Today in History

Births On This Day, January 31 🎂

1982 Elena Paparizou
Greek/Swedish singer-songwriter

1975 Preity Zinta
Indian actress

1937 Philip Glass
American composer

1919 Jackie Robinson
American baseball player

1797 Franz Schubert
Austrian composer

Deaths On This Day, January 31st 🪦

1969 Meher Baba
Indian mystic

1956 A. A. Milne
English author

1954 Edwin Armstrong
American engineers invented FM radio

1888 John Bosco
Italian priest, educator

1606 Guy Fawkes
English soldiers planned the Gunpowder Plot
 

1865
U.S. Congress passes 13th Amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery by a vote of 121-24
1928
Scotch Tape is 1st marketed by 3-M Company
1944
"Operation- Overlord'{D-Day} is postponed until June 6th, so the allies had time to assemble larger forces
1972
In Londonderry, Ireland, 13 unarmed civil rights protesters were shot dead by British paratroopers. They were marching to protest British policy of internment of suspected Irish nationalists. It became known around the world as 'Bloody Sunday"
2006
Sandra Day O'Connor, the 1st female Supreme Court justice retires, replaced by Samuel Alito
2019
The U.S. border agency seizes its biggest ever fentanyl bust of nearly 254 pounds hidden in a tractor trailer in Nogales, Arizona
 
On This Day In History, February 2nd

1990 The South African Apartheid system of racial segregation begins to disintegrate
President de Klerk announced the unbanning of the African Nations Congress (ANC) and his intentions to release Nelson Mandela.

1943 The Battle of Stalingrad comes to an end as the Axis Powers surrender
Germany's defeat marked a turning point in World War II.

1925 20 mushers embark on a journey to transport medicine to Nome, Alaska, inspiring the Iditarod Race
The Iditarod is the world's longest and most challenging dog sledge race.

1922 “Ulysses” by James Joyce is published
The novel is considered one of the most important works of modernist literature.

1852 The first public flushing toilet is opened in London
Using the “Public Waiting Room” at 95 Fleet Street costs 2 pence.
 


Births On This Day, February 2nd 🎂

1977 Shakira
Colombian singer-songwriter, producer, actress

1963 Eva Cassidy
American singer, guitarist

1926 Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
French politician, 20th President of France

1905 Ayn Rand
Russian/American author, philosopher

1882 James Joyce
Irish author

Deaths On This Day, February 2nd 🪦

1996 Gene Kelly
American dancer, actor

1979 Sid Vicious
English singer, bass player

1972 Natalie Clifford Barney
American poet, playwright

1970 Bertrand Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
English mathematician, historian, philosopher, Nobel Prize laureate

1945 Carl Friedrich Goerdeler
German politician
 
Feb 3rd:
1863
author Samuel Clemens 1st uses his pen name' Mark Twain' in a Virginia City newspaper,' Territorial Enterprise'
1913
16th Amendment of U.S. Constitution,federal income tax is ratified
1959
50's rock singers, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, PJ Richardson'The Big Bopper'and the pilot are all killed in plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa. Holly was 22, Valens was 17. This tragedy is known as' The Day the music Died'. It became the inspiration of singer Don Maclean's hit single' American Pie'
1969
Ibuprofen was launched in the UK under brand name' Brufen' as a prescription med. Its now the world's most popular anti- inflammatory pain killer
1994
Pres Bill Clinton lifts the 19yr U.S. trade embargo against Vietnam. He cited the co operation of the communist govt in helping locate 2,230 Americans officially still missing from the Vietnam War
2023
the coldest windchill recorded in U.S. -108 degrees taken at Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire
 
On This Day In History February 4th

2004 Facebook is founded
The social networking service currently has over 1 billion active users.

1948 Ceylon (Sri Lanka) proclaims independence within the British Commonwealth
Since the 16th century, the island had been colonized by Portugal, the Netherlands, and Great Britain.

1861 The Confederate States of America are established
6 slave states met in Montgomery, Alabama to form the Confederacy, which lasted only until 1865.

1859 German archaeologist Constantin von Tischendorf discovers the Codex Sinaiticus
The “Sinai Bible”, a handwritten copy of the Greek Bible, is considered a great historical treasure.

