1766 ~ Birthday of Thomas Malthus, Economist.

1779 ~ James Cook was killed by the natives of the Sandwich Islands.

1895 ~ First performance of Oscar Wilde's last play "The Importance of Being Earnest”.

1929 ~ The St. Valentine's Day Massacre took place in a Chicago garage.

1966 ~ Australian currency was decimalized.

1975 ~ Death of P. G. Wodehouse, English writer.

1989 ~ The first of the 24 Global Positioning System satellites was placed into orbit.

1989 ~ Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini called on Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie, author of ''The Satanic Verses,'' a novel Khomeini condemned as blasphemous.

2003 ~ Death of Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal.

Feastdays & Holidays

Catholicism ~ Feast day of Saint Valentine.

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Eudaimonia

1820 ~ Birthday of Susan B. Anthony, Activist & Suffragist.

1874 ~ Birthday of Sir Ernest Shackleton, British polar explorer.

1898 ~ The USS Maine exploded and sank in Havana Harbor, killing more than 260.

1965 ~ Death of Nat “King” Cole, Singer.

1965 ~ A new red and white maple leaf design was adopted as the flag of Canada replacing the old Canadian Red Ensign banner.

1974 ~ Birthday of Gina Lynn, Porn Actress.

1988 ~ Death of Richard Feynman, Physicist.

1995 ~ Kevin Mitnick was arrested by the FBI and charged with breaking into some of the more "secure" U.S. computer systems.

1989 ~ The Soviet Union announced that the last of its troops had left Afghanistan after more than nine years of military intervention.

2005 ~ YouTube was launched.

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Eudaimonia

1923 ~ Howard Carter unsealed the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun.

1935 ~ Birthday of Sonny Bono, Singer & Congressman.

1941 ~ Birthday of Kim Jong Il, North Korean leader.

1959 ~ Fidel Castro became premier of Cuba after the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista.

1978 ~ The first computer bulletin board system, CBBS, was created in Chicago, Illinois.

1985 ~ Hezbollah founded.

1986 ~ The Soviet liner Mikhail Lermontov ran aground in the Marlborough Sounds, New Zealand.

2001 ~ Death of William Masters, American gynecologist and sexologist (Masters and Johnson).

2005 ~ The Kyoto Protocol came into effect.

2006 ~ The last Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) was decommissioned by the U.S. Army.

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Eudaimonia

1653 ~ Birthday of Arcangelo Corelli, Composer.

1801 ~ An electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr was resolved when Jefferson was elected President and Burr Vice President by the House of Representatives.

1867 ~ The first ship passed through the Suez Canal.

1895 ~ Swan Lake, one of the more famous ballets, with music by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, was first completely performed in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

1909 ~ Death of Geronimo, Apache leader.

1972 ~ President Nixon departed on his historic trip to China.

1973 ~ Birthday of SaRenna Lee, Porn Actress.

1979 ~ China invaded Vietnam.

1979 ~ Birthday of Dee, Puerto Rican Porn Actress.

1992 ~ Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced in Milwaukee to life in prison.

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Eudaimonia

1745 ~ Birthday of Alessandro Volta, Physicist, eponym for the unit of the electric potential.

1838 ~ Birthday of Ernst Mach, Austrian Physicist & Philosopher.

1861 ~ In Montgomery, Alabama Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as the first and only President of the Confederate States of America.

1885 ~ Mark Twain's “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” was first published.

1930 ~ While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto.

1933 ~ Birthday of Yoko Ono, Singer, Artist, wife of John Lennon.

1969 ~ Lulu and Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees marry.

1967 ~ Death of J. Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist.

2005 ~ The UK law banning fox hunting, hare coursing and other sports which kill wild mammals is enforced from this date.

2010 ~ Death of John Babcock, last known Canadian veteran of World War I.

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Eudaimonia

1743 ~ Birthday of Luigi Boccherini, Italian Composer.

1915 ~ The Battle of Gallipoli began.

1942 ~ Some 250 Japanese warplanes attacked Darwin, Australia. The attack killed at least 243 people.

1942 ~ President Franklin Roosevelt signed the order allowing the U.S. military to relocate Japanese-Americans to internment camps.

1945 ~ About 30,000 U.S. Marines land on Iwo Jima.

1964 ~ Paul Simon wrote "The Sounds of Silence”, the song which would take him and Art Garfunkel to stardom.

1971 ~ Birthday of Gil Shaham, Israeli-born American violinist.

1980 ~ Bon Scott, the lead singer of the Australian hard rock band AC/DC, died after a night of heavy drinking.

1986 ~ The Soviet Union launched the Mir space station.

1997 ~ Death of Deng Xiaoping, the last of China's major Communist revolutionaries.



