hadrian adopts Antoninus Pius, effectively making him his successor.

493 – Odoacer surrenders Ravenna after a 3-year siege and agrees to a mediated peace with Theoderic the Great.

1336 – Four thousand defenders of Pilėnai commit mass suicide rather than be taken captive by the Teutonic Knights.

1797 – Colonel William Tate and his force of 1000–1500 soldiers surrender after the Last invasion of Britain.

1836 – Samuel Colt is granted a United States patent for the Colt revolver.

1866 – Miners in Calaveras County, California, discover what is now called the Calaveras Skull – human remains that supposedly indicated that man, mastodons, and elephants had co-existed.

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 incorporates the United States Steel Corporation.

1919 – Oregon places a one cent per U.S. gallon tax on gasoline, becoming the first U.S. state to levy a gasoline tax.

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

1933 – The USS Ranger is launched. It is the first US Navy ship to be designed from the start of construction as an aircraft carrier.

1939 – The first of 2  1⁄2 million Anderson air raid shelters appeared in North London.

1956 – In his speech On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union denounces the cult of personality of Joseph Stalin.

1986 – People Power Revolution: President of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos flees the nation after 20 years of rule; Corazon Aquino becomes the Philippines' first woman president.

1987 – Southern Methodist University's football program is the first college football program to receive the death penalty by the NCAA's Committee on Infractions. It was revealed that athletic officials and school administrators had knowledge of a "slush fund" used to make illegal payments to the school's football players as far back as 1981.

1991 – Gulf War: An Iraqi scud missile hits an American military barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia killing 28 U.S. Army Reservists from Pennsylvania.

1994 – Mosque of Abraham massacre: In the Cave of the Patriarchs in the West Bank city of Hebron, Baruch Goldstein opens fire with an automatic rifle, killing 29 Palestinian worshippers and injuring 125 more before being subdued and beaten to death by survivors.

1995 - At a private party for 1,200 select guests on the closing night of the Frank Sinatra Desert Classic golf tournament, Frank Sinatra sang before a live audience for the very last time. His closing song was 'The Best is Yet to Come'.

2015 – At least 310 people are killed in avalanches in northeastern Afghanistan.

2016 – Three people are killed and fourteen others injured in a series of shootings in the small Kansas cities of Newton and Hesston.

:knockdup:Births:knockdup:

1841 – Pierre-Auguste Renoir:artist:; 1873 – Enrico Caruso♪ ♫; 1888 – John Foster Dulles (Washington Dulles International Airport); 1890 – Myra Hess♪ ♫; 1901 – Zeppo Marx (youngest of the Marx Bros); 1913 – Jim Backus (voice of Mr. Magoo, Gilligan's Island); 1917 – Anthony Burgess (author A Clockwork Orange); 1918 – Bobby Riggs; 1920 – Sun Myung Moon (founded the Unification Church); 1927 – Dr. Ralph Stanley♪ ♫(sang O Death in O Brother Where Art Thou); 1928 – Larry Gelbart (creator M*A*S*H); 1929 – Tommy Newsom(NBC Orchestra, sub for Doc Severinson; 1932 – Faron Young♪ ♫; 1935 – Sally Jessy Raphael; 1937 – Bob Schieffer; 1940 – Billy Packer; 1943 – George Harrison♪ ♫:shred:(The Beatles, The Traveling Wilburys); 1949 – Ric Flair; 1949 – Jack Handey (SNL's "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey"); 1957 – Dennis Diken:drummer:(The Smithereens); 1958 – Kurt Rambis; 1961 – Davey Allison:driving:; 1966 – Téa Leoni:love:; 1966 – Nancy O'Dell; 1971 – Sean Astin (Rudy, TLOR; 1973 – Julio Iglesias, Jr.; 1975 – Chelsea Handler; 1976 – Rashida Jones

:skull:Deaths:skull:

1723 – Christopher Wren; 1878 – Townsend Harris; 1899 – Paul Reuter (Reuters News); 1957 – Bugs Moran (mob boss); 1983 – Tennessee Williams; 1987 – James Coco; 1993 – Toy Caldwell♪ ♫(Marshall Tucker Band); 1996 – Haing S. Ngor (The Killing Fields); 2006 – Darren McGavin (Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer (1957)); 2013 – C. Everett Koop

Saint Sam.:blush:

~Somebody

February 26

The 59th running of The Daytona 500 will held today. The Daytona 500 has been NASCAR's season-opening race since 1982.


