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Today in History ~ February 8
Events0421 - Flavius Constantine becomes emperor Constantine III of Roman Empire West
1600 - Vatican sentences scholar Giordano Bruno to death
1601 - Earl Robert Devereux of Essex armies draws into London
1622 - King James I disbands the English parliament
1672 - Isaac Newton reads 1st optics paper before Royal Society in London
1690 - French & Indian troops set Schenectady settlement NY on fire
1693 - William & Mary college is 2nd college chartered in US
1776 - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's "Stella," premieres in Hamburg
1802 - Simon Willard patents banjo clock
1807 - Napoleon defeats Russians in battle of Eylau
1837 - 1st VP chosen by Senate, Richard Johnson (Van Buren admin)
1861 - Confederate States of America organizes in Montgomery, Ala
1862 - Battle of Roanoke Island NC, Federals gain control of Pamlico Sound
1865 - 1st black major in US army, Martin Robinson Delany
1883 - Louis Waterman begins experiments to invents fountain pen
1887 - Aurora Ski Club of Red Wing, Minn became the 1st US ski club
1887 - Dawes Act passed (Indians living apart from tribe granted citizenship)
1894 - Enforcement Act repealed, making it easier to disenfranchise blacks
1895 - Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake," premieres in Petersburg
1896 - Georges Feydeau's "Le Dindon," premieres in Paris
1898 - John Ames Sherman patents 1st envelope folding & gumming machine (Mass)
1904 - Russo-Japanese War begins
1905 - Cyclone hit Tahiti & adjacent islands, killing some 10,000 people
1910 - The Boy Scouts of America was incorporated.
1911 - US helps overthrow President Miguel Devila of Honduras
1911 - Victor Herbert's opera "Natoma," premieres in NYC
1915 - D.W. Griffith's silent movie epic about the Civil War, "The Birth of a Nation," premiered at Clune's Auditorium in Los Angeles. [H]
1918 - "Stars & Stripes," weekly US armed forces newspaper, 1st published
1920 - Swiss men vote against women's suffrage
1922 - President Harding had a radio installed in the White House.
1923 - German NSDAP (Nazi Party) Volkischer Beobachter newspaper becomes a daily
1924 - The first execution by gas in the United States took place at the Nevada State Prison in Carson City.
1925 - Kaufman's & Berlin's "Cocoanuts," premieres in NYC
1925 - Marcus Garvey enters federal prison in Atlanta
1926 - German Reichstag decides to apply for League of Nations membership
1926 - Sean O'Casey's "Plough & Stars" opens at Abbey Theater Dublin
1926 - Walt Disney Studios forms
1928 - 1st transatlantic TV image received, Hartsdale, NY
1928 - Scottish inventor J Blaird demonstrates color-TV
1933 - 1st flight of all-metal Boeing 247
1936 - Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru follows Gandhi as chairman of India Congress Party
1940 - Lodtz, 1st large ghetto established by Nazis in Poland
1940 - Nazis shot every 10th person in two Polish villages near Warsaw in reprisal for the deaths of two German soldiers.
1941 - Japanese armored barges cross Strait of Johore to attack Singapore
1942 - Congress advises FDR that, Americans of Japanese descent should be locked up en masse so they wouldn't oppose the US war effort
1943 - Red Army recaptures Kursk
1945 - Allied air attack on Goch/Kleef/Kalkar/Reichswald
1946 - Premier Salazar of Portugal forbids opposition parties
1949 - Hungarian Cardinal Mindszenty sentenced to life in prison
1955 - Malenkov resigns as USSR premier, Bulganin replaces him
1960 - Congress opens hearings into payola
1964 - Peter Shaffer's "Royal Hunt of the Sun," premieres in London
1965 - Eastern DC-7B crashes into Atlantic off Jones Beach NJ, kills 84
1968 - Three college students were killed in a confrontation with highway patrolmen in Orangeburg, S.C., during a civil rights protest against a whites-only bowling alley.
