January 23rd
 

1789 ~ Georgetown College, founded by Archbishop John Carroll, became the first Catholic, Jesuit college in the U.S. This is the parent institution of Georgetown Medical where my BIL was readmitted today.

1832 ~ Birthday of Edouard Manet, Impressionist artist.

1849 ~ Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in America to receive a medical degree, from the Medical Institution of Geneva, N.Y.

1857 ~ Birthday of Andrija Mohorovičić, Croatian seismologist.

1862 ~ Birthday of David Hilbert, Mathematician.

1968 ~ North Korea seized the USS Pueblo, charging it had intruded into the communist nation's territorial waters on a spying mission. The crew was held for 11 months.

1973 ~ President Nixon appeared on national television to announce "peace with honor" in Vietnam.

1989 ~ Death of Salvador Dalí, Artist.

2002 ~ Daniel Pearl was kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan.

2004 ~ Death of Bob Keeshan, TV's “Captain Kangaroo”.

January 24th
 

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

1888 ~ Birthday of Ernst Heinkel, aircraft designer.

1908 ~ The first Boy Scout troop was organized in England by Robert Baden-Powell.

1927 ~ Alfred Hitchcock released his first film, “The Pleasure Garden”.

1945 ~ Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz.

1961 ~ Marilyn Monroe divorced Arthur Miller.

1965 ~ Death of Winston Churchill, Englishman.

1984 ~ The Apple Macintosh went on sale. 29 years ago! [Zounds! I'm getting old!]

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

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

January 25th
 

1627 ~ Birthday of Robert Boyle, Chemist.

1759 ~ Birthday of Robert Burns, Poet.

1882 ~ Birthday of Virginia Woolf, Writer.

1890 ~ Nellie Bly completed her round-the-world journey in 72 days.

1919 ~ The League of Nations was founded.

1947 ~ Death of Al Capone, Gangster.

1971 ~ General Idi Amin becomes Ugandan President Idi Amin after a coup.

1977 ~ Rene Levesque told a Wall Street audience at the Economic Club of New York that “separation is inevitable”.

2004 ~ Opportunity landed on Mars.

2011 ~ The Arab Spring arrives in Egypt, with street demonstrations, marches, rallies, acts of civil disobedience, riots, labour strikes, and violent clashes in Cairo, and Alexandria.

January 26th
 

1885 ~ Troops loyal to the Mahdi conquered Khartoum.

1905 ~ The Cullinan Diamond was found near Pretoria, South Africa.

1905 ~ Birthday of Maria von Trapp, Singer.

1925 ~ Birthday of Paul Newman, Actor.

1961 ~ Birthday of Wayne Gretzky, Canadian hockey Player, Coach, Owner.

1972 ~ Death of Mahalia Jackson, Gospel Music singer.

1988 ~ The musical "Phantom of the Opera", by Andrew Lloyd Webber opened at Broadway's Majestic Theater.

1996 ~ First lady Hillary Clinton testified before a grand jury connected to the Whitewater probe.

1998 ~ U.S. President Clinton denied on television he had "sexual relations" with Monica Lewinsky.

2005 ~ Following her confirmation by the Senate, Condoleezza Rice was sworn in as U.S. Secretary of State.

Feastdays & Holidays

Australia~ Australia Day

January 27th
 

1606 ~ The trial of Guy Fawkes and other Gunpowder Plot conspirators began.

1756 ~ Birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Composer.

1832 ~ Birthday of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who wrote “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” under the pen name Lewis Carroll.

1945 ~ The Red Army liberated the concentration camp at Auschwitz in southern Poland.

1967 ~ More than 60 nations signed a treaty banning the orbiting of nuclear weapons.

1967 ~ Astronauts Grissom, White and Chaffee were killed in a fire during a test of the Apollo 1 spacecraft.

1977 ~ The Vatican reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church's ban on female priests.

1997 ~ It was revealed that French museums had retained nearly 2,000 pieces of art stolen by Nazis.