Events

1616 – Galileo Galilei is formally banned by the Roman Catholic Church from teaching or defending the view that the earth orbits the sun.

1815 – Napoleon Bonaparte escapes from Elba.

1909 – Kinemacolor, the first successful color motion picture process, is first shown to the general public at the Palace Theatre in London.

1914 – HMHS (His Majesty's Hospital Ship) Britannic, sister to the RMS Titanic, is launched at Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast.

1919 – President Woodrow Wilson signs an act of Congress establishing the Grand Canyon National Park.

1929 – President Calvin Coolidge signs an executive order establishing the 96,000 acre Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.

1966 – Apollo program: Launch of AS-201, the first flight of the Saturn IB rocket.

1979 – The Superliner railcar enters revenue service with Amtrak.

1987 – Iran–Contra affair: The Tower Commission rebukes President Ronald Reagan for not controlling his national security staff.

1993 – World Trade Center bombing: In New York City, a truck bomb parked below the North Tower of the World Trade Center explodes, killing six and injuring over a thousand.

1995 – The UK's oldest investment banking institute, Barings Bank, collapses after a rogue securities broker Nick Leeson loses $1.4 billion by speculating on the Singapore International Monetary Exchange using futures contracts.

2008 – The New York Philharmonic performs in Pyongyang, North Korea in the first event of its kind to take place in North Korea.

2013 – A hot air balloon crashed near Luxor, Egypt, killing 19 people in history's deadliest ballooning disaster.

:knockdup:Births:knockdup:

1564 – Christopher Marlowe, 1802 – Victor Hugo, 1829 – Levi Strauss, 1846 – Buffalo Bill Cody, 1852 – John Harvey Kellogg, 1866 – Herbert Henry Dow, 1882 – Husband E. Kimmel, 1887 – William Frawley, 1908 – Tex Avery, 1914 – Robert Alda, 1916 – Jackie Gleason, 1920 – Tony Randall, 1928 – Fats Domino, 1928 – Ariel Sharon, 1931 – Robert Novak, 1932 – Johnny Cash, 1945 – Mitch Ryder, 1950 – Jonathan Cain, 1953 – Michael Bolton, 1954 – Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, 1958 – Tim Kaine, 1971 – Erykah Badu, 1979 – Corinne Bailey Rae

:skull:Deaths:skull:

1903 – Richard Jordan Gatling:rattat:, 1997 – David Doyle

February 27

1560 – The Treaty of Berwick, which would expel the French from Scotland, is signed by England and the Lords of the Congregation of Scotland.

1782 – American Revolutionary War: The House of Commons of Great Britain votes against further war in America.

1801 – Pursuant to the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801, Washington, D.C. is placed under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Congress.

1812 – Poet Lord Byron gives his first address as a member of the House of Lords, in defense of Luddite violence against Industrialism in his home county of Nottinghamshire.

1860 – Abraham Lincoln makes a speech at Cooper Union in the city of New York that is largely responsible for his election to the Presidency.

1864 – American Civil War: The first Northern prisoners arrive at the Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia.

1870 – The current flag of Japan, :f97:, is first adopted as the national flag for Japanese merchant ships.

1900 – Second Boer War: In South Africa, British military leaders receive an unconditional notice of surrender from Boer General Piet Cronjé at the Battle of Paardeberg.

1900 – The British Labour Party is founded.

1902 – Second Boer War: Australian soldiers Harry "Breaker" Morant and Peter Handcock are executed in Pretoria after being convicted of war crimes.

1922 – A challenge to the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, allowing women the right to vote, is rebuffed by the Supreme Court of the United States in Leser v. Garnett.

