Today in History

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Today in History

By Correspondent

YEARDAYEVENT
412Feb 8St. Proclus, Patriarch of Constantinople, was born
421Feb 8Flavius Constantine became emperor Constantine III of Roman Empire West.
1400Feb 8The Knights of the Cross with the assistance of Vytautas and the hercog of Lotaringia defeated Samogitia for the 1st time.
1577Feb 8Robert Burton (d.1640), writer, Anglican clergyman (Anatomy of Melancholy), was born. “A mere madness, to live like a wretch and die rich.”
1586Feb 8Jacob Praetorius, composer, was born.
1600Feb 8Vatican sentenced scholar Giordano Bruno to death.
1601Feb 8The armies of Earl Robert Devereux of Essex drew into London.
1612Feb 8Samuel Butler (d.1680), England, poet, satirist (Hudibras) was baptized.
1622Feb 8King James I disbanded the English parliament.
1672Feb 8Isaac Newton read his 1st optics paper before Royal Society in London.
1690Feb 8Some 200 French and Indian troops burned Schenectady, NY, and massacred about 60 people to avenge Iraquois raids on Canada.
1691Feb 8Carlo di Girolamo Rainaldi (79), Italian architect, composer, died.
1693Feb 8A charter was granted for the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.
1709Feb 8Giuseppi Torelli (50), Italian composer, died.
1712Feb 8L. Joseph de Montcalm de Saint-Veran, French general in America, was born.
1725Feb 8Peter I (52) “the Great” Romanov, czar of Russia (1682-1725), died.
1740Feb 8Clement XII (87), [Lorenzo Corsini], blind Pope (1730-40), died.
1741Feb 8Andre-Ernest-Modeste Gretry, composer, was born.
1749Feb 8Jan van Huysum (66), Dutch still life painter, died.
1776Feb 8Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s “Stella” premiered in Hamburg.
1789Feb 8Ludwig Wilhelm Maurer, composer, was born.
1796Feb 8China’s Emperor Qianlong (1711-1799) abdicated in favor of his son. Despite his voluntary abdication, from 1796 to 1799 Qianlong continued to hold on to power and the Jiaqing Emperor (d.1820) ruled only in name.
1802Feb 8Simon Willard patented a banjo clock.
1817Feb 8Richard Stoddert Ewell (d.1872(), Lt Gen (Confederate Army), was born.
1819Feb 8John Ruskin (d.1900), writer, critic, artist, Gothic Revivalist (Pre-Raphaelite), was born. His work included “Modern Painter” and “The Stones of Venice.”
1820Feb 8General William T. Sherman (d.1891), Union general in America’s Civil War, was born. His famous “March to the Sea” changed the face of modern warfare.
1834Feb 8Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleyev (d.1907), Russian chemist, was born. He formulated the periodic table of elements.
1837Feb 8The Senate selected Richard Mentor Johnson as the vice president of the United States. Johnson was nominated for vice president on the Democratic ticket with Martin Van Buren in 1836. When Johnson failed to receive a majority of the popular vote, the election was thrown into the Senate for the first and only time. Johnson won the election in the Senate by a vote of 33 to 16.
1851Feb 8Kate (Katherine O’Flaherty ) Chopin (d.1904), American novelist, short story writer, was born. Her work included “The Awakening.” She wrote tales of love and passion that presented women testing the boundaries of social convention. “There are some people who leave impressions not so lasting as the imprint of an oar upon the water.”
1861Feb 8Delegates from seceded states adopted a provisional Confederate Constitution in Montgomery, Ala.
1862Feb 8Union troops under Gen. Ambrose Burnside defeated a Confederate defense force at the Battle of Roanoke Island, N.C.
1865Feb 8Confederate raider William Quantrill and men attacked a group of Federal wagons at New Market, Kentucky.
1865Feb 8Martin Robinson Delany became the 1st black major in US army.
1871Feb 8Elections were held in France, unknown to most of the nation’s population.
1878Feb 8Martin Buber, German-Israeli philosopher, theologist (Ich und Du), was born.
1883Feb 8Louis Waterman began experiments to invent fountain pen.