1789 George Washington is elected as the first President of the United States
Washington took office on April 30, 1789.
 
Births On This Day, February 4th 🎂

1948 Alice Cooper
American singer-songwriter, actor

1913 Rosa Parks
American activist

1906 Dietrich Bonhoeffer
German pastor, theologian

1902 Charles Lindbergh
American pilot, activist

1746 Tadeusz Kościuszko
Polish/American general

Deaths On This Day, February 4th 🪦

2006 Betty Friedan
American author, activist

2001 Iannis Xenakis
Greek/French composer, engineer, theorist

1987 Liberace
American singer, pianist, actor

1987 Meena Keshwar Kamal
Afghan activist founded the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan

1894 Adolphe Sax
Belgian musician invented the saxophone
 
On This Day In History, February 6th

1996 The crash of a Boeing 757 aircraft leaves no survivors
Birgenair Flight 301 was the worst accident involving this type of aircraft.

1989 The Round Table Talks start in Poland
The negotiations between the Polish government and the trade union Solidarność, or Solidarity in English, marked the beginning of the end of communism in Eastern Europe.

1959 The first microchip is patented
For his invention of the integrated circuit, Jack Kilby was awarded the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics.

1952 Elizabeth II becomes Queen of the United Kingdom
She succeeded her father, George VI, who died that day.

1840 New Zealand becomes a British colony
While the Treaty of Waitangi is generally celebrated as the country's founding document, many Māori claim they were deceived and unwittingly stripped of their right to govern the country.
 
Births On This Day, February 6th 🎂

1950 Natalie Cole
American singer-songwriter, actress

1945 Bob Marley
Jamaican/American singer-songwriter, guitarist

1911 Ronald Reagan
American actor, politician, 40th President of the United States

1895 Babe Ruth
American baseball player

1665 Anne, Queen of Great Britain

Deaths On This Day, February 6th 🪦

2011 Gary Moore
Irish singer-songwriter, guitarist, producer

2007 Frankie Laine
American singer-songwriter, actor

1999 Don Dunstan
Australian politician, 35th Premier of South Australia

1918 Gustav Klimt
Austrian painter, graphic artist

1804 Joseph Priestley
English chemist, minister, philosopher
 
1819
British statesman, Stamford Raffle founded Singapore as a British trading post
1867
U.S. philathropist, George Peabody establishes Peabody Educational Fund to provide improvements to schools in poor areas of Southern states
1935
board game' Monopoly' goes on sale for the 1st time
1964
France&Great Briain sign agreement to build the channel tunnel
1971
NASA astronaut Alan Shepard becomes the 1st to hit a golf ball on the moon
1987
No Smoking rules go into effect at all U.S. Federal Buildings
2018
Elon Musks's company' Space X' launches' Falcon Heavy, world's most powerful rocket. On board is a mannequin dubbed' Starman', he's sitting in the driver's seat of Musk's Tesla roadster
 
On This Day In History, February 7th

2009 The Black Saturday bushfires in Australia kill 173 people
The fires were the worst natural disaster in Australian history.

2005 Ellen MacArthur breaks the speed record for sailing solo around the world
The journey took her 71 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes, and 33 seconds.

1992 The European Union is established as the Maastricht Treaty is signed
The treaty also defined a single European currency: the Euro.

1986 Haiti's president, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, flees the country, ending 28 years of family rule
On the same day 5 years later, the first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was sworn in.

1984 NASA astronauts take the first untethered spacewalk
The photographs of Bruce McCandless and Robert L. Stewart hovering freely in space became some of the most iconic images of the 1980s.
 
Births On This Day, February 7th 🎂

1978 Ashton Kutcher
American model, actor, producer

1962 Eddie Izzard
Yemeni/English actor, comedian

1962 Garth Brooks
American singer-songwriter, guitarist

1906 Oleg Antonov
Soviet aircraft designer founded the Antonov Aircraft Company

1812 Charles Dickens
English author

Deaths On This Day, February 7th 🪦

2015 Dean Smith
American basketball player, coach

1994 Witold Lutosławski
Polish composer, conductor

1986 Cheikh Anta Diop
Senegalese historian, anthropologist, physicist

1959 Nap Lajoie
American baseball player

1938 Harvey Samuel Firestone
American businessman founded the Firestone Tire, and Rubber Company
 
On This Day In History, February 9th

1996 The Irish paramilitary organization IRA ends an 18-month ceasefire by exploding a large bomb in London
The explosion in London's Canary Wharf left 2 people dead and 39 injured.

1969 The Boeing 747 flies for the first time
The “Jumbo Jet” was the world's largest passenger aircraft at the time.

1964 The Beatles embark on their first tour in the United States
Their appearance in the Ed Sullivan Show marked the beginning of the “British Invasion”

1959 The world's first intercontinental ballistic missile becomes operational in the USSR
The Soviet R-7 Semyorka missile had a range of 8800 km (5500 mi).

1950 U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy launches his anti-communist campaign
On this day, McCarthy accused the U.S. State Department of being infiltrated by communists.
 