1933 – Reichstag fire: Germany's parliament building in Berlin, the Reichstag, is set on fire; Marinus van der Lubbe, a young Dutch Communist claims responsibility. The Nazis used the fire to solidify their power and eliminate the communists as political rivals.

1940 – American biochemists Martin Kamen and Sam Ruben discovered carbon-14, which today is used extensively as the basis of the radiocarbon dating method to date archaeological and geological samples.

1943 – The Smith Mine #3 in Bearcreek, Montana, explodes, killing 74 men.

1951 – The Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution, limiting Presidents to two terms, is ratified.

1964 – The Government of Italy asks for help to keep the Leaning Tower of Pisa from toppling over.

1991 – Gulf War: U.S. President George H. W. Bush announces that "Kuwait is liberated".

1991 - James Brown was paroled after spending two years of a six-year prison sentence, imposed for resisting arrest after a car chase across two States.

2010 – An earthquake measuring 8.8 on the moment magnitude scale strikes central parts of Chile leaving over 500 victims, and thousands injured. The quake triggered a tsunami which struck Hawaii shortly after.

:knockdup:Births:knockdup:

272 – Constantine the Great, 1622 – Carel Fabritius:artist:, 1807 – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1891 – David Sarnoff (founded RCA), 1892 – William Demarest, 1902 – John Steinbeck, 1905 – Franchot Tone♪ ♫, 1910 – Kelly Johnson (co-founded Lockheed's Skunk Works), 1930 – Joanne Woodward, 1932 – Elizabeth Taylor, 1934 – Ralph Nader, 1938 – Jake Thackray♪ ♫, 1940 – Howard Hesseman, 1943 – Mary Frann, 1951 – Lee Atwater, 1954 – Neal Schon♪ ♫:shred:(Journey), 1957 – Timothy Spall, 1959 – Johnny Van Zant♪ ♫(Lynyrd Skynyrd), 1962 – Adam Baldwin, 1966 – Donal Logue, 1971 – Sara Blakely (founded Spanx):madmoon:, 1971 – Rozonda 'Chilli' Thomas♪ ♫(TLC), 1980 – Chelsea Clinton, 1981 – Josh Groban♪ ♫, 1992 – Ty Dillon:driving:

:skull:Deaths:skull:

1892 – Louis Vuitton, 1902 – Harry 'Breaker' Morant, 1936 – Ivan Pavlov, 1968 – Frankie Lymon♪ ♫(The Teenagers), 1977 – John Dickson Carr, 1980 – George Tobias (neighbor 'Abner Kravitz' on Bewitched), 1985 – Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., 1993 – Lillian Gish, 2002 – Spike Milligan, 2003 – Fred Rogers (Mister Rogers' Neighborhood), 2008 – William F. Buckley, Jr. (founded the National Review), 2011 – Frank Buckles (was the last surviving American WWI veteran), 2013 – Van Cliburn:keys:, 2013 – Dale Robertson, 2014 – Aaron Allston (game designer), 2015 – Leonard Nimoy

The lying bastards were just waiting for us to relax, until 1812.

I don't like it, sir. It's too quiet. ;)

February 28

Today is the last day of February.

Today is marked as Rare Disease Day, raising awareness of rare diseases on an international level.

Today is Shrove Tuesday.

Mardi Gras!!!


Events

202 BC – Coronation ceremony of Liu Bang as Emperor Gaozu of Han takes place thus initiating four centuries of Han dynasty rule over China.

1525 – Aztec king Cuauhtémoc is executed on the order of conquistador Hernán Cortés.

1784 – John Wesley charters the Methodist Church.

1827 – The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) is incorporated, becoming the first railroad in America offering commercial transportation of both people and freight.

1849 – Regular steamboat service from the west to the east coast of the United States begins with the arrival of the SS California in San Francisco Bay, four months 22 days after leaving New York Harbor.

1867 – Seventy years of Holy See–United States relations are ended by a Congressional ban on federal funding of diplomatic envoys to the Vatican and are not restored until January 10, 1984.