1886Feb 8Two rival leftist organizations, the London United Workmen’s Committee and H.F. Hyndman’s revolutionary Social Democratic Federation, gave notice of their intention to hold meetings simultaneously in Trafalgar Square. A brief riot occurred and sometimes became referred to as Black Monday.
1887Feb 8Luke Short, owner of the classy Fort Worth White Elephant saloon, engaged in a gunfight with Longhair Jim Courtright, gunfighter extraordinaire. Short won.
1887Feb 8Aurora Ski Club of Red Wing, Minn., became the 1st US ski club.
1892Feb 8Fritz Todt, German Reichs minister (Organization Todt) succeeded by Albert Speer, was born.
1894Feb 8The US Enforcement Act was repealed making it easier to disenfranchise blacks.
1895Feb 8Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake,” premiered in Petersburg.
1896Feb 8Georges Feydeau’s “Le Dindon,” premiered in Paris.
1898Feb 8John Ames Sherman patented the 1st envelope folding & gumming machine in Mass.
1900Feb 8British General Buller was beaten at Ladysmith, South Africa as the British fled over the Tugela River.
1904Feb 8The Russo-Japanese War began. In a surprise attack at Port Arthur, Korea, the Japanese disabled seven Russian warships. During the war, Russia suffered a series of stunning defeats to Japan; the fighting ended with an agreement mediated by President Theodore Roosevelt, who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.
1905Feb 8A cyclone hit Tahiti and adjacent islands killing some 10,000 people.
1906Feb 8Chester F. Carlson, physicist, was born. He invented xerography, the electrostatic dry-copy process.
1906Feb 8Henry Roth, writer, was born. His work included “Call it Sleep.”
1907Feb 8Revolution broke out in Argentina.
1910Feb 8The Boy Scouts of America was incorporated in Washington, D.C. by William D. Boyce, a wealthy Chicago publisher who learned of the “scouts” on a trip to England the previous year.
1911Feb 8Elizabeth Bishop, poet, was born
1915Feb 8D.W. Griffith’s silent movie epic about the Civil War, “The Birth of a Nation,” premiered at Clune’s Auditorium in Los Angeles. It was based Thomas Dixon’s novel “The Clansman.”
1916Feb 8Demonstrators protested against food shortages in Berlin.
1920Feb 8Swiss men voted against women’s suffrage.
1921Feb 8Pjotr A. Kropotkin (78), Russian anarchist and son of Prince Alexei Petrovich Kropotkin, died. Books by Peter Kropotkin included “Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution” (1902)
1922Feb 8President Harding had a radio installed in the White House.
1923Feb 8German NSDAP (Nazi Party) Volkischer Beobachter newspaper became a daily.
1924Feb 8The gas chamber was used for the first time to execute a murderer. Major D.A. Turner of the US Medical Corps used hydrocyanic gas on an alleged Chinese Tong member named Gee Jon at the Nevada State Prison in Carson City, Nev.
1925Feb 8Jack Lemmon, actor (Days of Wine & Roses, Missing), was born in Boston, Mass.
1926Feb 8Neal Cassaday, writer, counterculture proponent, was born.
1927Feb 8Stanley Baker, actor (Concrete Jungle, Zorro, Zulu), was born in Ferndale, Wales.
1928Feb 81st transatlantic TV image was received at Hartsdale, NY.
1928Feb 8Scottish inventor J. Blaird demonstrated color TV.
1931Feb 8James Dean, stage and film actor who personified “cool” for young people in the 1950s, was born in Marion, In. His films were Rebel Without a Cause, East of Eden and Giant.
1932Feb 8Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll, mobster, was killed by Dutch Schultz gang.
1933Feb 8Elly Ameling, soprano (Ilya-Idomeneo), was born in Rotterdam, Holland.
1935Feb 8Max Liebermann (b.1847), German impressionist painter, graphic artist, died in Berlin. He was associated with several artists’ organizations including the Berlin Secession.
1936Feb 8Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru followed Gandhi as chairman of India Congress Party.
1941Feb 8Japanese armored barges crossed the Strait of Johore to attack Singapore.
1942Feb 8Terry Melcher, Rip Chords, Doris Day’s son, was born
1942Feb 8Congress advised FDR that Americans of Japanese descent should be locked up en masse so they wouldn’t oppose the US war effort.
