On This Day In History February 1 - 29 (ancient, war, Roman) - U.S. and World, studying past, wars, presidents, language, economy - City-Data Forum

Da Grouch · 02-02-2010, 11:19 AM

And so we start off with another month, it certainly doesn't seem like it's already been 5 months since we got this rolling.
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February 1

~1327 – Teenaged Edward III was crowned King of England, but the country was in fact ruled by his mother Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer. The situation only lasted for 3 years, however, before a 17 year old Edward got his vengeance against the pair.

~1411 – The First Peace of Thorn was signed in Thorn, Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights (Prussia). It formally ended the Polish-Lithuanian-Teutonic War (1409-1411), which mainly comprised of the Battle of Grunwald in 1410.

The 1411 Peace of Thorn treaty

Photo image courtesy Polska.pl

~1587 – The Colony of Roanoke Island was established by the landing of Sir Walter Raleigh. The Colony would become known as the "Lost Colony".

~1662 – The Chinese general Koxinga seized the island of Taiwan after a 9 month siege. The Dutch Governor of Taiwan, Frederik Coyett, surrendered Fort Zeelandia to Koxinga and in the peace treaty, Koxinga was styled Lord Teibingh Tsiante Teysiancon Koxin. This effectively ended 38 years of Dutch rule on Taiwan. Koxinga then devoted himself to transforming Taiwan into a military base for loyalists who wanted to restore the Ming Dynasty.

~1713 – The Kalabalik or Tumult in Bendery occurred. It was a skirmish resulting from the Ottoman sultan's order that his no longer welcome guest, King Charles XII of Sweden, be forced to leave.

Charles XII and his soldiers fighting Moldavian soldiers, as depicted in 1894

Artist: A. Tholey, courtesy the Library of Congress

~1788 - In Georgia, Isaac Briggs and William Longstreet patented the first steamboat design.

~1793 – During the French Revolutionary Wars, France declared war on Britain and the Dutch Republic. (I guess they didn't learn their lesson the first 6 times they got their ass kicked into a mudhole...)

~1796 – The capital of Upper Canada was moved from Newark (Niagara on the Lake) to York (Toronto), which was judged to be less vulnerable to attack by the Americans.

~1814 – Mayon Volcano, in the Philippines, erupted, killing more than 1,200 people. This was the most devastating eruption of the volcano to date. While there was a substantial lava flow,the volcano spewed dark ash that completely buried the town of Cagsawa; only the bell tower of the town's church remained above the new surface.

The church tower is all that remains of Cagsawa Church, which was buried during the 1814 eruption of Mayon Volcano
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/08/CAGSAWA_RUINS.jpg (broken link)
Photo by Tomas Tam taken on December 15th, 2006

~1861 – A State Convention, considering secession, adopted an Ordinance of Secession from the United States by by a vote of 166–8. Texas voters approved this Ordinance on February 23, 1861.

~1862 - Julia Ward Howe's Battle Hymn of the Republic was published for the first time, in the Atlantic Monthly.

~1865 – President Abraham Lincoln signed the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

~1880 - The first edition of theatrical newspaper The Stage was published, it cost 3 old pence for 12 pages.

~1884 – The first volume (A to Ant) of the Oxford English Dictionary was published.

~1893 – Thomas Edison finished construction of the first motion picture studio, the Black Maria (Muh-rye-uh) in West Orange, New Jersey.

Edison's Black Maria studio in West Orange, New Jersey
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bb/Edison_black_maria.jpg (broken link)
Photo courtesy the US National Park Service

~1896 – Giacomo Puccini's opera La bohème premiered at the Teatro Regio in Turin.

~1908 – King Carlos I of Portugal and his son, Prince Luis Filipe were assassinated in Terreiro do Paco, Lisbon.

~1920 – The Northwest Mounted Police merged with the Dominion Police force to become the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

(Low resolution image of the)
Heraldic badge of the RCMP.
It reads: Defending The Law

Image courtesy the RCMP

~1924 – Great Britain recognized the USSR. (Hey! I remember you...!)

~1942 – Josef Terboven, Reichskommissar of German occupied Norway, appointed Vidkun Quisling the Minister President of the collaborationist Norwegian government. After the war he was tried for high treason and executed by firing squad. Today in Norway and other parts of the world, Quisling is synonymous with "traitor".

~1945 - The first flight of the Kawasaki Ki-100 single engine fighter took place. Arguably Japan's best fighter of the war it arrived too late to make any difference in the rapidly deteriorating Japanese position.

The Kawasaki Ki-100 I-Otsu (of Japanese Imperial Army first lieutenant Tatsuda Mamoru)

Photographer unknown

~1946 – Trygve Lie of Norway was elected as the first Secretary General of the United Nations as a result of a compromise between the major powers, having only missed being elected President of the first General Assembly by a small margin.

~1957 – Felix Wankel's first working prototype DKM 54 of the Wankel rotary engine ran at the NSU research and development department Versuchsabteilung TX in Germany.

The first DKM Wankel Engine DKM 54 Drehkolbenmotor, at the Deutsches Museum in Bonn, Germany

Photo by Ralf Pfeifer

~1958 – Egypt and Syria merged to form the short lived United Arab Republic, which only lasted until 1961.

~1960 – 4 black students staged the first of the Greensboro Sit Iins at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.

