01/02/10

Texas seceded from the Union in 1861.  Abraham Lincoln signed the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1864, outlawing slavery.  The first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, covering from A to Ant, was published in 1884.  La Bohème premiered at the Teatro Regio in Turin in 1896.  The Royal Canadian Mounted Police began in 1920.  The space shuttle Columbia disintegrated on reentry to the Earth's atmosphere in 2003, killing all seven crew members.  During the Hajj of 2004, 251 people were trampled to death and another 244 were injured at the Stoning of the Devil ceremony.  Civil marriage became legal in Canada in 2005.  And one year ago, Johanna Sigurðardottir became the first female Prime Minister of Iceland and the first openly gay head of state in the modern world.

Born today:  Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884-1937), Clarke Gable (1901-1960), Langston Hughes (1902-1967), Muriel Spark (1918-2006), Don Everly (1937), Terry Jones (1942) and Rick James (1948-2004).

It is Imbolc, or St. Brigid's Day, if you prefer.