1942Feb 8The Japanese landed on Singapore. By 1941, Gen. Yamashita was the commanding general of Japan’s Twenty-Fifth Army. His plans for taking Singapore were already underway.
1943Feb 8Red Army recaptured Kursk.
1945Feb 8Allied air attack on Goch, Kleef, Kalkar, Reichswald.
1946Feb 8Premier Salazar of Portugal forbade opposition parties.
1949Feb 8In Hungary Cardinal Mindszenty was sentenced to life imprisonment for high treason.
1952   Feb 8Elizabeth was formally proclaimed Queen of England following the Feb 6 death of her father, King George VI. Elizabeth was crowned Jun 2, 1953.
   
1953Feb 8Mary Steenburgen, actress (Parenthood, Time After Time), was born in Newport, Ark.
1954Feb 8Caryl Whittier Chessman (34), on death row at San Quentin for kidnapping and attempted rape, had his 1st book accepted for publication: “Cell 2455, Death Row.” He was executed May 2, 1960.
1955Feb 8John Grisham, writer (Client, Firm, Pelican Brief), was born.
1955Feb 8Malenkov resigned as USSR premier. Bulganin replaced him.
1956Feb 8U.S. banned the launching of weather balloons because of Soviet complaints.
1959Feb 8William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan (76), Office Strategic Services, died.
1960Feb 8Congress opened hearings into payola.
1962Feb 8The U.S. Defense Department reported the creation of the Military Assistance Command in South Vietnam.
1964Feb 8 Peter Shaffer’s “Royal Hunt of the Sun,” premiered in London. 
1965Feb 8Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson called for the development and protection of a balanced system of trails to help protect and enhance the quality of the outdoor experience.
1965Feb 8Eastern DC-7B crashed into the Atlantic off Jones Beach, NJ, and 84 people were killed.
   
1965Feb 8South Vietnamese bombed the North Vietnamese communications center at Vinh Linh.
1968Feb 8Robert F. Kennedy said that the US cannot win the Vietnam War.
1969Feb 8The last edition of Saturday Evening Post was published. It had begun publishing in 1869.
1971Feb 8Nasdaq, a unit of the National Association of Securities Dealers, went live under the leadership of Gordon Macklin (1928-2007).
1971Feb 8South Vietnamese ground forces, backed by American air power, began Operation Lam Son 719, a 17,000 man incursion into Laos that ended three weeks later in a disaster.
1973Feb 8Pres. Nixon appointed Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003) ambassador to India.
 
1973Feb 8Senate leaders named seven members of a select committee to investigate the Watergate scandal, including the chairman, Sam J. Ervin Jr., D-N.C.
1973Feb 8Max Yasgur (53), owner Woodstock festival farmland, died of a heart attack
1978Feb 8The BBC TV show Grange Hill, a children’s drama created by Phil Redmond, made its debut.
1979Feb 8In the Republic of the Congo Denis Sassou Nguesso (b.1943), a member of the Mbochi minority, began 13 years of rule as a Marxist dictator.
1980Feb 8President Jimmy Carter unveiled a plan to re-introduce draft registration.
1981Feb 8Scott Hamilton won the US male Figure Skating championship.
1982Feb 8John Hay Whitney (b.1904), US ambassador and newspaper magnate, died.
1983Feb 8Baseball ordered Mickey Mantle (1931-1995) to sever ties with Claridge Casino.
1983Feb 8Champion thoroughbred Shergar was kidnapped in Ireland and never found. Lloyds of London paid $10.6 million insurance.
1984Feb 8Winter Olympics opened in Sarajevo.
1986Feb 8Brian Boitano won the US male Figure Skating championship.
1988Feb 8Jimmy Lee Dill fatally shot and killed Leon Shaw in Birmingham, Alabama, and robbed him of cocaine and about $200. Dill (49) was executed in 2009.
1989Feb 8Jockey Chris Antley (1966-2000) began a record of 64 consecutive winning days.
1989Feb 8In the Azores 144 people were killed when an American-chartered Boeing 707 filled with Italian tourists slammed into fog-covered Santa Maria mountain.
1990Feb 8CBS television temporarily suspended Andy Rooney for his anti-gay and anti-black remarks in a gay magazine interview.