~1965 – The Hamilton River in Labrador was renamed the Churchill River by Premier Joey Smallwood, in honour of Sir Winston Churchill.

Labrador's Churchill River (and falls)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Churchillfallslabrador2.jpg (broken link)
Photo by J C Murphy

~1968 – The execution (murder) of Viet Cong officer Nguyen Van Lem by South Vietnamese Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Loan was caught on video by NBC television cameraman Vo Suu and photographed by Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams. The photo image especially helped build opposition to the Vietnam War.

(Low resolution) The famous picture of the event on
February 1st, 1968

Photo by Edward Adams (Associated Press)

~1968 – Canada's three military services, the Royal Canadian Navy, the Canadian Army and the Royal Canadian Air Force, were unified into the Canadian Forces. (Ever since that supposedly money saving debacle the Canadian Armed Forces have had to deal with MAJOR underfunding and lack of political support.)

~1968 – The New York Central Railroad and the Pennsylvania Railroad were merged to form the ill fated and short-lived Penn Central.

~1972 - Arlo Guthrie released his memorable version of Steve Goodman's bittersweet and nostalgic folk song City of New Orleans.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfxoM6trtZE

~1972 – Kuala Lumpur became a city by way of a royal charter granted by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia.

~1974 – A fire in the 25 story Joelma Building in Sao Paulo, Brazil killed 189 and injured over 300 more.

~1978 – Director Roman Polanski skipped bail and fled the US to France after pleading guilty to charges of having sex with a 13 year old girl.

~1979 – Convicted bank robber Patty Hearst was released from prison after serving 22 months of a 7 year term when her sentence was commuted by US President Jimmy Carter. She was granted a full pardon by President Bill Clinton in January 2001 on his last day in office.

~1979 – The Ayatollah Khomeini was welcomed back to Tehran, Iran after nearly 15 years of exile.

~1985 – Maybell, Colorado reached a record low for the state of -61 degrees.

~1992 – The Chief Judicial Magistrate of Bhopal court declared Warren Anderson, ex-CEO of Union Carbide, a fugitive under Indian law for failing to appear in the Bhopal Disaster case. (And only a pinhead would've shown up for THAT kangaroo court!)

~1993 – Gary Bettman became the NHL's first commissioner.

~1996 – The Communications Decency Act was passed by the U.S. Congress.

~1998 – Lillian E. Fishburne became the first black woman to be promoted to a US Navy rear admiral. (Woohoo! You show 'em, Lil!)

~2003 – The Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster: Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during mission STS-107, upon re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere. All 7 astronauts aboard were killed in this the second fatal Shuttle incident.

The Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrating during re-entry
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/STS-107_reentry.jpg (broken link)
Photo courtesy NASA

~2004 – 251 people were trampled to death and 244 injured in a stampede at the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.

~2005 – King Gyanendra of Nepal carried out a coup d'état to capture the democracy, becoming Chairman of the Councils of Ministers.

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Da Grouch · 02-03-2010, 12:19 AM

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~ 506 - The Breviary of Alaric (Breviarium Alaricianum or Lex Romana Visigothorum), a collection of Roman law, was compiled on order of Alaric II, eighth king of the Visigoths.

~962 – Pope John XII crowned Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, the first Holy Roman Emperor in nearly 40 years.

~1032 - Died this day: Rudolph III, King of Burgundy.

~1032 – Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor became King of Burgundy.

~1536 – Spaniard Pedro de Mendoza founded Buenos Aires, Argentina.

~1542 – 400 Portuguese musketeers led by Christovão da Gama captured a Moslem occupied hill fort in northern Ethiopia defended by a force nearly 4 times their size at the Battle of Baçente. Though Portuguese losses were minimal the entire defending garrison was wiped out.

~1653 – New Amsterdam (later renamed The City of New York) was incorporated.

~1709 – Alexander Selkirk was rescued after being abandoned on an uninhabited island. He is believed to be the inspiration for the book Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.

Title page of the book The Life and Adventures of Alexander Selkirk, the Real Robinson Crusoe
(1835) by John Howell

Illustrator unknown

~1790 – In Philidelphia, the Supreme Court of the United States convened for the first time.

~1848 – The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, ending the Mexican-American War.

~1870 - The Cardiff Giant (both of them) were revealed as just carved gypsum and not the petrified remains of a human, ending one of history's more elaborate hoaxes.

The Cardiff Giant being exhumed (October 1869)

Photographer unknown

~1876 – The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs (National League) of Major League Baseball was formed.

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

~1897 – Despite the guarantees given by the Great Powers on the Ottoman sovereignty over Crete, occupying Greek Army Colonel Timoleon Vassos unilaterally proclaimed its union with Greece, thereby precipitating the 1897 Greco-Turkish War.

~1901 – The funeral of Queen Victoria took place.

~1913 – Grand Central Terminal was opened in New York City.

View of Grand Central (c. 1918)

Photographer unknown, courtesy of the Frances Loeb Library, Harvard University Graduate School of Design

~1920 – The Tartu Peace Treaty was signed between Estonia and Russia, ending the Estonian War of Independence.

~1922 – The novel Ulysses was first published in its entirety after this material by author James Joyce first appeared in serialized parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, becoming one of the most important works of Modernist Literature.

