|
|||||||
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||||
|
|||||||
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||||
Today in History ~ February 2
Happy Groundhog's Day! [H]
Events0962 - Pope John XII crowns German King Otto I ("The Great") Holy Roman Emperor
1461 - 2nd battle of St Alban's -- Lancastrians defeat Yorkists in fratricidal War of the Roses
1536 - Pedro de Mendoza establishes Argentine city of Buenos Aires (Other accounts, including the memorial Column standing at the center of Buenos Aires, give the date as 1500)
1653 - New Amsterdam, now New York City, was incorporated.
1709 - British sailor Alexander Selkirk is rescued after being marooned on a desert island for 5 years, his story inspires "Robinson Crusoe"
1762 - Thomas Arne's opera "Ataxerxes," premieres in London
1795 - Joseph Haydn's 102nd Symphony in B premieres
1812 - Russian settlers establish Ft Ross trading post north of San Francisco [H]
1823 - Rossini's opera "Semiramide" premieres in Venice
1848 - 1st ship load of Chinese arrive in SF
1848 - Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends Mexican War; US acquires Texas California, New Mexico & Arizona for $15 million
1852 - Alexandre Dumas Jr's "Le Dame aux Camelias," premieres in Paris
1863 - Samuel Clemens becomes Mark Twain for 1st time
1869 - James Oliver invents removable tempered steel plow blade
1870 - Mark Twain, 34, marries Olivia Langdon in Elmira, NY
1876 - Baseball's National League forms with teams in Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Hartford, Louisville, New York, Philadelphia, St Louis
1892 - Bottle cap with cork seal patented by William Painter (Baltimore)
1893 - 1st movie close-up (of a sneeze), Edison studio, West Orange, NJ
1897 - Fire destroyed the Pennsylvania state capitol in Harrisburg. (A new statehouse was dedicated on the same site nine years later.)
1900 - Gustave Charpentier's opera "Louise" premieres in Paris
1906 - Papal encyclical denounces separation of church & state
1922 - James Joyce's "Ulysses" published in Paris (1,000 copies)
1923 - Ethyl gasoline 1st marketed, Dayton, Ohio
1932 - Al Capone sent to prison (Atlanta, Georgia) for "tax evasion"
1933 - 2 days after becoming chancellor, Adolf Hitler dissolves Parliament
1933 - Reichstag President Herman Goring bans communist meetings/demonstrations in Germany
1935 - Lie detector 1st used in court (Portage, Wisc)
1942 - LA Times urges security measures against Japanese-Americans
1942 - US auto factories switch from commercial to war production
1943 - The remainder of Nazi forces from the Battle of Stalingrad surrendered in a major victory for the Soviets in World War II. [H]
1945 - President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill departed Malta for the summit in Yalta with Soviet leader Josef Stalin.
1948 - President Truman urges congress to adopt a civil rights program
1949 - 1st 45 RPM record released
1954 - President Eisenhower reports detonation of 1st Hydrogen bomb (detonated in 1952)
1957 - Liz Taylor's 3rd marriage (Mike Todd)
1959 - Buddy Holly's last performance
1961 - The 600 passengers of a hijacked Portuguese ocean liner, the Santa Maria, were allowed to disembark in Brazil.
1964 - GI Joe, debuts as a popular American toy
1965 - Joe Orton's farce, "Loot," premieres in Brighton
1971 - Idi Amin ousts Milton Obote to become dictator (and butcher) of Uganda [H]
1974 - Barbra Striesand's 1st #1 hit, "The Way We Were"
1977 - Radio Shack officially begins creating TRS-80 computer
1980 - FBI releases details of Abscam, a sting operation that targeted/entrapped 31 elected and public officials for bribes for political favors
1986 - Dalai Lama meets Pope John Paul II in India
1990 - South Africa's Pres FW de Klerk promises to free Nelson Mandela and legalizes ANC and 60 other political orgs
1991 - In the Gulf War, Iraq fired Scud missiles at Israel and Saudi Arabia; no serious damage was reported.