1885 – The American Telephone and Telegraph Company is incorporated in New York as the subsidiary of American Bell Telephone. (American Bell would later merge with its subsidiary.)

1900 – The Second Boer War: The 118-day "Siege of Ladysmith" is lifted.

1935 – DuPont scientist Wallace Carothers invents nylon.

1939 – The erroneous word "dord" is discovered in the Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition, prompting an investigation.

1940 – Basketball is televised for the first time.

1947 – February 28 Incident: In Taiwan, civil disorder is put down with the loss of an estimated 30,000 civilians.

1953 – James Watson and Francis Crick announce to friends that they have determined the chemical structure of DNA; the formal announcement takes place on April 25 following publication in April's Nature (pub. April 2).

1954 – The first color television sets using the NTSC standard are offered for sale to the general public.

1958 – A school bus in Floyd County, Kentucky hits a wrecker truck and plunges down an embankment into the rain-swollen Levisa Fork river. The driver and 26 children die in what remains one of the worst school bus accidents in U.S. history.

1968 - 25 year old Frankie Lymon, lead singer of The Teenagers, died of a heroin overdose in his grandmother's New York home. Lymon was on leave from a Georgia Army post at the time and was scheduled to record for Roulette Records the next day. He first hit the national charts in 1956 when he was just 13 with 'Why Do Fools Fall in Love'.

1975 – In London, an underground train fails to stop at Moorgate terminus station and crashes into the end of the tunnel, killing 43 people.

1977 - Ray Charles was attacked onstage by a man who tried to strangle him with a microphone cord. The man was a member of a group called Project Heavy, a community program for disadvantaged youths. They promised that the matter would be handled within the organization and no charges were filed.

1983 – The final episode of M*A*S*H airs, with almost 106 million viewers. It still holds the record for the highest viewership of a season finale.

1985 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army carries out a mortar attack on the Royal Ulster Constabulary police station at Newry, killing nine officers in the highest loss of life for the RUC on a single day.

1985 - David Byron, singer with Uriah Heep, died from an epileptic fit and liver disease, aged 38. Uriah Heep had a hit with 'Easy Livin' from the 1972 album Demons and Wizards.

1986 – Olof Palme, 26th Prime Minister of Sweden, is assassinated in Stockholm.

1991 – The first Gulf War ends.

1993 – The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents raid the Branch Davidian church in Waco, Texas with a warrant to arrest the group's leader David Koresh. Four ATF agents and five Davidians die in the initial raid, starting a 51-day standoff.

1997 – GRB 970228, a highly luminous flash of gamma rays, strikes the Earth for 80 seconds, providing early evidence that gamma-ray bursts occur well beyond the Milky Way.

1998 – First flight of the RQ-4 Global Hawk, the first unmanned aerial vehicle certified to file its own flight plans and fly regularly in U.S. civilian airspace.

2013 – Pope Benedict XVI resigns as the pope of the Catholic Church, becoming the first pope to do so since 1415.

:knockdup:Births:knockdup:

1882 – Geraldine Farrar♪ ♫, 1901 – Linus Pauling, 1906 – Bugsy Siegel, 1915 – Zero Mostel, 1919 – Alfred Marshall (founded Marshall's dept stores), 1923 – Charles Durning, 1929 – Frank Gehry, 1931 – Gavin MacLeod, 1939 – John Fahey:shred:, 1939 – Tommy Tune♪ ♫, 1940 – Aldo & Mario Andretti:driving:, 1940 – Joe South♪ ♫, 1942 – Brian Jones♪ ♫(The Rolling Stones), 1945 – Bubba Smith, 1948 – Mike Figgis, 1948 – Bernadette Peters:love:, 1948 – Mercedes Ruehl, 1955 – Gilbert Gottfried, 1957 – John Turturro, 1957 – Cindy Wilson♪ ♫(The B-52s), 1958 – Jack Abramoff, 1961 – Rae Dawn Chong, 1969 – Robert Sean Leonard ('Dr. James Wilson' on House), 1969 – Patrick Monahan♪ ♫(Train), 1976 – Ali Larter (Final Destination and Final Destination 2), 1977 – Jason Aldean♪ ♫, 1994 – Jake Bugg♪ ♫