~1925 – The Serum run to Nome: Dog sleds reached Nome, Alaska with diphtheria serum in spite of the prevailing horrendous winter storm conditions. The event went on to inspire the present day Iditarod race.

~1925 – The magnitude 6.2 Charlevoix-Kamouraska Earthquake struck northeastern North America causing extensive damage.

~1934 – The Export-Import Bank of the United States, the official export credit agency of the United States federal government, was established by an executive order.

~1935 – Leonarde Keeler tested the first polygraph machine on 2 criminals in Portage, Wisconsin, who were later convicted of assault when the lie detector results were introduced in court.

~1943 – The Battle of Stalingrad: In a pivotal turning point of the Second World War the last German troops of the Sixth Army surrendered to the Soviets, ending the bloodiest battle in history with nearly 2 million casualties.

A Soviet soldier waving the Red Banner over the central plaza in Stalingrad (c. late January - early February, 1943)

Photo by Georgii Zelma, courtesy Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive)

~1952 - A tropical storm formed north of Cuba and moveds northeast making landfall in Florida. It is still the earliest reported formation of a tropical storm on record in the Atlantic basin.

~1957 – Pakistani President Iskander Mirza laid the foundation stone of the Guddu Barrage.

~1967 – The American Basketball Association was founded.

~1971 – Idi Amin declared himself President of Uganda, replacing the ousted Milton Obote.

~1972 – The British embassy in Dublin was burnt to the ground in protest of Bloody Sunday (The Bogside Massacre).

~1974 – The first flight of the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon took place. This nimble little fighter has seen service in air forces around the world and is still being produced as of 2010.

Turkish Air Force F-16s in formation
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Ya%C5%9FarKad%C4%B1o%C4%9FluTuAF4.jpg (broken link)
Photo by Yasar Kadioglu

~1976 – The Groundhog Day Gale slammed into the north-eastern United States and south-eastern Canada. The major winter storm/blizzard packed maximum sustained winds of 164 kilometers per hour (102 mph) in coastal areas (equal to a Category 2 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale), with wind gusts of up to 188 kilometers per hour (116 mph).

~1976 - The first prototype of the M1 Abrams main battle tank rolled out of the Chrysler Defense Factory.

An M1A1 Abrams from Bravo Company, 185th Armor, 81st Armor Brigade, conducting an area reconnaissance
around Balad, Iraq on September 6th, 2004

Photo by Staff Sgt. Shane A. Cuomo, courtesy the U.S. Air Force

~1980 – NBC Nightly News became the first media outlet to break the story that FBI personnel were targeting members of Congress in a sting operation. The FBI had codenamed the operation Abscam, a contraction of "Abdul scam", after the name of the company.

~1982 – The Hama Massacre: The Syrian army bombarded the town of Hama in order to quell a revolt by the Muslim Brotherhood. As many as 40,000 people were killed, including about 1,000 soldiers. Large parts of the old city were destroyed.

~1987 – In the aftermath of the 1986 People Power Revolution the Philippine electorate ratified a new constitution in a plebiscite.

~1989 – As the Soviet War in Afghanistan wound down the last Soviet armored column left Kabul on its way back to the Soviet Union, ending nine years of military occupation.

~1990 – The End of Apartheid: F.W. de Klerk allowed the African National Congress to once again function legally and promised to release Nelson Mandela from prison.

~1998 – Cebu Pacific Flt. 387, a DC-9 32, crashed into a mountain near Cagayan de Oro, Philippines, killing all 104 aboard. The mishap was initially blamed on pilot error but this has been disputed and some evidence, that has since surfaced, would tend to confirm this.

~2007 – In central Florida a long-tracked supercell formed and produced 3 tornadoes over a 1 hour and seventeen minute period. The supercell killed 21 people and injured 76 others while leaving a 70-mile (110-kilometer) trail of damage in its wake. The outbreak was the second deadliest on record for Florida, with damages of over $218 million.

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Da Grouch · 02-04-2010, 12:01 AM

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~699 - Died this day: Saint Werburgh, patron saint of Chester, at Trentham.

~1112 – Ramon Berenguer III of Barcelona and Douce I of Provence were married at Arles, uniting the fortunes of the two states.

~1377 – The Cesena Bloodbath: Nearly 5,000 people in the Italian city of Cesena were slaughtered by Papal troops.

~1451 - Died this day: Murad II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire.

~1451 – Sultan Mehmed II ascended the throne of the Ottoman Empire (for the 2nd time) upon the death of his father Murad II.

~1488 – Bartolomeu Dias, a nobleman of the Portuguese royal household, and his men landed in Mossel Bay after sailing around the Cape of Good Hope. They were the first known Europeans to travel so far south.

~1509 – The Battle of Diu: Sometimes referred to as as the Second Battle of Chaul, the naval battle was fought in the Indian Sea, near the port of Diu, India, between the Portuguese Empire and a joint fleet of the Mamlûk Burji Sultanate of Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, the Zamorin of Calicut and the Sultan of Gujarat. The decisive Portuguese victory set that country's trade dominance for almost a century, and thereby greatly assisted the growth of the Portuguese Empire.

The painting Battle of Diu (1509)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Battle_of_Diu_1509.jpg (broken link)
Artist unknown (unsigned work), circa early 16th century

~1534 – The Irish rebel Silken Thomas (Thomas FitzGerald, 10th Earl of Kildare) was executed upon order of King Henry VIII in Tyburn, London.