1998 ~ U.S. First Lady Hillary Clinton called the attacks against her husband part of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" on the “Today Show”.

2009 ~ Death of John Updike, American Novelist.

January 28th
 

1521 ~ The Diet of Worms began.

1547 ~ Death of Henry VIII, King of England.

1596 ~ Death of Sir Francis Drake, Explorer & Soldier.

1822 ~ Birthday of Alexander Mackenzie, Prime Minister of Canada.

1887 ~ Birthday of Artur Rubinstein, Polish Pianist.

1935 ~ Iceland became the first country to legalize abortion.

1939 ~ Death of William Butler Yeats, awarded the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature.

1986 ~ Space Shuttle Challenger exploded just after takeoff killing all seven astronauts onboard.

2004 ~ Lord Hutton published his report into the death of Dr. David Kelly.

2011 ~ Hundreds of thousands of protesters participated in the "Friday of Anger" demonstrations against the Mubarak regime.

Feastdays & Holidays

Catholicism ~ Feast day of St. Thomas Aquinas.

January 29th
 

1845 ~ Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven" was first published, in the New York Evening Mirror.

1856 ~ Queen Victoria instituted the Victoria Cross.

1880 ~ Birthday of W.C. Fields, Actor.

1933 ~ Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg.

1936 ~ The first members of baseball's Hall of Fame, including Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth, were named in Cooperstown, N.Y.

1956 ~ Death of H. L. Mencken, Journalist.

1962 ~ Death of Fritz Kreisler, Austrian violinist.

1963 ~ Death of Robert Frost, Poet.

1996 ~ France ended nuclear testing.

2002 ~ In his State of the Union Address, President Bush coined the term "Axis of Evil".

January 30th
 

1649 ~ King Charles I of England was beheaded.

1862 ~ The first Union ironclad warship, the USS Monitor was launched.

1933 ~ The first episode of the ''Lone Ranger'' radio program was broadcast on station WXYZ in Detroit.

1937 ~ Birthday of Boris Spassky, World Chess Champion.

1948 ~ Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated.

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

1969 ~ Last public performance by The Beatles.

1972 ~ Thirteen Roman Catholic civil rights marchers were shot to death by British soldiers in Northern Ireland on what became known as "Bloody Sunday”.

1991 ~ The first major ground battle of the Gulf War was fought at the frontier port of Al Khafji in Saudi Arabia.

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

1649 ~ King Charles I of England was beheaded.

For the full story, as told by Monty Python:-


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJ1yPz14LrU

January 31st
 

1606 ~ Guy Fawkes was executed for his part in the Gunpowder Plot.

1797 ~ Birthday of Franz Schubert, Composer.

1865 ~ The U.S. House of Representatives passed a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery.

1919 ~ Birthday of Jackie Robinson, Baseball Player & Barrier Breaker.

1929 ~ The Soviet Union exiled Leon Trotsky.

1956 ~ Death of A. A. Milne, Author (Winnie the Pooh).

1958 ~ James Van Allen discovered the Van Allen radiation belt.

1961 ~ Ham became the first chimpanzee in space.

1996 ~ An explosives-filled truck rammed into the gates of the Central Bank in Colombo, Sri Lanka killing 91 and injuring 1,400.

2000 ~ Family doctor Harold Shipman was given 15 life sentences at Crown Court after being found guilty of multiple murders.

February 1st
 

1851 ~ Death of Mary Shelley, English Author (Frankenstein).

1896 ~ Puccini’s opera La Bohème premiered in Turin.

1920 ~ The Royal Canadian Mounted Police was established.

1929 ~ Frenchman Charles Rigoulet became the first weightlifter to lift over 400 pounds (181 kg) in the "clean and jerk" method.

1960 ~ Four black college students began a sit-in protest against racial segregation at a lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., where they'd been refused service.

1970 ~ Birthday of Jill Kelly, Porn actress.