Births On This Day, February 9th 🎂

1987 Magdalena Neuner
German biathlete

1942 Carole King
American singer-songwriter, pianist

1932 Gerhard Richter
German painter

1846 Wilhelm Maybach
German businessman founded Maybach

1737 Thomas Paine
English/American theorist, author

Deaths On This Day, February 9th 🪦

1981 Bill Haley
American singer-songwriter, musician

1957 Miklós Horthy
Hungarian Admiral, regent

1881 Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Russian author

1857 Dionysios Solomos
Greek poet

967 Sayf al-Dawla
Emir of Aleppo
 
On This Day In History, February 10th

2009 Two satellites collide in space
Both the U.S. satellite “Iridium 33” and the Russian “Kosmos 2251” were destroyed in the accident.

1996 Deep Blue becomes the first computer to win a chess game against a reigning world champion
Despite his defeat in the first game, Russian world champion Garry Kasparov won the match by 4-2 games.

1964 Bob Dylan's album “The Times They Are A-Changin'” is released
The title track is one of Dylan's best-known songs.

1964 An aircraft carrier collides with a destroyer in Australia, killing 82
Destroyer HMAS Voyager sailed under aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourn's bow, was cut in half and sank.

1962 Francis Gary Powers, a U.S. spy captured by the Soviet Union, is released
Powers were exchanged for captured Soviet spy, Rudolf Ivanovich Abel.
 

Births On This Day, February 10th 🎂

1929 Jerry Goldsmith
American composer, conductor

1898 Bertolt Brecht
German author

1894 Harold Macmillan
English politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

1890 Boris Pasternak
Russian author, poet, Nobel Prize laureate

1744 William Cornwallis
English Admiral

Deaths On This Day, February 10 🪦

2005 Arthur Miller
American playwright

1932 Edgar Wallace
English journalist, author, playwright

1923 Wilhelm Röntgen
German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate

1837 Alexander Pushkin
Russian author, poet

1755 Montesquieu
French philosopher
 
On This Day In History, February 11th

1990 Nelson Mandela is freed after 27 years as a political prisoner
The anti-apartheid campaigner's release was a high point in South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy.

1979 Ayatollah Khomeini seizes power in Iran
A few days after Khomeini's triumphant return from French exile, the Iranian army steps aside, making way for the creation of an Islamic theocracy.

1975 Margaret Thatcher becomes the first female leader of the British Conservative Party
Thatcher won the general elections in 1979 and became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

1938 The BBC broadcasts Karel Čapek's “R.U.R.”, the world's first science fiction TV program
The Czech play whose abbreviated title stands for “Rossum's Universal Robots” introduced the word “robot” to the English language.

1858 Bernadette Soubirous sees a vision of the Virgin Mary near Lourdes
The small town in southern France became one of the most important Christian places of pilgrimage.
 
Births On This Day, February 11th 🎂

1969 Jennifer Aniston
American actress, director, producer

1964 Sarah Palin
American politician, 9th Governor of Alaska

1934 Manuel Noriega
Panamanian general, politician, and Military Leader of Panama

1926 Leslie Nielsen
Canadian/American actor

1847 Thomas Edison
American businessman, who invented the light bulb, phonograph

Deaths On This Day, February 11th 🪦

2012 Whitney Houston
American singer, actress, producer, model

2010 Alexander McQueen
English fashion designer founded

1978 James Bryant Conant
American chemist, academic, diplomat, 1st United States Ambassador to West Germany

1963 Sylvia Plath
American poet

1650 René Descartes
French philosopher, mathematician
 
12th February

1554 Lady Jane Grey (aged either 16 or 17) and her husband Lord Guildford Dudley were beheaded; he on Tower Hill, she on Tower Green, after being implicated in the Wyatt's rebellion. The rebellion arose out of concern over Queen Mary I's determination to marry Philip II of Spain, which was an unpopular policy with the English.

1932 Ramsay MacDonald introduced a bill to improve youth courts, raise the age of juveniles and ban whipping of under 14s.

1964 Fighting between ethnic Turks and Greeks in the disputed island of Cyprus left at least 16 people dead. Four Greek Cypriots including a schoolgirl were reported to have been injured in the shooting before a ceasefire was negotiated.

1989 Belfast lawyer Finucane murdered. Leading solicitor Pat Finucane was shot dead at his home in north Belfast.The killers burst in as he was eating his Sunday dinner with his wife and three children. Two gunmen showered him with 14 bullets and shot his wife in the ankle.