1969 - Last edition of Saturday Evening Post
1969 - Meteorite weighing over 1 ton falls in Chihuahua, Mexico
1971 - South Vietnamese troops invade Laos
1973 - Senate leaders named seven members of a select committee to investigate the Watergate scandal.
1974 - The three-man crew of the "Skylab" space station returned to Earth after spending 84 days in space.
1975 - 1800 Unification church couples' wed in Korea
1978 - The deliberations of the Senate were broadcast on radio for the first time as members opened debate on the Panama Canal treaties.
1980 - President Carter unveiled a plan to reintroduce draft registration.
1981 - US male Figure Skating championship won by Scott Hamilton
1983 - Baseball orders Mickey Mantle to sever ties with Claridge Casino
1983 - Champion thoroughbred Shergar kidnapped in Ireland -- never found, but Lloyds of London pays $10.6 million insurance
1986 - US male Figure Skating championship won by Brian Boitano
1987 - A 60-day cease-fire ended between the Philippine army and communist rebels. 28 people had died in truce violations.
1989 - Jockey Chris Antley begins record of 64 consecutive winning days
1989 - 144 people were killed when an American-chartered Boeing 707 filled with Italian tourists slammed into the fog-covered Santa Maria mountain in the Azores.
1990 - "60 Minutes" commentator Andy Rooney suspended by CBS for racial remarks attributed to him by a gay magazine
1991 - Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin L. Powell met with American pilots in Saudi Arabia. Powell drew cheers as he described how allied troops would deal with the Iraqi force in Kuwait: "We'll cut it off and kill it."
1992 - The 16th Olympic Winter Games opened in Albertville, France, with the traditional pageantry.
1993 - Q gunman shot three doctors in the emergency room at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, then barricaded himself in an X-ray room with two hostages before surrendering.
1993 - A chartered passenger plane collided with a military aircraft over the Iranian capital of Tehran, killing at
least 132 people and strewing bodies across a military base as Iran celebrated Air Force Day.
1994 - Jack Nicholson uses a golf club to attack a car
1995 - 6.4 earthquake at Trujillo, Colombia (46+ killed)
1995 - The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to send 7,000 peacekeepers to Angola to maintain peace in the African nation.
1996 - NFL & Cleveland allows Art Modell to move his NFL franchise to Baltmore but he had to leave the Browns' name behind
1996 - In a ceremony at the Library of Congress, President Clinton signed legislation revamping the telecommunications industry, saying it would "bring the future to our doorstep."
1997 - President Clinton announced in his weekly radio address that he was releasing the first of a $200 million program of grants to provide schools with computers and Internet training.
2000 - Internet vandals continued an unprecedented campaign of electronic assaults against the biggest names in cyberspace, disrupting access for consumers to popular Web sites including eBay, Amazon.com and CNN.com.
2001 - A House committee opened hearings into former President Clinton's last-minute pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich, with former prosecutors complaining that they hadn't been consulted before the pardon was granted.
2001 - President Bush sent his proposed $1.6 trillion, 10-year tax cut plan to Congress.