1979 ~ Patty Hearst, whose prison sentence for bank robbery had been commuted by President Jimmy Carter, left a federal prison near San Francisco.

2003 ~ Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas upon reentry killing all seven astronauts.

2004 ~ Hundreds of people were killed and injured in a stampede duringthe Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.

2004 ~ Super Bowl XXXVIII: One team defeated the other team, 32-29. During the half-time show Janet Jackson's right breast was bared.

February 2nd
 

1870 ~ The Cardiff Giant - supposedly the petrified remains of a human discovered in Cardiff, N.Y. - was revealed to be nothing more than carved gypsum.

1882 ~ Birthday of James Joyce, Irish author.

1887 ~ In Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania the first Groundhog Day was observed.

1905 ~ Birthday of Ayn Rand, Writer, Philosopher.

1943 ~ The German 6th Army surrendered at Stalingrad.

1969 ~ Death of Boris Karloff, English actor.

1970 ~ Death of Bertrand Russell, Mathematician & Philosopher.

1982 ~ Birthday of Brandy Talore, Porn actress.

1990 ~ At the opening of Parliament in Cape Town, President FW de Klerk announced the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa..

Feastdays & Holidays

U.S. & Canada – Groundhog Day

U.S. & Canada – Groundhog Day


Wasn't that tomorrow, or yesterday, or both?

I suppose the answer to that question depends upon when you are.

February 3rd
 

1809 ~ Birthday of Felix Mendelssohn, Composer.

1870 ~ The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified.

1874 ~ Birthday of Gertrude Stein, Writer.

1894 ~ Birthday of Norman Rockwell, Illustrator.

1907 ~ Birthday of James Michener, American author.

1917 ~ The U.S. broke off diplomatic relations with Germany after Germany announced a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare.

1947 ~ You want winter weather? You want COLD? Snag, Yukon recorded a temperature of -62.8°C, the lowest official temperature ever measured in Canada.

1959 ~ Rock 'n' Roll stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper died in a plane crash. Don McLean immortalized the tragedy in “American Pie”.

1966 ~ The Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft made the first controlled landing on the Moon.

1974 ~ Birthday of Julie Meadows, Porn actress.

February 4th
 

1861 ~ In Montgomery, Alabama the Confederate States of America was formed by delegates from six break-away United States.

1902 ~ Birthday of Charles Lindbergh, U.S. aviator.

1913 ~ Birthday of Rosa Parks, U.S. civil rights activist.

1928 ~ Death of Hendrik Lorentz, Dutch physicist and Nobel laureate.

1974 ~ The Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapped Patty Hearst in Berkeley, California.

1987 ~ Death of Liberace, "Mr. Showmanship".

1997 ~ O. J. Simpson was found to be civilly liable for the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

1998 ~ A magnitude 6.1 earthquake hit northeast Afghanistan, killing an estimated 5,000 people.

2004 ~ The online social network Facebook was founded

2006 ~ Death of Betty Friedan, American feminist.

February 5th
 

1878 ~ Birthday of André-Gustave Citroën, automobile pioneer.

1897 ~ The Indiana House of Representatives passed a measure redefining the area of a circle and the value of π. The bill died in the state Senate.

1917 ~ The U.S. Congress passed, over President Woodrow Wilson's veto, a law severely curtailing the immigration of Asians.

1919 ~ Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith created United Artists.

1924 ~ The Royal Greenwich Observatory began to broadcast hourly time signals known as the Greenwich Time Signal or the "BBC pips".

1934 ~ Birthday of Hank Aaron, Athlete.

1937 ~ President Roosevelt proposed increasing the number of Supreme Court justices; critics charged Roosevelt was attempting to "pack" the court.

1958 ~ A hydrogen bomb was lost by the U.S. Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, never to be recovered.

1962 ~ French President Charles De Gaulle called for Algerian independence.

1982 ~ Laker Airways collapsed owing £270 million to banks and other creditors.

February 6th
 

1840 ~ Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, founding document of New Zealand.

