10/02/10

Baghdad fell to the Mongols in 1258.  Robert the Bruce murdered John Comyn in front of the high altar of Greyfriars Church in Dumfries in 1306.  In evidence that students have always had their priorities straight, a dispute between two Oxford students and some local residents over beer turned into the St. Scholastica Day Riot in 1355.  The fights lasted for two days and in the end, 63 scholars and 30 local residents were dead.  Vicky and Albert got married in 1840.  New Delhi became the capital of India in 1931 and the US traded Soviet spy Rudolf Abel for Francis Gary Powers in 1962.

Born today:  John Suckling (1609-1642), Charles Lamb (1775-1834), Boris Pasternak (1890-1960), Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), Roberta Flack (1937) and Michael Apted (1941).

Strangely enough, it is the feast day of St. Scholastica.

09/02/10

John Hooper, the Bishop of Gloucester, was burnt at the stake for heresy in 1555.  John Quincy Adams was elected President of the United States by the House of Representatives in 1825, after no candidate received a majority of votes in the Electoral College.  William G. Morgan invented a game he called mintonette in 1895.  It is now called volleyball.  The Beatles made their first appearance on American television, appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964.

Born today:  Ronald Colman (1891-1958), Carmen Miranda (1909-1955), Brendan Behan (1923-1964), Clive Swift (1936), Janet Suzman (1939), J.M. Coetzee (1940), Carole King (1942), Alice Walker (1944), Ciarán Hinds (1953) and Gordon Strachan (1957).

It is the feast day of St. Teilo.

08/02/10

A doctor in Salem, Massachusetts, suggested that two daughters of the local pastor might be suffering from bewitchment in 1692, setting off the hysteria that led to the Salem Witch Trials.  The Devil's Footprints mysteriously appeared in the Devon snow in 1855.  D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation premiered in 1915 and the city of Melbourne was enveloped in a 320m-deep dust cloud in 1983.

Born today:  Samuel Butler (1612-1680), John Ruskin (1819-1900), Jules Verne (1828-1905), Kate Chopin (1850-1904), Lana Turner (1921-1995), Jack Lemmon (1925-1901), Neal Cassady (1926-1968), James Dean (1931-1955) and Trinny Woodall (1964).

It is Preseren Day in Slovenia.

07/02/10

Edward of Caernarvon became the first English Prince of Wales in 1301.  Supporters of Girolamo Savonarola burned cosmetics, art and books in the Bonfire of the Vanities in 1497.  The strongest earthquake in the recorded history of the US occurred along the New Madrid fault line in southeastern Missouri in 1812, measuring 8.3 on the Moment Scale.  Emile Zola was put on trial for libel in 1898 for publishing J'Accuse.  The Maastricht Treaty was signed in 1992 and, last year, bush fires killed 173 people in Victoria, in what is now the worst natural disaster in Australian history.

Born today:  Thomas More (1478-1535), Thomas Killigrew (1612-1683), Charles Dickens (1812-1870), Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957), Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951), Eubie Blake (1887-1983), Gay Talese (1932), Pete Postlethwaite (1945) and Eddie Izzard (1962).

It is Independence Day in Grenada.

06/02/10

In 1820, eighty-six freed slaves from the United States founded a settlement in what is now Liberia.  The Treaty of Waitangi, establishing New Zealand as a British colony, was signed in 1840.  Brenda became queen in 1952.  And in 1958, the Munich Air Disaster claimed the lives of 23 people, including eight Man Utd players, three Man Utd staff, eight journalists, two airline crew members and two other passengers.

Born today:  Patrick Macnee (1922), François Truffaut (1932), Leslie Crowther (1933-1996), Bob Marley (1945-1981), Kate McGarrigle (1946-2010), Axl Rose (1962) and Rick Astley (1966).

It is Waitangi Day in New Zealand and Sami National Day in Finland and Scandinavia.

05/02/10

It will never cease to amaze me how days seem to either be feast or famine, in terms of events and notable births.  Yesterday was a feast.  I left out quite a bit of stuff that was interesting.  Today, I'm hard-pressed to find any of it terribly interesting.  But here goes:

An earthquake measuring approximately 7.5 on the Richter Scale caused major damage to Pompeii in 62.  Twenty-six Christians were crucified as threats to Japanese society in 1597.  And the Royal Greenwich Observatory began broadcasting an hourly signal in 1924.

Born today:  William S. Burroughs (1914-1997), Charlotte Rampling (1946), Sven-Göran Eriksson (1948), Christopher Guest (1948), Carlos Tévez (1984) and Irritating Portuguese Pretty-boy (1985).

The good folk of San Marino are celebrating their Liberation from the Alberoni Occupation today.

M.C. Escher has no association with today's events, that I'm aware of.  My son liked the Leger that I put with yesterday's thread and told me that I should use an Escher some day.  Since the only thing relevant that I could think of would have been a photo of Pompeii, I decided to go ahead and use this.

04/02/10

The Song Dynasty began in 960, with the coronation of Emperor Taizu.  George Washington was unanimously elected to be the first President of the United States by the Electoral College in 1789.  Three earthquakes have struck on this date in recent decades:  1328 people were killed in 1975 in Haicheng, China; twenty-two thousand were killed in Guatemala and Honduras in 1976; and 5000 were killed in Afghanistan in 1998.

Born today:  Fernand Leger (1881-1955), Nigel Bruce (1895-1953), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), Rosa Parks (1913-2005), Ida Lupino (1918-1995), Alice Cooper (1948), Dara O'Briain (1972), Oscar de la Hoya (1973), Natalie Imbruglia (1975).

It is Independence Day in Sri Lanka.