1992 - IRS and Willie Nelson settle on $9M tax bill (of $16.7M)
1996 - A deep freeze continued in the Plains, the Midwest and much of the South, breaking temperature records that had stood for a century.
2000 - Searchers recovered the cockpit voice recorder from the wreckage of Alaska Airlines Flight 261 in the Pacific Ocean, off the California coast.
Birthdays Today
1650 - Nell [Eleanor] Gwyn, English actress/mistress (King Charles II)
1803 - Albert Sidney Johnston, Gen (Confederate Army), died in 1862 at Shiloh
1817 - John Glover, English chemist (sulfuric acid)
1861 - Mohammed VI, last sultan of Ottoman Empire (1918-22)
1861 - Solomon R Guggenheim, philanthropist (Guggenheim Museum NYC)
1873 - Baron Konstantin von Neurath, German secretary of State (1932-38). After WW II, was tried as war criminal and received jail sentence
1875 - Fritz Kreisler (Austrian-born violin virtuoso/composer: Caprice Viennois, Tambourin Chinois, Liebesfreud, La Gitana)
1882 - James Joyce (poet, author: Ulysses, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Finnegan's Wake, Chamber Music)
1890 - Charles Correll (creator with Freeman Gosden of: Amos 'n' Andy; voice of Andy on radio)
1895 - George Halas (football executive: Chicago Bears owner: 'Papa Bear', a leader of the National Football League)
1901 - Jascha Heifetz (Russian-born violin virtuoso, first public appearance at age of six)
1905 - Ayn Rand (social critic, writer: The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged)
1906 - Gale Gordon (Charles Aldrich) (actor: The Lucy Show, The Lucille Ball Comedy Hour, My Little Margie, Our Miss Brooks)
1911 - Johan J "Jussi" Bjorling, great Swedish tenor, now regarded by many as the greatest opera tenor of the middle 20th Century
1912 - Burton Lane (composer)
1920 - A. Wang, founder (Wang Labs, Wang Computers)
1923 - James Dickey (poet: The Firebombing; novelist: Deliverance)
1923 - Red (Albert) Shoendienst (baseball: St. Louis Cardinals player and manager)
1927 - Herb Kaplow (newsman: ABC-TV News)
1927 - Stan Getz (Gayetzsky) (jazz musician: The Girl from Ipanema with Astrud Gilberto; 17-time winner of Down Beat mag's top tenor saxophone poll)
1928 - Elaine Stritch (actress: Three Violent People, Providence, September)
1929 - Russell Arms (singer)
1937 - Tom Smothers (entertainer: The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour; Dick's Brother)
1942 - Graham Nash (singer, musician: group: Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young: Ohio; Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, Wasted On the Way)
1944 - Andrew Davis, Ashbridge, England, conductor
1947 - Farrah Fawcett-Majors (actress: Charlie's Angels, The Burning Bed; ex-Mrs. Lee Majors; Playboy pictorial [12/95])
1949 - Ray Jarvis (football)
1953 - Mike Fanning (football: Los Angeles Rams defensive Tackle: Super Bowl XIV)
1954 - John Tudor (baseball)
Famous deaths
1594 - Giovanni Perluigi da Palestrina, Italian composer, dies at 68
1685 - Charles II, King of England/Scotland/Ireland (1660-85), dies at 54
1789 - Armand-Louis Couperin, Fren composer/organist (Notre Dame), dies at 63
1918 - John L Sullivan, Mass, heavyweight boxing champ, dies at 59
1945 - Karl F Goerdeler, mayor (Leipzig)/"July 20th plot", hanged at 60
1969 - Boris Karloff, [Pratt], British actor (Frankenstein), dies at 81
1969 - Giovanni Martinelli, opera singer (NY Met), dies at 83
1970 - Bertrand Russell, philosopher/social gadfly, British MP, dies in Merioneth at 97
1979 - Sid Vicious, [John Simon Ritchie], bassist (Sex Pistols), OD's at 31
1992 - Bert Parks, [Jacobson], TV host (Miss America), dies at 77
1996 - Gene Kelly, actor/dancer (Singing in the Rain), dies at 83
If you have other Birthdays or events to add for this day please E-mail me
Yesterday Tomorrow