1895 ~ Birthday of Babe Ruth, Athlete.

1913 ~ Birthday of Mary Leakey, Anthropologist.

1952 ~ The UK’s King George VI died; he was succeeded by his daughter, Elizabeth II.

1959 ~ Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments filed the first patent for an integrated circuit.

1971 ~ Alan Shepard became the first man to hit a golf ball on the Moon.

1983 ~ Former Gestapo commandant Klaus Barbie extradited to France from Bolivia to stand trial for war crimes.

1993 ~ Death of Arthur Ashe, Athlete.

2002 ~ Death of Max Perutz, Austrian molecular biologist, Nobel laureate (Doctoral students James Watson & Francis Crick ).

2004 ~ An explosion in a Moscow subway car during rush hour killed 41 people in a terrorist attack blamed on Chechen separatists.

February 7th
 

1812 ~ Birthday of Charles Dickens, Novelist.

1834 ~ Birthday of Dmitri Mendeleev, chemist and inventor of the Periodic table of the chemical elements.

1883 ~ Birthday of Eubie Blake, Musician, Composer.

1905 ~ The Great Baltimore Fire destroyed more than 1,500 buildings in 30 hours.

1964 ~ The Beatles arrived in New York for their first American tour, touching off rock 'n' roll's “British invasion”.

1971 ~ Women became entitled to vote in Switzerland.

1979 ~ Death of Dr. Josef Mengele, accused Nazi war criminal.

1984 ~ Bruce McCandless and Robert Stewart went on the first untethered spacewalk.

1990 ~ The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union agreed to let other political parties compete for control of the country, thereby giving up its monopoly on power.

1992 ~ The European Union was formed.

February 8th
 

1587 ~ Mary, Queen of Scots was executed.

1828 ~ Birthday of Jules Verne, Author.

1855 ~ The Devil's Footprints mysteriously appeared in southern Devon.

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

1932 ~ Birthday of John Williams, Composer & Conductor.

1952 ~ Princess Elizabeth proclaimed herself Queen.

1957 ~ Death of John von Neumann, Mathematician.

1982 ~ Birthday of Erik Rhodes, Porn Actor.

1993 ~ General Motors sued NBC, alleging that the program "Dateline NBC" had rigged two crashes to show that GM pickups were prone to fires. NBC settled the lawsuit the following day.

1996 ~ President Clinton signed the Communications Decency Act at the Library of Congress.

Great organization! :thumbs:

Yes, they are. :)

February 9th
 

1825 ~ After no presidential candidate received a majority of electoral votes, the U.S. House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams President.

1881 ~ Death of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Author.

1900 ~ Davis Cup competition established.

1906 ~ Death of Paul Laurence Dunbar, Poet.

1910 ~ Birthday of Jacques Monod, biochemist, winner of 1965 Nobel Prize in Medicine.

1943 ~ American authorities declared Guadalcanal secure.

1950 ~ Senator Joseph McCarthy charged that the U.S. State Department was infested with Communists.

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

1984 ~ Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov died at age 69, less than 15 months after succeeding Leonid Brezhnev.

2001 ~ The submarine USS Greeneville (SSN-772) accidentally strikes and sinks the Ehime-Maru.

February 10th
 

1840 ~ Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

1890 ~ Birthday of Boris Pasternak, Poet, winner of the 1958 Nobel Prize in literature.

1898 ~ Birthday of Bertolt Brecht, Author.

1927 ~ Birthday of Leontyne Price, Soprano.

1933 ~ The first singing telegram was introduced by the Postal Telegram Co. in New York. Sic transit gloria mundi.

1962 ~ Captured American spy pilot Francis Gary Powers was exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.

1982 ~ Birthdy of Brent Everett, Porn Actor.

1996 ~ Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov for the first time. :(

2005 ~ Death of Arthur Miller, playwright .

2007 ~ Sen. Barack Obama announced his bid for president.

February 11th
 

1650 ~ Death of René Descartes, Philosopher.