:skull:Deaths:skull:

468 – Pope Hilarius:lol2:, 1916 – Henry James, 1967 – Henry Luce (co-founded Time Magazine), 1977 – Eddie "Rochester" Anderson (The Jack Benny Program), 1993 – Ruby Keeler, 2005 – Chris Curtis:drummer:(The Searchers), 2007 – Billy Thorpe♪ ♫, 2009 – Paul Harvey:devil:, 2011 – Jane Russell:ggw:, 2016 – George Kennedy (The Blue Knight, The Sons Of Katie Elder, Cool Hand Luke)

And the day we celebrated Brianna's birthday, which was actually the 29th. Miss you babe. :mecry:

March 1

1565 – The city of Rio de Janeiro is founded.

1642 – Georgeana, Massachusetts (now known as York, Maine), becomes the first incorporated city in the United States.

1692 – Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne and Tituba are brought before local magistrates in Salem Village, Massachusetts, beginning what would become known as the Salem witch trials.

1713 – The siege and destruction of Fort Neoheroka begins during the Tuscarora War in North Carolina, effectively opening up the colony's interior to European colonization.

1781 – The Continental Congress adopts the Articles of Confederation.

1815 – Napoleon returns to France from his banishment on Elba, start of the Hundred Days.

1845 – United States President John Tyler signs a bill authorizing the United States to annex the Republic of Texas.

1867 – Nebraska becomes the 37th U.S. state; Lancaster, Nebraska is renamed Lincoln and becomes the state capital.

1872 – Yellowstone National Park is established as the world's first national park.

1893 – Electrical engineer Nikola Tesla gives the first public demonstration of radio in St. Louis, Missouri.

1896 – Henri Becquerel discovers radioactive decay.

1901 – The Australian Army is formed.

1910 – The worst avalanche in United States history buries a Great Northern Railway train in northeastern King County, Washington, killing 96 people.

1932 – Charles Lindbergh's son is reportedly kidnapped.

1936 – The Hoover Dam is completed.

1946 – The Bank of England is nationalised.

1953 – Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin suffers a stroke and collapses; he dies four days later.

1954 – Nuclear weapons testing: The Castle Bravo, a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb, is detonated on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, resulting in the worst radioactive contamination ever caused by the United States.

1954 – Armed Puerto Rican nationalists attack the United States Capitol building, injuring five Representatives.

1961 – United States President John F. Kennedy establishes the Peace Corps.

1995 – Yahoo! is incorporated.

1998 – Titanic became the first film to gross over $1 billion worldwide.

2002 – U.S. invasion of Afghanistan: Operation Anaconda begins in eastern Afghanistan.

2006 – English-language Wikipedia reaches its one millionth article, Jordanhill railway station.

Births

1810 – Frédéric Chopin, 1904 – Glenn Miller, 1910 – David Niven, 1914 – Harry Caray, 1914 – Ralph Ellison, 1924 – Deke Slayton, 1926 – Pete Rozelle, 1927 – Harry Belafonte, 1935 – Robert Conrad, 1942 – Jerry Fisher, 1944 – Roger Daltrey, 1944 – Mike d'Abo, 1945 – Dirk Benedict, 1947 – Alan Thicke, 1952 – Nevada Barr, 1954 – Ron Howard, 1956 – Tim Daly, 1967 – George Eads, 1969 – Javier Bardem, 1983 – Lupita Nyong'o

Deaths

1620 – Thomas Campion, 1984 – Jackie Coogan, 1988 – Joe Besser, 1991 – Edwin H. Land, 2013 – Bonnie Franklin

March 2

1797 – The Bank of England issues the first one-pound and two-pound banknotes.

1807 – The U.S. Congress passes the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, disallowing the importation of new slaves into the country.

1836 – Texas Revolution: Declaration of independence of the Republic of Texas from Mexico.