~1706 – During the Battle of Fraustadt, in Poland, Swedish forces defeated a much larger Saxon-Polish-Russian army by deploying a pincer movement.

~1783 - Shays' Rebellion had some of its opening salvos in Central Massachusetts, in the town of Uxbridge, in Worcester County.

~1787 – Shays' Rebellion was crushed. A militia that had been raised as a private army defeated an attack on the federal Springfield Armory by the main Shaysite force.

~1807 – A British military force, under Brigadier General Sir Samuel Auchmuty captured the city of Montevideo, then part of the Spanish Empire now the capital of Uruguay.

~1830 – The sovereignty of Greece was confirmed in a London Protocol.

~1834 – Wake Forest University was established. The university received its name from its original location in Wake Forest, north of Raleigh, North Carolina, the state Capital.

~1867 – Prince Mutshuhito became Emperor Meiji, the 122nd emperor of Japan.

~1870 – The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, one of the Reconstruction Amendments, was ratified. It granted voting rights to citizens regardless of race.

~1894 – Born this day: Norman Rockwell, American artist and illustrator (d. 1978)

~1900 – William Goebel, the 34th Governor of Kentucky, died on only his 4th day in office from a bullet wound he had recieved the day before the election. The assassin of Goebel has never been conclusively identified.

~1913 – The Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. It allows the Congress to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the states or basing it on census results.

~1916 – A fire started in the Center Block of the Candian Parliament buildings in Ottawa which burnt it to the ground.

Centre Block fire, Parliament Buildings. Photograph taken at 12:30 AM February 4th, 1916 a few
minutes before the collapse of the tower.

Photo by J.B. Reid, courtesy Library and Archives Canada

~1917 – The United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany a day after the Kaiserliche Marine announced a new policy of unrestricted submarine warfare.

~1918 – The Twin Peaks Tunnel in San Francisco, one of the world's longest streetcar tunnels, opened.

~1924 – Died this day: Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States, Nobel laureate (b. 1856)

~1930 – The Communist Party of Vietnam was established, in Hong Kong. (???)

~1931 – The Hawke's Bay Earthquake occurred in New Zealand, killing 256 and devastating the Hawke's Bay region. Centred 15 km north of Napier, it lasted for 2 1/2 minutes and measured 7.8 on the Richter scale. There were 525 aftershocks recorded in the following 2 weeks. The main shock could be felt in much of the lower half of the North Island.

Hastings, New Zealand post office damaged by the earthquake

Photo by James Henry Daroux, courtesy the Alexander Turnbull Library

~1944 – The Battle of Kwajalein ended. Employing the hard learned lessons of the Battle of Tarawa, U S army regulars and Marines concluded a successful twin assault on the main islands of Kwajalein in the south and Roi-Namur in the north. The Japanese defenders put up a stiff resistance though outnumbered and under prepared. The determined defense of Roi-Namur left only 51 survivors of an original garrison of 3,500.

~1945 – Over 1,000 B-17 bombers of the US Eighth Air Force attacked the Berlin railway system in the belief that the German Sixth Panzer Army was moving through Berlin by train on its way to the Eastern Front. The raid killed between 2,500 and 3,000 people and left over 120,000 homeless.

Part of a 1,000 ship B-17 Flying Fortress bomber stream enroute to Berlin (February, 1945)

Photographer unknown, courtesy the U.S. Air Force Archives

~1947 – The record low temperature for continental North America was recorded in Snag, Yukon at −63 °C (−81.4 °F).

~1951 - Dick Button won the American Figure Skating Championship for the 6th time.

~1958 – The treaty establishing the Benelux Economic Union (Benelux Economische Unie/Union Économique Benelux) was signed. It came into force in 1960 to promote the free movement of workers, capital, services, and goods in the region.

~1959 – A small plane crash killed rock & roll greats Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson. The pilot, Roger Peterson, was also killed when the Beechcraft V-tailed Bonanza went down in a cornfield outside of Clear Lake, Iowa just after 1:00 AM.

~1960 – At the Parliament of South Africa, in Cape Town, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan spoke of "a wind of change" regarding the increasing national consciousness throughout colonial Africa. This was a signal that his Government was likely to support decolonisation. The speech acquired its name from a now famous quotation embedded in it. Macmillan said:

"The wind of change is blowing through this continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact."

~1966 – The unmanned Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft made the first controlled rocket assisted landing on the Moon.

~1967 – The murderer of prison officer George Hodson became the last person to be executed in Australia when he was hanged in Pentridge Prison, Melbourne.

~1969 – In Cairo, Yasser Arafat was appointed Palestine Liberation Organization leader at the Palestinian National Congress. (Hey Yasser, killed any kids lately...?)

~1971 – New York Police Officer Frank Serpico was shot during a drug bust in Brooklyn and survived to later testify against police corruption. To a great many the incident proved that NYPD officers tried to kill him.

~1972 - The XI Olympic Winter Games, the first Winter Olympics to be held in Asia, opened in Sapporo, Japan.

~1984 – Dr. John Buster and the research team at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center announced history's first embryo transfer (from one woman to another) birth.

~1984 – NASA launched Space Shuttle Challenger on mission STS-41-B, the shuttle's 4th mission.