1898 ~ Birthday of Leó Szilárd, Physicist & Peace Activist.

1938 ~ BBC Television produced the first science fiction television program, an adaptation of the Karel Capek play R.U.R. (This play coined the term 'robot.')

1941 ~ Birthday of Sergio Mendes, Brazilian musician (Brazil '66).

1945 ~ President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and Premier Stalin signed the Yalta Agreement.

1961 ~ The trial of Adolf Eichmann began in Jerusalem.

1978 ~ China lifted a ban on works by Aristotle, Shakespeare and Dickens.

1979 ~ Followers of Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in Iran, after the religious leader returned to his home after his exile.

1986 ~ Death of Frank Herbert, Science Fiction author.

1990 ~ South African black activist Nelson Mandela was freed after 27 years in captivity.

February 12th
 

1809 ~ Birthday of Charles Darwin, Naturalist.

1893 ~ Birthday of Omar Bradley, General.

1924 ~ George Gershwin's ''Rhapsody in Blue'' premiered in New York City.

1938 ~ Anschluss: German troops enter Austria.

1942 ~ Birthday of Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel.

1984 ~ Birthday of Lolly Badcock, Porn Actress.

1994 ~ Edvard Munch's "The Scream" was stolen from a museum in Norway.

1999 ~ The U.S. Senate voted to acquit President Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

2000 ~ Death of Charles M. Schulz, creator of the “Peanuts” comic strip.

2002 ~ The war crimes trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic began in The Hague.

Rats.

February 13th
 

1883 ~ Death of Richard Wagner, Composer.

1923 ~ Birthday of Chuck Yeager, pilot of first supersonic flight.

1935 ~ A jury found Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh.

1945 ~ The RAF & USAAF created a firestorm in Dresden, Germany which killed tens of thousands of civilians.

1960 ~ France tested its first nuclear weapon.

1974 ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in literature, was exiled from the Soviet Union.

1988 ~ Winter Olympic Games opened in Calgary, Alberta.

1991 ~ Hundreds of Iraqi civilians were killed when a pair of laser-guided bombs destroyed an underground facility in Baghdad identified by U.S. officials as a military installation, but which Iraqi officials said was a bomb shelter.

1997 ~ Tune-up and repair work on the Hubble Space Telescope performed by astronauts from the Space Shuttle Discovery.

2002 ~ Death of Waylon Jennings, American musician.

February 14th
 

1766 ~ Birthday of Thomas Malthus, Economist.

1779 ~ James Cook was killed by the natives of the Sandwich Islands.

1895 ~ First performance of Oscar Wilde's last play "The Importance of Being Earnest”.

1929 ~ The St. Valentine's Day Massacre took place in a Chicago garage.

1966 ~ Australian currency was decimalized.

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

1989 ~ Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini called on Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie, author of ''The Satanic Verses,'' a novel Khomeini condemned as blasphemous.

2000 ~ The spacecraft NEAR Shoemaker entered orbit around asteroid 433 Eros, the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid.

2003 ~ Death of Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal.

Feastdays & Holidays

Catholicism ~ Feast day of Saint Valentine.

February 15th
 

1874 ~ Birthday of Sir Ernest Shackleton, British polar explorer.

1898 ~ The USS Maine exploded and sank in Havana Harbor, killing more than 260.

1942 ~ Sigapore fell to the Japanese. The Sook Ching massacre followed.

1954 ~ Birthday of Matt Groening, Satirist.

1965 ~ Death of Nat “King” Cole, Singer.

1965 ~ A new red and white maple leaf design was adopted as the flag of Canada replacing the old Canadian Red Ensign banner.

1974 ~ Birthday of Gina Lynn, Porn actress.

1988 ~ Death of Richard Feynman, Physicist.

1995 ~ Kevin Mitnick was arrested by the FBI and charged with breaking into some of the more "secure" U.S. computer systems.

2005 ~ YouTube was launched.