1990Feb 8In NYC a gunman botched an attempt to rob a diamond courier. He then shot and killed Rabbi Chaskel Werzberger in his vehicle and rode off in the vehicle. David Ranta, an unemployed drug addict, was arrested on circumstantial evidence and “uncertain” witness testimony. In 2013 Ranta was freed from his 37.5 year prison sentence.
1991Feb 8Defense 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.”
1991Feb 8In Ohio Kenneth Biros (33) raped and killed Tami Engstrom (22) after offering her a ride home from a bar in Trumbull county. He then scattered her body parts in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Biros was executed in 2009.
1992Feb 8The 16th Olympic Winter Games opened in Albertville, France.
1993Feb 8General Motors sued NBC, alleging that the “Dateline NBC” program had rigged two car-truck crashes to show that 1973-1987 GM pickups were prone to fires in side impact crashes. NBC settled the lawsuit the following day.
1994Feb 8President Clinton’s health-care proposal suffered a blow as the Congressional Budget Office released an analysis saying that the plan would not shrink federal deficits, but instead drive them higher.
1995Feb 8US Surgeon General nominee Henry Foster said in an ABC interview he’d performed 39 abortions, more than three times as many as previously stated.
1995Feb 8The U.N. Security Council approved sending 7,000 peacekeepers to Angola to cement an accord ending 19 years of civil war.
1995Feb 8A 6.4 earthquake at Trujillo, Colombia, killed over 46 people.
1996Feb 8NFL and Cleveland allowed Art Modell to move his NFL franchise to Baltimore but he had to leave the Browns’ name behind.
1996Feb 8In a ceremony at the Library of Congress, President Clinton signed legislation revamping the telecommunications industry, saying it would “bring the future to our doorstep.”
1997Feb 8President 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.
1998Feb 8Olga Danilova of Russia won the first gold medal of the Nagano Winter Games in 15-kilometer classical cross-country skiing.
1998Feb 8In Afghanistan new tremors killed up to 250 more people as relief workers struggled to reach the disaster scene.
1998Feb 8Greek Cypriots voted in elections with neither main candidate receiving a necessary majority. Pres. Glafcos Cleridas (78) will face former foreign minister George Lacovou on Feb 15.
1998Feb 8In Iceland Halldor Laxness (b.1902), novelist and Nobel Prize winner, died at age 95. His books included “Independent People” (1946), “the Great Weaver of Cashmere,” “Salka Valka,” “The Atom Station,” and “Paradise Reclaimed.”
1998Feb 8In Sierra Leone a jet belonging to West African peacekeepers fired on a tank with a mounted anti-aircraft gun in Freetown and killed 6 people. Nigerian led peacekeepers were moving toward Freetown in an effort to drive the military junta from power.
1999Feb 8The Senate heard closing arguments at President Clinton’s impeachment trial, with House prosecutors challenging senators to “cleanse the office” and the president’s attorney dismissing the case as one of partisan retribution.
1999Feb 8American Airlines cancelled 400 flights as pilots called in sick. There was pilot concern over pay rates and new pilots coming from the recently merged Reno Air. In April a federal judge fined the pilots’ union $46 million.
1999Feb 8Nevada lawmakers voted to oppose federal plans for a nuclear storage dump northwest of Las Vegas.
1999Feb 8Iris Murdoch (b.1919), Dublin-born novelist, died. Her husband, John Bayley, published “Iris: A Memoir of Iris Murdoch” in 1998. It was published in the US as “Elegy for Iris.”
1999Feb 8A French helicopter crashed in Antarctica and 3 people were killed.
2000Feb 8George W. Bush won the Delaware Republican primary with 51% of the vote.
2001Feb 8President Bush sent his proposed $1.6 trillion, 10-year tax cut plan to Congress.
2001Feb 8A 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.
2001Feb 8The new Disney theme park “Disney’s California Adventure” opened in Anaheim.
2001Feb 8In China the cabinet approved a 700-mile rail line to link Lhasa, Tibet, and Qinghai province.
2001Feb 8In Colombia Pres. Pastrana met with FARC leader Manuel Marulanda at Los Pozos.