~1989 – A military coup overthrew Alfredo Stroessner, the dictator of Paraguay since 1954.

~1996 – The Lijiang Earthquake occurred in Yunnan, China measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale. 200+ people died in the earthquake and 14,000 more were injured, 3,800 of them seriously. 186,000 houses collapsed and another 300,000 people were forced out of their damaged homes. 184 aftershocks occurred in the 26 hours following the earthquake, including 18 which measured between 4.0 and 4.8 on the Richter scale. In addition to damage to structures from the earthquake itself, it triggered more than 200 landslides in a 12,000 sqare kilometer area.

~1998 – The Cavalese Cable Car Disaster: A USMC Grumman EA-6B Prowler struck the cables supporting a cable car in Cavalese after flying low through the valley at more than 500 mph. The cable was severed and 20 people in the cabin plunged over 80 metres to their deaths. The Prowler had wing and tail damage but was able to return to Aviano Air Base. The pilot of the plane, Captain Richard J. Ashby, along with his navigator, Captain Joseph Schweitzer, were put on trial in the United States where they were found not guilty of involuntary manslaughter and negligent homicide. Later they were found guilty of obstruction of justice and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman for having destroyed a videotape recorded from the aircraft and were dismissed from the Marines.

US Navy Grumman EA-6B Prowler in flight

Photo courtesy the US Navy

~2007 – The Baghdad Market Bombing occurred when a large truck bomb was detonated amid a busy market in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. The suicide attack killed at least 135 people and injured 339 others. The bomb, estimated to be about 1 ton in weight, brought down more than 10 buildings and coffee shops. It also obliterated market stalls in the largely Shi‘ite enclave less than a half mile from the Tigris River.

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Da Grouch · 02-05-2010, 12:26 AM

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~211 – Roman Emperor Septimius Severus died, leaving the Roman Empire in the hands of his two quarrelsome sons, Caracalla and Geta.

~960 – The coronation of Zhao Kuangyin as Emperor Taizu of Song took place, initiating the Song Dynasty period of China that would last more than 3 centuries.

~1454 – The Thirteen Years' War: The Secret Council of the Prussian Confederation sent a formal act of disobedience to the Grand Master, Ludwig von Erlichshausen. (I could make a lewd joke here but...)

~1703 – In Edo (now Tokyo), 46 of the Forty seven Ronin committed seppuku (ritual suicide) as recompense for avenging their master's death.
(http://victorian.fortunecity.c...amp/410/47ronin.html)

The ronin attack the principal gate of Kira's mansion

Artist: Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849)

~1794 – The French legislature abolished slavery throughout all territories of the French Republic, only to have it re-established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1804. Slavery would be permanently abolished in France after his first exile to Elba in 1814.

~1801 – John Marshall was sworn in as Chief Justice of the United States.
~1810 – The British seized Guadeloupe (again). They remained until 1816.

~1820 – The Chilean Navy under the command of Lord Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald completed the 2 day long Capture of Valdivia with just 350 men and 2 ships.

~1825 – The Ohio Legislature authorizes the construction of the Ohio and Erie Canal and the Miami and Erie Canal.

The Ohio and Erie Canal in 1902

Photographer unknown, courtesy of Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area

~1861 – In Montgomery, Alabama, delegates from 6 break away U.S. states met and formed the Confederate States of America.

~1862 - Bacardi, one of the world's largest spirits company, was founded as a small distillery in Santiago de Cuba in eastern Cuba.

~1899 – The Battle of Manila began (between 12,000 Americans and 15,000 Filipinos). It was the first and largest battle fought during the Philippine-American War.

The Battle of Manilla on February 4th, 1899
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9a/Fil-American_War_Feb_04%2C1899.jpg (broken link)
Original artist information not available

~1932 – With the establishment of Manchukuo, Japanese troops occupied Harbin, China.

~1932 - The III Olympic Winter Games opened in Lake Placid, New York.

~1935 - The first flight of the Mitsubishi A5M "Claude" fighter took place in the skies over Japan. The fast and agile little aircraft was the world's first monoplane shipboard fighter.

An A5M Claude with arrestor hook and drop tank

Photo courtesy the US Navy

~1936 – Radium E became the first radioactive element to be made synthetically in the US. Dr. John Jacob Livingood at the radiation lab at University of California, Berkeley was bombarding several elements with 5-MEV deuterons. He noted that irradiated bismuth emits fast electrons with a 5 day half-life, the behavior of Radium E.

~1938 - Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was released and went on to become a major box office success, making more money than any other motion picture in 1938.

~1941 – In New York, the United Service Organization (USO) was created to entertain American troops.

~1945 – The Yalta Conference: US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin gathered to discuss Europe's postwar reorganization. Mainly, it was intended to discuss the re-establishment of the nations of war torn Europe.

Allied leaders pose in the courtyard of Livadia Palace, Yalta during the conference

Photo courtesy the US Navy Naval Historical Center

~1948 – Ceylon (later renamed Sri Lanka) was granted its independence within the British Commonwealth.

~1966 – All Nippon Airways Flt. 60, a Boeing 727, was landing at Tokyo Haneda Airport when it crashed into Tokyo Bay, with the loss of all 133 passengers and crew.

~1967 – Lunar Orbiter 3 lifted off from Cape Canaveral's Launch Complex 13 on its (successful) mission to identify possible landing sites for the Surveyor and Apollo spacecraft.