Doesn't seem possible that Nat King Cole has been gone some 50 years now, or that the Canadian Maple Leaf flag has been around that long either. Wow, time flies when you're having fun.

February 16th
 

1923 ~ Howard Carter unsealed the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun.

1935 ~ Birthday of Sonny Bono, Singer & Congressman.

1937 ~ Wallace Carothers received a patent for nylon.

1942 ~ Birthday of Kim Jong Il, North Korean leader.

1959 ~ Fidel Castro became premier of Cuba after the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista.

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

1985 ~ Hezbollah founded.

1986 ~ The Soviet liner Mikhail Lermontov ran aground in the Marlborough Sounds, New Zealand.

2001 ~ Death of William Masters, American gynecologist and sexologist (Masters and Johnson).

2005 ~ The Kyoto Protocol came into effect.

February 17th
 

1653 ~ Birthday of Arcangelo Corelli, Composer.

1801 ~ An electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr was resolved when Jefferson was elected President and Burr Vice President by the House of Representatives.

1844 ~ Birthday of Aaron Montgomery Ward, American department store founder.

1867 ~ The first ship passed through the Suez Canal.

1895 ~ Swan Lake, one of the more famous ballets, with music by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, was first completely performed in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

1962 ~ Death of Bruno Walter, Conductor.

1972 ~ President Nixon departed on his historic trip to China.

1973 ~ Birthday of SaRenna Lee, Porn actress.

1979 ~ China invaded Vietnam.

1992 ~ Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced in Milwaukee to life in prison.

February 18th
 

1745 ~ Birthday of Alessandro Volta, Physicist, eponym for the unit of the electric potential.

1838 ~ Birthday of Ernst Mach, Austrian Physicist & Philosopher.

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

1885 ~ Mark Twain's “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” was first published.

1930 ~ While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto.

1933 ~ Birthday of Yoko Ono, Singer, Artist, wife of John Lennon.

1969 ~ Lulu and Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees marry.

1967 ~ Death of J. Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist.

2001 ~ FBI agent Robert Hanssen is arrested for spying for the Soviet Union.

2005 ~ The UK law banning fox hunting, hare coursing and other sports which kill wild mammals is enforced from this date.

February 19th
 

1743 ~ Birthday of Luigi Boccherini, Italian Composer.

1915 ~ The Battle of Gallipoli began.

1942 ~ Some 250 Japanese warplanes attacked Darwin, Australia. The attack killed at least 243 people.

1942 ~ President Franklin Roosevelt signed the order allowing the U.S. military to relocate Japanese-Americans to internment camps.

1943 ~ Rommel's Afrika Korps began to spank the Allies in the Battle of the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia (Operation Torch).

1945 ~ About 30,000 U.S. Marines land on Iwo Jima.

1964 ~ Paul Simon wrote "The Sounds of Silence”, the song which would take him and Art Garfunkel to stardom.

1980 ~ Bon Scott, the lead singer of the Australian hard rock band AC/DC, died after a night of heavy drinking.

1986 ~ The Soviet Union launched the Mir space station.

1997 ~ Death of Deng Xiaoping, the last of China's major Communist revolutionaries.

February 20th
 

1792 ~ President Washington signed an act creating the U.S. Post Office.

1902 ~ Birthday of Ansel Adams, Photographer.

1904 ~ Birthday of Alexei Kosygin, Premier of the Soviet Union.

1927 ~ Birthday of Sidney Poitier, Actor.

1952 ~ The film The African Queen opened in New York City.

1958 ~ An announcement was made that the Sheerness Docks, established the in the 17th century by Samuel Pepys, were to close.

1962 ~ John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth aboard Friendship 7.

1966 ~ Death of Chester Nimitz, American admiral.

1989 ~ Part of a British Army barracks in Ternhill, England is destroyed by an IRA bomb.

2009 ~ Two Tamil Tigers aircraft, packed with C4 explosives en route in a kamikaze style attack on the national airforce headquarters, were shot down.