1994 Art thieves snatch Scream. Thieves stole one of the world's best-known paintings from a gallery in the Norwegian capital, Oslo. Two men took just 50 seconds to climb a ladder, smash through a window of the National Art Museum in Oslo and cut The Scream, by Edvard Munch, from the wall with wire cutters.The cutters were left behind along with a short ladder as the men fled with the painting. The entire incident was filmed by security cameras.

2017 Dunblane's Elaine Hopley arrived in Antigua on Sunday 12 February 2017 having spent nearly 2 months at sea competing in the 2,000 mile Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge. Her time of 59 days, 19 hours and 14 minutes makes her the fastest woman to cross the Atlantic solo in the 30-year history of the race, dubbed the world’s toughest row.
 
On This Day In History, February 13th

2008 Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologizes to Indigenous Australians for the “stolen generations”
Between 10 and 30 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Islander children were removed from their families until the 1960s.

2004 The universe's largest known diamond is discovered
BPM 37093 is a white dwarf star about 50 light-years from Earth and was nicknamed “Lucy” after The Beatles' song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”.

2000 The last “Peanuts” comic strip is published
The 17,897th-and-last instalment was published in newspapers around the world on the day following the death of its creator, Charles M. Schulz.

1945 The German city of Dresden is destroyed by a bombing raid
According to estimates, up to 25,000 people were killed in the raids that lasted 3 days.

1991 Two “smart bombs” kill at least 408 civilians in Baghdad
The Amiriyah shelter bombing was one of the worst cases of civilian killings during “Operation Desert Storm”.
 
Births On This Day, February 13th 🎂

1974 Robbie Williams
English singer-songwriter, producer, actor

1950 Peter Gabriel
English singer-songwriter, producer

1946 Richard Blumenthal
American politician

1849 Lord Randolph Churchill
English politician, Chancellor of the Exchequer

1835 Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
Indian religious leader founded the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community


Deaths On This Day, February 13th 🪦

2002 Waylon Jennings
American singer-songwriter, musician

1883 Richard Wagner
German composer, director

1787 Ruđer Bošković
Croatian physicist, astronomer, mathematician

1728 Cotton Mather
American minister

1662 Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia
 
13th February


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

1692 The massacre of the MacDonalds at Glencoe. The most commonly accepted account is that the Scottish army massacred 38 men, women and children of the clan MacDonald of Glencoe. A further 40 died of exposure attempting to flee the Glen in the snow.

1948 The Science Museum in London announced that it would return the Wright Brothers’ biplane, Kitty Hawk, the first to fly, to the Smithsonian Institution. It had been sent to England in 1928 by Orville Wright when he found that the Smithsonian had labelled another plane as the first capable of sustained flight.

1987 London’s property boom resulted in a 5ft 6in x 11ft broom cupboard opposite Harrods being offered for sale at £36,500 - over £600 per square foot.

1988 The Winter Olympics opened in Calgary, Canada. English ski-jumper and plasterer Eddie Edwards, became the surprise sensation of the Games. The fearless contestant came last, but won all the headlines and the nickname The Eagle. His life story was made into a film, Eddie the Eagle, in 2016.

2015 PC Robert Brown, who joined the Metropolitan Police in the era of 'Dixon of Dock Green', retired after 47-years service. He was the country's longest serving policeman. In recognition of his service, he was awarded the Queen's Police Medal at Buckingham Palace, one of the highest honours bestowed on police officers.
 
On This Day In History, February 14th

2005 Former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri is assassinated
Several sources reported that the U.N. Special Tribunal for Lebanon found compelling evidence for the Lebanese militia Hezbollah's involvement.

2003 Dolly the sheep is put to death
Dolly, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult, had shown signs of premature ageing and contracted various diseases.

1989 Union Carbide finally agrees to pay damages to the Indian government for the Bhopal disaster
The company had a yearly turnover of 9.5 billion USD at the time; up to 25,000 people had died in the tragedy.

1949 The Knesset, the parliament of Israel, convenes for the first time
The term “Knesset” is derived from the Hebrew name of an ancient Great Assembly: Anshei Knesset HaGedolah.

1876 The telephone is patented
Both Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray applied for a patent on that day - Bell won.
 

Births On This Day, February 14th 🎂

1951 Kevin Keegan
English footballer

1943 Maceo Parker
American saxophonist

1942 Michael Bloomberg
American businessman, politician, 108th Mayor of New York City

1894 Jack Benny
American actor, comedian

1818 Frederick Douglass
American author, activist

Deaths On This Day, February 14th 🪦

1975 P. G. Wodehouse
English author

1975 Julian Huxley
English biologist

1779 James Cook
English navy officer, explorer, cartographer

1229 Ragnvald Godredsson
Manx king

269 Saint Valentine
Roman bishop, martyr
 

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