Lunar Orbiter 3

Photo image courtesy NASA

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

~1975 – The Haicheng Earthquake: A magnitude 7.3 quake struck Haicheng, Liaoning, China. Seismologists sent out warnings about this earthquake a day before it took place and ordered evacuations, this successful prediction saved tens of thousands of lives. It was the first successful earthquake prediction in history. In spite of the advance warning, however, 1,328 people still died in the quake.

~1976 – The Guatemala Earthquake: A magnitude 7.5 earthquake, centered in the Motagua Fault about 160 km (100 miles) northeast of Guatemala City, struck during the early morning (at 03:01 AM, local time) when most people were asleep. This accounts for the high death toll of 23,000. Approximately 76,000 were injured, and many thousands more left homeless. Some areas went without electricity and communication for days while cities throughout the country and much of Honduras suffered extensive damage. Most adobe type houses in the outlying areas of Guatemala City were completely destroyed.

~1976 – The XII Olympic Winter Games opened in Innsbruck, Austria.

~1977 - Fleetwood Mac released one of the biggest selling albums of all time, Rumours. It was their 11th album and was released on the Warner Bros. label.

~1992 – Hugo Chávez led a failed Coup d'état against Venezuelan President Carlos Andrés Pérez. (Perez should have done the world a favor and hung him then when he had the chance...)

~1997 – En route to Lebanon, two Israeli Sikorsky CH-53 troop transport helicopters collided in mid air over northern Galilee, Israel killing 73. The choppers were supposed to have crossed the border into Israel's "security zone" in Lebanon, but they were hovering while waiting for official clearance to go.

Israeli Air Force CH-53D Yas'ur

Photo by G Nehemia

~1998 – A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck northeast Afghanistan, lasting for over 8 minutes. Aftershocks continued for the next 7 days. Over 4,000 were killed and a further 10,000 were injured with tens of thousands left homeless. The quake was also felt at Tashkent and Dushanbe.

~1999 – Unarmed West African immigrant Amadou Diallo was shot dead by 4 plainclothes New York City police officers. They fired a total of 41 rounds, hitting Diallo 19 times. Race relations in the city soon neared the boiling point.

~1999 – The freighter New Carissa ran aground during a storm and subsequently broke apart near Coos Bay, Oregon.

The New Carissa, after breaking in two on February 14th, 1999

Photo courtesy the US Coast Guard

~2000 – A German extortionist was given life imprisonment for attempted murder and extortion in connection with the sabotage of German railway lines.

~2003 – The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was officially renamed Serbia and Montenegro and adopted a new constitution. (This whole arrangement fell apart in early June, 2006.)

~2004 – Facebook, a mainstream online social network was created by Mark Zuckerberg in his Harvard dorm room.

~2006 – A stampede occurred in the ULTRA Stadium near Manila killing 78 and injured over 400. 30,000 people had gathered outside the stadium waiting to participate in the first anniversary episode of the television variety show Wowowee. The mayhem erupted when organizers of the show began handing out tickets to people in the crowd, many of whom had been camping outside the stadium for days to acquire them.

~2008 – The London Low Emission Zone (LEZ) scheme began to operate in the UK.

...

Da Grouch · 02-06-2010, 12:15 AM

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~62 – In Italy, the Roman city of Pompeii was struck by a magnitude 7.5 earthquake that caused serious damage throughout the region. The cause has been determined to be due to magna filling crack fissures in nearby Mount Vesuvius. This event was a precursor to the catastrophic eruption of the volcano that took place 17 years later in 79 AD.

~1576 – Henry of Navarre, later King Henry IV of France, renounced Catholicism at Tours and rejoined the Protestant forces in the French Wars of Religion.

~1597 – A group of early Japanese Christians were killed by the new government of Japan for being seen as a "threat to Japanese society". 26 Christians, 6 European Franciscan missionaries, 3 Japanese Jesuits and 17 Japanese laymen including 3 young boys were executed by crucifixion in Nagasaki. (Can you image what they would do to modern day right wing extremist Christian fundamentalists?)

~1631 – Roger Williams landed in Boston. He was an English theologian, a notable proponent of religious tolerance and believed the separation of church and state. He was also an advocate for fair dealings with Native Indians. Many of his ideas are entrenched in the US Constitution.

~1782 – The Spanish Seige of Minorca finally resulted in the surrender of the British forces and capture of the island.

~1783 – In Calabria the first in a sequence of 5 earthquakes ranging from magnitude 5.9 to 7.0 struck. Major devastation was widespread in the area and as many as 50,000 would be killed and hundreds of thousands more injured by the time the last quake hit on March 28th.

~1818 – Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte ascended to the thrones of Sweden and Norway.

~1846 – The Oregon Spectator was first published by the Oregon Printing Association, becoming the first newspaper on the Pacific coast of the United States.

~1859 – Wallachia and Moldavia are united under Alexander John Cuza as the United Principalities, an autonomous region within the Ottoman Empire, which led to the birth of the modern Romanian state.

~1885 – King Léopold II of Belgium established the Congo as a personal possession. Fully half of the population would die under the imposed Congo Free State. (Which was anything BUT free under the rule of that despot...)