February 21st
 

1875 ~ Birthday of Jeanne Calment. She lived for 122 years 164 days, the longest confirmed lifespan for any human being in history.

1893 ~ Birthday of Andrés Segovia, Spanish guitarist.

1903 ~ Birthday of Anaïs Nin, Writer.

1907 ~ Birthday of W. H. Auden, Poet.

1916 ~ The Battle of Verdun began. French casualties during the battle were estimated at 550,000 with German losses set at 434,000, half of the total being fatalities.

1947 ~ Edwin Land demonstrated the first "instant camera", the Polaroid Land Camera, to a meeting of the Optical Society of America.

1953 ~ Francis Crick and James Watson discovered the structure of the DNA molecule.

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

1988 ~ TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart confessed to his congregation that he was guilty of an unspecified sin, and said he was leaving the pulpit temporarily. Reports linked Swaggart to a prostitute.

1995 ~ When he landed in Leader, Saskatchewan, Steve Fossett became the first man to make a solo baloon flight across the Pacific Ocean.

February 22nd
 

1732 ~ Birthday of George Washington, 1st U.S. President.

1857 ~ Birthday of Robert Baden-Powell, Chief Scout of the World.

1879 ~ Frank Woolworth opened a five-cent store in Utica, N.Y.

1935 ~ Airplanes were no longer permitted to fly over the White House.

1946 ~ George Kennan, the American charge d'affaires in Moscow, sent an 8,000-word telegram - the "Long Telegram" - to the Department of State detailing his views on the Soviet Union, and U.S. policy toward the communist state. Kennan's analysis provided one of the most influential underpinnings for America's Cold War policy of containment.

1980 ~ In the Olympic competition, the U.S. Ice Hockey team defeated the Soviets 4–3 at Lake Placid, NY.

1982 ~ Birthday of Jenna Haze, Porn Actress.

1987 ~ Death of Andy Warhol, Celebrity

1994 ~ Double agent Aldrich Ames was arrested.

1997 ~ Ian Wilmut and his colleagues at the Roslin Institute announced that a sheep had been successfully cloned, and named the clone Dolly.

February 23rd
 

1633 ~ Birthday of Samuel Pepys, Diarist.

1685 ~ Birthday of Georg Friederich Händel, Composer.

1836 ~ The siege of the Alamo began in San Antonio , Texas.

1893 ~ Rudolf Diesel received a patent for the diesel engine.

1915 ~ Birthday of Paul Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay.

1927 ~ President Calvin Coolidge signed a bill creating the Federal Radio Commission, forerunner of the Federal Communications Commission.

1945 ~ The Stars and Stripes raised over Iwo Jima . The 28th Regiment of the 5th Marine Division took Mount Suribachi.

1954 ~ Lasting prevention of polio reported in vaccine tests.

1965 ~ Death of Stan Laurel, Actor & Comedian.

1998 ~ Osama bin Laden published a fatwa declaring jihad against all Jews and "Crusaders" (commonly interpreted to refer to the people of Europe and the United States).

February 24th
 

1786 ~ Birthday of Wilhelm Grimm, Philologist & Folklorist.

1803 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court, in Marbury v. Madison, established the principle of judicial review.

1856 ~ Death of Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky, Russian mathematician.

1868 ~ The U.S. House of Representatives impeached President Andrew Johnson.

1903 ~ The U.S. signed an agreement acquiring a naval station at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

1949 ~ At White Sands NM, "Project Bumper” a WAC CORPORAL attached to a German built V-2 rocket, reached a height of 250 miles above sea level, the first rocket to reach outer space. The entire trip took 6-1/2 minutes from firing.

1955 ~ Birthday of Steve Jobs, Computer Pioneer.

1942 ~ Birthday of Teri Weigel, Porn Actress.

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

2001 ~ Death of Claude E. Shannon, "father of information theory".

2008 ~ After nearly fifty years, Fidel Castro retired as the President of Cuba.