1855 – Alexander II becomes Tsar of Russia.

1859 – The two-day Great Slave Auction, the largest such auction in United States history, begins.

1877 – U.S. presidential election, 1876: Just two days before inauguration, the U.S. Congress declares Rutherford B. Hayes the winner of the election even though Samuel J. Tilden had won the popular vote on November 7, 1876.

1882 – Queen Victoria narrowly escapes an assassination attempt by Roderick McLean in Windsor.

1901 – United States Steel Corporation is founded as a result of a merger between Carnegie Steel Company and Federal Steel Company which became the first corporation in the world with a market capital over $1 billion.

1933 – The film King Kong opens at New York's Radio City Music Hall.

1946 – Ho Chi Minh is elected the President of North Vietnam.

1949 – Captain James Gallagher lands his B-50 Superfortress Lucky Lady II in Fort Worth, Texas after completing the first non-stop around-the-world airplane flight in 94 hours and one minute.

1962 – Wilt Chamberlain sets the single-game scoring record in the National Basketball Association by scoring 100 points.

1965 – The US and South Vietnamese Air Force begin Operation Rolling Thunder, a sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam.

1969 – In Toulouse, France, the first test flight of the Anglo-French Concorde is conducted.

1972 – The Pioneer 10 space probe is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida with a mission to explore the outer planets.

1983 – Compact discs and players are released for the first time in the United States and other markets. They had previously been available only in Japan.

1995 – Researchers at Fermilab announce the discovery of the top quark.

2017 – The elements Moscovium, Tennessine, and Oganesson were officially added to the periodic table at a conference in Moscow, Russia

Births

1793 – Sam Houston, 1900 – Kurt Weill, 1904 – Dr. Seuss, 1909 – Mel Ott, 1917 – Desi Arnaz, 1919 – Jennifer Jones, 1931 – Mikhail Gorbachev, 1931 – Tom Wolfe, 1942 – Lou Reed, 1943 – Peter Straub, 1948 – Rory Gallagher, 1950 – Karen Carpenter, 1952 – Laraine Newman, 1955 – Dale Bozzio, 1955 – Jay Osmond, 1956 – John Cowsill, 1958 – Ian Woosnam, 1962 – Jon Bon Jovi, 1964 – Laird Hamilton, 1968 – Daniel Craig, 1977 – Chris Martin, 1980 – Rebel Wilson, 1981 – Bryce Dallas Howard, 1982 – Ben Roethlisberger

Deaths

1791 – John Wesley, 1896 – Jubal Early, 1930 – D. H. Lawrence, 1939 – Howard Carter, 1982 – Philip K. Dick, 1987 – Randolph Scott, 1992 – Sandy Dennis, 1999 – Dusty Springfield, 2003 – Hank Ballard, 2004 – Mercedes McCambridge, 2004 – Marge Schott, 2008 – Jeff Healey

March 3

1776 – American Revolutionary War: The first amphibious landing of the United States Marine Corps begins the Battle of Nassau.

1820 – The U.S. Congress passes the Missouri Compromise.

1845 – Florida is admitted as the 27th U.S. state.

1849 – The Territory of Minnesota was created.

1857 – Second Opium War: France and the United Kingdom declare war on China.

1865 – Opening of The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, the founding member of the HSBC Group.

1873 – Censorship in the United States: The U.S. Congress enacts the Comstock Law, making it illegal to send any "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" books through the mail.

1875 – Georges Bizet's opera Carmen receives its première at the Opéra-Comique in Paris.

1904 – Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany becomes the first person to make a sound recording of a political document, using Thomas Edison's phonograph cylinder.

1923 – TIME magazine is published for the first time.

1931 – The United States adopts The Star-Spangled Banner as its national anthem.

1939 – In Bombay, Mohandas K. Gandhi begins a hunger strike in protest at the autocratic rule in British India.

1942 – World War II: Ten Japanese warplanes raid Broome, Western Australia, killing more than 100 people.

1951 – Jackie Brenston, with Ike Turner and his band, records "Rocket 88", often cited as "the first rock and roll record", at Sam Phillips's recording studios in Memphis, Tennessee.