Native laborers who failed to meet rubber collection quotas were often punished by having their hands cut off...even children

Original photographers unknown

~1917 – The current constitution of Mexico was adopted, establishing a federal republic with powers separated into independent executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

~1917 – The Congress of the United States passed the Immigration Act of 1917 over President Woodrow Wilson's veto. Also known as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act, it forbade immigration from nearly all of south and southeast Asia.

~1918 – Stephen W. Thompson shot down a German Albatros D.III fighter. It was the first ever aerial victory by the U.S. military.

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

~1922 - DeWitt and Lila Wallace published the first issue of Reader's Digest.

~1924 – The Royal Greenwich Observatory began broadcasting the hourly time signals known as the Greenwich Time Signal or the BBC pips.

~1937 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed the ill-fated Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937, a plan to enlarge the Supreme Court of the United States.

~1946 – The Chondoist Chongu Party was founded in North Korea by a group of followers of the Chondogyo religion. The founder and leader of the party was Kim Tarhyŏn.

~1953 - Disney's animated classic Peter Pan was released by RKO Radio Pictures.

~1958 – Gamel Abdel Nasser was nominated to be the first president of the United Arab Republic.

~1958 – An Mk 15 hydrogen bomb known as the Tybee Bomb was lost by the US Air Force following a mid air collision between an F-86 Sabre and a B-47 Stratojet bomber, off the coast of Savannah, Georgia. The bomb was never recovered.

Mk 15 nuclear bomb

Original photo courtesy the US Air Force

~1964 - A fast moving Pacific frontal system ran into a stationary Arctic high over northwestern Washington state and southwestern British Columbia. The ensuing snowstorm rapidly transformed into a blizzard and effectively shut down the region for days with an accumulated snowfall of up to 30 inches in some areas.

~1971 - Apollo 14 landed on the Moon.

Edgar Mitchell on the lunar surface - February, 1971

Photo by Alan Shepard, courtesy NASA

~1972 – Bob Douglas became the first black inductee to the Basketball Hall of Fame.

~1978 – The Northeast Blizzard of 78, a catastrophic and historic nor'easter that brought blizzard conditions to the New England region of the United States and the New York metropolitan area, formed. Boston received a record 27.1 inches of snow, as did Providence, Rhode Island with 27.6 inches of snow. The storm killed approximately 100 people in the Northeast and injured over 4,500 while causing over US$520 million (US$1.7 billion in present terms) in damage.

~1988 – The US Drug Enforcement Administration indicted Manuel Noriega on drug smuggling and money laundering charges.

~1994 – Byron De La Beckwith was convicted of the 1963 murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers, 30 years after his first 2 trials ended in mistrials.

~1997 – The so called Big Three banks in Switzerland announced the creation of a $71 million fund to aid Holocaust survivors and their families. (No comment...)

~1997 - Morgan Stanley and Dean Witter investment banks announced a $10 billion merger deal.

~2004 – 23 out of a group of 35 Chinese cockle pickers were drowned when they were trapped by rising tides in Morecambe Bay, England. Only 21 bodies were ever recovered.

~2004 – Rebels from the Revolutionary Artibonite Resistance Front captured the city of Gonaïves, initiating the 2004 Haiti rebellion.

~2008 – The Super Tuesday Tornado Outbreak: A major tornado outbreak across the Southern United States caused major damage and left 57 dead along with hundreds of others injured, the most since the May 31, 1985 outbreak that killed 88.

Damage to one of the dormitory buildings at the Union University Campus in Jackson, Tennessee
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9a/UnionDorm.jpg (broken link)
Photo by someone that calls him/herself 07.07.07 as posted on flickr (http://flickr.com/photos/snyder07/2256305613/)

~2009 – The United States Navy guided missile cruiser USS Port Royal ran aground off Oahu, Hawaii, damaging the ship as well as a coral reef.

USS Port Royal (CG-73) grounded on a coral reef near Honolulu, Hawaii in February 2009

Photo courtesy the US Navy

...

Da Grouch · 02-06-2010, 03:05 PM

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~Born this day - Kat. Have a good one, doll! (I'd list the year but she'd give me a serious ass kicking if I did...)

------------

~337 - Julius I was elected pope.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The painting Duckworth's Action off San Domingo

Artist: Nicholas Pocock, 1808

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

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

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

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

The illustration Bombardment and capture of Fort Henry, Tennessee

Artist unknown, as published in Currier & Ives (1862)

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

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

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

Scene at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, Pennsylvania, December 1923, with guns from scrapped battleships in the
foreground (in accordance with the treaty). The USS South Carolina is being dismantled in the background.

Photo courtesy the U.S. Naval Historical Center

~1922 - Pius XI was elected pope.

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

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

~1951 – The Broker, one of Pennsylvania Railroad's K4s passenger trains, derailed near Woodbridge Township, New Jersey. The accident killed 85 people and injured over 500 more. The wreck is one of the worst rail disasters in American history.

One of the Pennsylvania Railroad's K4s
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a8/PRR-K4s-Aberdeen.jpg (broken link)
Photo courtesy the Gottscho-Schleisner collection at
the Library of Congress

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

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

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

Airspeed AS.57 Ambassador

Photo courtesy Adrian Pingstone

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

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

A Titan I test launch from Cape Canaveral

Photo courtesy the US Air Force

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

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

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

~1989 – The Polish Round Table Talks began in Warsaw, Poland. The government initiated the discussion with the banned trade union Solidarność and other opposition groups in an attempt to defuse growing social unrest. (It didn't work.)