Birthdays Today
0412 - St Proclus, patriarch of Constantinople
1291 - Afonso IV, King of Portugal (1325-57)
1577 - Robert Burton, writer, Anglican clergyman (Anatomy of Melancholy)
1586 - Jacob Praetorius, composer
1612 - Samuel Butler, England, poet/satirist (Hudibras) (baptized)
1712 - L Joseph de Montcalm de Saint-Veran, French general in America
1741 - Andre-Ernest-Modeste Gretry, composer
1789 - Ludwig Wilhelm Maurer, composer
1817 - Richard Stoddert Ewell, Lt Gen (Confederate Army), died in 1872
1819 - John Ruskin, writer/critic/artist/Gothic Revivalist (Prerafaelite)
1820 - William Tecumseh Sherman (army officer: Civil War hero: famous for his march through Georgia: "War is hell."), died in 1891
1828 - Jules Verne ('the father of science fiction': writer: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Around the World in Eighty Days)
1878 - Martin Buber, German/Israeli philosopher/theologist (Ich und Du)
1888 - Dame Edith Evans (actress: Scrooge, Look Back in Anger, David Copperfield, The Madwoman of Chaillot)
1892 - Fritz Todt, German Reichs minister (Organization Todt) succeeded by Albert Speer
1918 - John Intoxication, resistance fighter
1919 - Buddy Morrow (Moe Zudekoff) (bandleader: Night Train, Hey Mrs. Jones, theme from Man with the Golden Arm)
1920 - Lana (Julia Jean) Turner (actress: Ziegfeld Girl, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Madame X, Love Finds Andy Hardy)
1925 - Jack Lemmon (Academy Award-winning actor: Save the Tiger [1973]; Best Supporting Oscar: Mr. Roberts [1955], The Odd Couple, Grumpy Old Men)
1927 - Stanley Baker, Ferndale Wales, actor (Concrete Jungle, Zorro, Zulu)
1930 - Alejandro Rey (actor: The Grace Kelly Story, Fun in Acapulco)
1930 - Jim Dooley (football)
1931 - James Dean (actor: Giant, East of Eden, Rebel Without A Cause)
1933 - Elly Ameling, Rotterdam Holland, soprano (Ilya-Idomeneo)
1936 - Larry Verne (singer: Please Mr. Custer)
1938 - Ray Sharpe (singer: Linda Lu)
1940 - Ted Koppel (journalist; anchor: Nightline)
1941 - Nick Nolte (actor: Down and Out in Beverly Hills, The Deep, Blue Chips, 48 Hours, The Prince of Tides, Extreme Prejudice)
1942 - Robert Klein (comedian: TV's Bloopers & Practical Jokes)
1942 - Terry Melcher, Rip Chords, Doris Day's son
1943 - Bob Oliver (baseball)
1943 - Creed Bratten (musician: group: The Grassroots: Sooner or Later, Let's Live for Today)
1944 - Bunky Henry (golfer; name-of-the-year nominee)
1947 - Larry Walton (football)
1951 - Camille Lapierre (hockey; a guy, not a girl)
1953 - Mary Steenburgen, Newport Ark, actress (Parenthood, Time After Time)
1955 - John Grisham, writer (Client, Firm, Pelican Brief)
1968 - Gary Coleman (actor: Diff'rent Strokes, Webster, The Kid from Left Field, The Fantastic World of D.C. Collins)
Famous deaths
1587 - Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots (1560-87), beheaded at 44 [H]
1676 - Aleksei M Romanov, 1st Romanov-czar of Russia, dies at 46
1691 - Carlo Rainaldi, composer, dies at 79
1691 - Carlo di Girolamo Rainaldi, Italian architect/composer, dies at 79
1709 - Giuseppi Torelli, Italian composer, dies at 50
1725 - Peter I "the Great" Romanov, czar of Russia (1682-1725), dies at 52
1740 - Clement XII, [Lorenzo Corsini], blind Pope (1730-40), dies at 87
1749 - Jan van Huysum, Dutch still life painter, dies at 66
1921 - Pjotr A Kropotkin, Russian ruler/anarchist, dies at 78
1932 - Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll, mobster, killed by Dutch Schultz gang
1935 - Max Liebermann, Ger impressionist painter/graphic artist, dies at 87
1959 - William J "Wild Bill" Donovan, Office Strategic Services, dies at 76
1974 - Fritz Zwicky, Swiss/US astronomer (supernova), dies at 75
1975 - Martyn Green, actor (Gilbert & Sullivan, Mikado), dies at 75
1982 - John Hay Whitney, US newspaper magnate
1995 - William Fulbright, US politician, dies
If you have other Birthdays or events to add for this day please E-mail me
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