1980 – The USS Nautilus, the world's first operational nuclear-powered submarine, is decommissioned and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register.

1985 – A magnitude 8.3 earthquake strikes the Valparaíso Region of Chile, killing 177 and leaving nearly a million people homeless.

1991 – An amateur video captures the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers.

1997 – The tallest free-standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere, Sky Tower in downtown Auckland, New Zealand, opens after two-and-a-half years of construction.

2005 – James Roszko murders four Royal Canadian Mounted Police constables during a drug bust at his property in Rochfort Bridge, Alberta, then commits suicide. This is the deadliest peace-time incident for the RCMP since 1885 and the North-West Rebellion.

2005 – Steve Fossett becomes the first person to fly an airplane non-stop around the world solo without refueling.

2005 – Margaret Wilson is elected as Speaker of the New Zealand House of Representatives, beginning a period lasting until August 23, 2006 where all the highest political offices (including Elizabeth II as Head of State), were occupied by women, making New Zealand the first country for this to occur.

Births

1831 – George Pullman, 1847 – Alexander Graham Bell, 1860 – John Montgomery Ward, 1882 – Charles Ponzi, 1895 – Matthew Ridgway, 1911 – Jean Harlow, 1913 – Harold J. Stone, 1920 – James Doohan, 1923 – Doc Watson, 1940 – Perry Ellis, 1945 – Hattie Winston, 1947 – Jennifer Warnes, 1953 – Robyn Hitchcock, 1962 – Jackie Joyner-Kersee, 1962 – Herschel Walker, 1966 – Tone Lōc, 1970 – Julie Bowen, 1971 – Charlie Brooker, 1974 – David Faustino, 1982 – Jessica Biel

Deaths

1706 – Johann Pachelbel, 1959 – Lou Costello, 1966 – William Frawley, 1987 – Danny Kaye, 1991 – Arthur Murray, 1998 – Fred W. Friendly, 2012 – Ronnie Montrose

March 4

51 – Nero, later to become Roman emperor, is given the title princeps iuventutis (head of the youth).

1493 – Explorer Christopher Columbus arrives back in Lisbon, Portugal, aboard his ship Niña from his voyage to what is now The Bahamas and other islands in the Caribbean.

1519 – Hernán Cortés arrives in Mexico in search of the Aztec civilization and its wealth.

1628 – The Massachusetts Bay Colony is granted a Royal charter.

1681 – Charles II grants a land charter to William Penn for the area that will later become Pennsylvania.

1789 – In New York City, the first Congress of the United States meets, putting the United States Constitution into effect.

1791 – Vermont is admitted to the United States as the fourteenth state.

1794 – The 11th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is passed by the U.S. Congress.

1797 – John Adams is inaugurated as the 2nd President of the United States of America, becoming the first President to begin his presidency on March 4.

1837 – The city of Chicago is incorporated.

1861 – The first national flag of the Confederate States of America (the "Stars and Bars") is adopted.

1865 – The third and final national flag of the Confederate States of America is adopted by the Confederate Congress.

1882 – Britain's first electric trams run in east London.

1890 – The longest bridge in Great Britain, the Forth Bridge in Scotland, measuring 1,710 feet (520 m) long, is opened by the Prince of Wales.

1899 – Cyclone Mahina sweeps in north of Cooktown, Queensland, with a 12 metres (39 ft) wave that reaches up to 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) inland, killing over 300.

1908 – The Collinwood school fire, Collinwood near Cleveland, Ohio, kills 174 people.

1917 – Jeannette Rankin of Montana becomes the first female member of the United States House of Representatives.

1974 – People magazine is published for the first time in the United States as People Weekly.

1980 – Nationalist leader Robert Mugabe wins a sweeping election victory to become Zimbabwe's first black prime minister.

1985 – The Food and Drug Administration approves a blood test for AIDS infection, used since then for screening all blood donations in the United States.

1986 – The Soviet Vega 1 begins returning images of Halley's Comet and the first images of its nucleus.