The Polish Round Table Talks (February, 1989)

Photographer unknown, possibly Hermann Brest

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

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

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

...

Da Grouch · 02-07-2010, 11:55 PM

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~457 – Leo I became emperor of the Byzantine Empire. He was known as Magnus Thrax (the Great Thracian) by his supporters, and Macellus (The Butcher) by his enemies. Leo proved to be a capable head of state, ruling the Eastern Empire for 17 years until 474. He oversaw many ambitious political and military plans, aimed mostly for the aid of the faltering Western Roman Empire and recovering its former territories.

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

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

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

~1550 - Julius III was elected Pope.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 1863 painting Wreck of HMS Orpheus, presently located in the
New Zealand National Maritime Museum

Artist: Richard B. Beechy (1808 - 1895)

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

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

Cripple Creek during the 1894 strike

Photo by Benjamin McKie Rastall

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

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

Baltimore after the Great Fire

Photo by Fred Pridham, taken on February 9th, 1904

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

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

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

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

Painting of the Japanese evacuation of troops from Guadalcanal during the Ke Operation, first week of February, 1943.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/OperationKeEvacPainting.jpg (broken link)
Artist: Kenichi Nakamura, courtesy U.S. Army Center of Military History

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Astronaut Bruce McCandless during the EVA with the Manned Maneuvering Unit

Photo courtesy NASA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

King Hussein I of Jordan, at a meeting with US Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen in the Pentagon on April 2nd, 1997

Photo by Helene C. Stikkel, courtesy the US Department of Defense

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

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

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

...

Da Grouch · 02-09-2010, 01:01 AM

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

~1238 - The Mongols burnt the Russian city of Vladimir.

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

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

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

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

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

The College of William & Mary's Wren building with its Italianate towers (c. 1859)

Artist unknown: Unsigned work

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

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

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

Army of the Andes monument at Cerro de la Gloria in Mendoza, Argentina

Photo by SpiceMan

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

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

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

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

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

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

MIA Scouts in front of the Church Administration Building in Salt Lake City (1917)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/67/CAB_with_Scouts.jpg (broken link)
Photographer unknown, courtesy the Utah State Historical Society

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

A color poster of the movie The Birth of a Nation

Artist unknown, distributed by Epoch Film Co.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Boy looking at stereogaph of the Sphinx, using a Holmes stereoscope.
Cover of the January 14th, 1922 edition of the Saturday Evening Post.

Artist: Norman Rockwell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hollywood Pictures Backlot

Photo by Bobcgir

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

...

Da Grouch · 02-09-2010, 10:50 PM

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

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

The martyrdom of John Hooper.

Woodcut from the 1583 edition of John Foxe's Book of Martyrs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 1907 painting, Battle of Port Arthur
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/Port_ARthur_Action.jpg (broken link)
Artist: Norman L. Wilkinson (1878-1971)

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

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

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

deHavilland Mosquito Mk XVI (ML963) "King" of 571 Squadron on September 30th, 1944

Photographer Charles E. Brown, courtesy the Imperial War Museum

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

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

SS Normandie on fire at Pier 88 in New York (February 9th, 1942)

Photo courtesy the US National Archives

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

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

HMS Venturer on August 18th, 1943

Photo courtesy the Imperial War Museum

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

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

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

A Boeing 727-200 belonging to Syrian Air

Photo by Dmitry A. Mottl

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

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

A Boeing 747-100 belonging to United Airlines at Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/United_747old.jpg (broken link)
Photo by Philippe Noret (1996)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Low resolution photo of the Ehime-Maru Japanese training vessel

Photo courtesy Ehime Prefecture photo

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

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

The 44 story TVCC building in flames, next to the CCTV Headquarters (on the left)

Photo by WiNG
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Da Grouch · 02-10-2010, 11:42 PM

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

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

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

Hulagu Khan's army attacks Baghdad, 1258.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/90/Hulagu_Baghdad_1258.jpg (broken link)
Image courtesy the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

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

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

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

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

~1798 – French forces led by Louis Alexandre Berthier invaded Rome, proclaimed a Roman Republic on February 15th and then, on February 20th, took Pope Pius VI prisoner. The pope died shortly thereafter while in Berthier's custody. (Well THAT wasn't overly friendly on the part of the Frenchman!)

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

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

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

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

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

The wedding of General Tom Thumb (Charles Sherwood Stratton)
and Lavinia Warren, February 10th, 1863

Photo by Mathew Brady Studio (active 1844–1883)
courtesy Frederick Hill Meserve Collection, National
Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

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

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

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

HMS Dreadnought underway (c. 1912)

Photo courtesy the US Navy Historical Center

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

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

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

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

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

The SS General von Steuben, in the summer of 1925

Photo by Richard Fleischhut, courtesy Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive)

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

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

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

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

HMA Ships Melbourne, Vendetta, and Voyager underway (c. 1959)

Photo courtesy the Australian War Memorial (AWM)

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

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

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

A typical World War II U-boat of the Kreigsmarine (U-boat 534 at Birkenhead Docks, Merseyside, England)

Photo by Paul Adams

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

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

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

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

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

Aftermath of the Namdaemun fire on February 11th, 2008

Photo by WatchWants

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