2002Feb 8William T. Dillard (b.1914), founder of Dillard’s department store chain, died in Little Rock, Ark.
2003Feb 8In a jab at major US allies, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told a security conference in Munich that countries such as France and Germany that favored giving Iraq another chance to disarm were undermining what slim chance existed to avoid war.
2003Feb 8In Iraq gunmen posing as defectors from an Islamic extremist group killed  Gen. Shawkat Haji Mushir, a political leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and two other Kurdish officials.
2004Feb 8US Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited Croatia and thanked Pres. Stipe Mesic for Croatia’s small military police contingent (50) in Iraq.
2005Feb 8An earlier-than-usual Mardi Gras festival opened in New Orleans with sparse crowds.
2006Feb 8President Bush condemned deadly rioting sparked by cartoons of the prophet Muhammad as he urged foreign leaders to halt the spreading violence.
2006Feb 8The Italian Senate approved a bill that would dramatically increase the number of women elected to parliament in a country with one of the lowest number of female lawmakers in Europe.
2006Feb 8Japan and North Korea ended five days of high-level talks aimed at establishing diplomatic relations without any agreements, citing major differences on the North’s abduction of Japanese nationals and its nuclear program.
2006Feb 8,Kenya’s government and the UN said  Kenya needs $221.5 million in aid to help feed 3.5 million people threatened by starvation due to drought and avoid a “massive humanitarian catastrophe.”
2006Feb 8In Libya the leaders of Sudan and Chad signed a peace agreement to end increasing tension over Sudan’s Darfur region, pledging to normalize diplomatic relations and deny refuge to each other’s rebel groups. A communique issued by Sudan, Chad and Libya, as well as Burkino Faso, Congo and the Central African Republic, whose leaders attended the talks, said a committee of African countries overseen by Libya would monitor the implementation of the deal.
2006Feb 8A rebel attack and an army shooting of protesters marred Nepal’s first elections in seven years, as few voters turned out at schools, shrines and temples for municipal balloting seen as a referendum on the king. At least six people were killed.
2006Feb 8The World Organization for Animal Health said the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus has been detected on a large commercial chicken farm in Nigeria, the first reported outbreak in Africa. Researchers later reported that 3 different strains of bird flu had entered Nigeria and most closely resembled those identified in Egypt, Mongolia and Russia.
2006Feb 8Hundreds of Palestinians attacked an international observer mission in Hebron, throwing stones and smashing windows as dozens of foreigners were trapped inside.
2006Feb 8Khaled Batch, a leader of the militant Islamic Jihad group, said the group rejects the idea of a long-term truce with Israel and will not join a Hamas-led government. Islamic Jihad, which is believed to be funded, in part, by Iran, boycotted last month’s Palestinian parliament election.
2006Feb 8In Thailand skydivers from 31 countries set a new world record of 400 people holding hands in a midair free-fall formation.
2007Feb8A federal judge in Fargo, N.D., sentenced Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. to death for the slaying of college student Dru Sjodin.
2007Feb 8In France teachers, tax collectors, railway workers and other public servants went on strike to protest job losses and demand higher pay.
2008Feb 8Pres. Bush reached his lowest approval rating in an Associated Press-Ipsos poll as only 30% said they like the job he is doing, including an all-time low in his support by Republicans. Congress’ approval fell to just 22%, equaling its poorest grade in the survey.
2010Feb 8The US federal government was shuttered while the Mid-Atlantic region dug out from as much as three feet of snow that left tens of thousands without power and blocked trains, planes and cars, with another storm looming.
2011Feb 8First lady Michelle Obama said her husband hasn’t had a cigarette in almost a year.
2011Feb 8Australian firefighters brought a raging wildfire that destroyed 68 houses and damaged 32 others near the city of Perth under control.
2012Feb 8In Afghanistan a NATO airstrike reportedly killed 8 children in Kapisa haled Mashaal.
2013Feb 8In northern Mali French forces wrested Tessalit from control of Islamic insurgents. In Gao the conflict’s first suicide bombing increased fears of terror attacks..
2014Feb 8In Albania a speeding minivan carrying eleven people lost control and hurtled 100 meters down a cliff, killing 6 people and seriously injuring the five others.
 Credit: Timeline of History   

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