1998 – Gay rights: Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc.: The Supreme Court of the United States rules that federal laws banning on-the-job sexual harassment also apply when both parties are the same sex.

2001 – BBC bombing: A massive car bomb explodes in front of the BBC Television Centre in London, seriously injuring one person; the attack was attributed to the Real IRA.

2002 – Afghanistan: Seven American Special Operations Forces soldiers and 200 Al-Qaeda Fighters are killed as American forces attempt to infiltrate the Shah-i-Kot Valley on a low-flying helicopter reconnaissance mission.

2009 – The International Criminal Court (ICC) issues an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. Al-Bashir is the first sitting head of state to be indicted by the ICC since its establishment in 2002.

Births

1678 – Antonio Vivaldi, 1888 – Knute Rockne, 1906 – Avery Fisher, 1909 – Harry Helmsley, 1913 – John Garfield, 1919 – Buck Baker, 1932 – Ed Roth, 1938 – Paula Prentiss, 1942 – Lynn Sherr, 1944 – Bobby Womack, 1948 – Chris Squire, 1948 – Shakin' Stevens, 1950 – Rick Perry, 1954 – Peter Jacobsen, 1957 – Rick Mast, 1958 – Patricia Heaton, 1961 – Ray 'Boom Boom' Mancini, 1961 – Steven Weber, 1963 – Jason Newsted, 1968 – Patsy Kensit, 1986 – Mike Krieger

Deaths

1193 – Saladin, 1852 – Nikolai Gogol, 1858 – Matthew C. Perry, 1925 – John Montgomery Ward, 1972 – Charles Biro, 1994 – John Candy, 1996 – Minnie Pearl, 2008 – Gary Gygax, 2009 – Horton Foote, 2013 – Lillian Cahn, 2016 – Pat Conroy

March 5

1496 – King Henry VII of England issues letters patent to John Cabot and his sons, authorising them to explore unknown lands.

1616 – Nicolaus Copernicus's book On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres is added to the Index of Forbidden Books 73 years after it was first published.

1836 – Samuel Colt patents the first production-model revolver, the .34-caliber.

1850 – The Britannia Bridge across the Menai Strait between the island of Anglesey and the mainland of Wales is opened.

1872 – George Westinghouse patents the air brake.

1933 – Great Depression: President Franklin D. Roosevelt declares a "bank holiday", closing all U.S. banks and freezing all financial transactions.

1940 – Six high-ranking members of Soviet politburo, including Joseph Stalin, sign an order for the execution of 25,700 Polish intelligentsia, including 14,700 Polish POWs, in what will become known as the Katyn massacre.

1946 – Winston Churchill coins the phrase "Iron Curtain" in his speech at Westminster College, Missouri.

1963 – American country music stars Patsy Cline, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Cowboy Copas and their pilot Randy Hughes are killed in a plane crash in Camden, Tennessee.

1974 – Yom Kippur War: Israeli forces withdraw from the west bank of the Suez Canal.

1981 – The ZX81, a pioneering British home computer, is launched by Sinclair Research and would go on to sell over 1.5 million units around the world.

Births

1133 – Henry II of England, 1512 – Gerardus Mercator, 1658 – Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, 1898 – Zhou Enlai, 1908 – Rex Harrison, 1922 – James Noble, 1929 – J. B. Lenoir, 1938 – Fred Williamson, 1948 – Eddy Grant, 1953 – Tokyo Sexwale, 1954 – Marsha Warfield, 1955 – Penn Jillette, 1956 – Teena Marie, 1958 – Andy Gibb, 1963 – Joel Osteen, 1970 – John Frusciante, 1974 – Kevin Connolly

Deaths

1770 – Crispus Attucks, 1827 – Alessandro Volta, 1929 – David Dunbar Buick, 1953 – Joseph Stalin, 1963 – Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins, 1980 – Jay Silverheels, 1982 – John Belushi, 1984 – William Powell, 1999 – Richard Kiley, 2013 – Paul Bearer, 2013 – Hugo Chávez