Sorry about being a bit early, but I just found out that I will be off-line for the next 40 hours, so I thought I'd post this now.

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Eudaimonia

1942 ~ Some 250 Japanese warplanes attacked Darwin, Australia. The attack killed at least 243 people.

Cyclone Carlos broke the marquee erected for the memorial ceremony.

The destroyer USS Robert E Peary was destroyed during the attack.

The same battle fleet bombed Pearl Harbour, the Phillipines and Darwin.

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Calm, quiet, smooth, devastating

1792 ~ President Washington signed an act creating the U.S. Post Office.

1902 ~ Birthday of Ansel Adams, Photographer.

1904 ~ Birthday of Alexei Kosygin, Premier of the Soviet Union.

1927 ~ Birthday of Sidney Poitier, Actor.

1952 ~ The film The African Queen opened in New York City.

1958 ~ An announcement was made that the Sheerness Docks, established the in the 17th century by Samuel Pepys, were to close.

1961 ~ Death of Percy Grainger, Australian composer.

1962 ~ John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth aboard Friendship 7.

1976 ~ Death of René Cassin, French judge, recipient of the 1968 Nobel Peace Prize.

2001 ~ FBI agent Robert Hanssen was arrested and charged with spying for Russia for 15 years.

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Eudaimonia

1875 ~ Birthday of Jeanne Calment. She lived for 122 years 164 days, the longest confirmed lifespan for any human being in history.

1893 ~ Birthday of Andrés Segovia, Spanish guitarist.

1903 ~ Birthday of Anaïs Nin, Writer.

1907 ~ Birthday of W. H. Auden, Poet.

1916 ~ The Battle of Verdun began. French casualties during the battle were estimated at 550,000 with German losses set at 434,000, half of the total being fatalities.

1947 ~ Edwin Land demonstrated the first "instant camera", the Polaroid Land Camera, to a meeting of the Optical Society of America.

1953 ~ Francis Crick and James Watson discovered the structure of the DNA molecule.

1958 ~ The Peace symbol was completed for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

1965 ~ Malcolm X was assassinated in New York City by members of the Nation of Islam.

1988 ~ TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart confessed to his congregation that he was guilty of an unspecified sin, and said he was leaving the pulpit temporarily. Reports linked Swaggart to a prostitute.

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Eudaimonia

1732 ~ Birthday of George Washington, 1st U.S. President.

1857 ~ Birthday of Robert Baden-Powell, Chief Scout of the World.

1879 ~ Frank Woolworth opened a five-cent store in Utica, N.Y.

1935 ~ Airplanes were no longer permitted to fly over the White House.

1946 ~ George Kennan, the American charge d'affaires in Moscow, sent an 8,000-word telegram - the "Long Telegram" - to the Department of State detailing his views on the Soviet Union, and U.S. policy toward the communist state. Kennan's analysis provided one of the most influential underpinnings for America's Cold War policy of containment.

1980 ~ In the Olympic competition, the U.S. Ice Hockey team defeated the Soviets 4–3 at Lake Placid, NY.

1982 ~ Birthday of Jenna Haze, Porn Actress.

1987 ~ Death of Andy Warhol, Celebrity

1994 ~ Double agent Aldrich Ames was arrested.

1997 ~ Ian Wilmut and his colleagues at the Roslin Institute announced that a sheep named Dolly had been successfully cloned.

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Eudaimonia

1786 ~ Birthday of Wilhelm Grimm, Philologist & Folklorist.

1803 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court, in Marbury v. Madison, established the principle of judicial review.

1856 ~ Death of Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky, Russian mathematician.

1868 ~ The U.S. House of Representatives impeached President Andrew Johnson.

1903 ~ The U.S. signed an agreement acquiring a naval station at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

1942 ~ Birthday of Joseph Lieberman, U.S. Senator.

1949 ~ At White Sands NM, "Project Bumper” a WAC CORPORAL attached to a German built V-2 rocket, reached a height of 250 miles above sea level, the first rocket to reach outer space. The entire trip took 6-1/2 minutes from firing.

1955 ~ Birthday of Steve Jobs, Computer Pioneer.

1981 ~ Buckingham Palace announced the engagement of Charles, Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer.

2001 ~ Death of Claude E. Shannon , "father of information theory".

2008 ~ Fidel Castro retired as the President of Cuba.

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Eudaimonia

1723 ~ Death of Sir Christopher Wren, Architect.

1870 ~ Hiram R. Revels, R-Miss., became the first black member of the U.S. Senate.

1901 ~ Incorporation of the United States Steel Corporation.

1943 ~ Birthday of George Harrison, Beatle.

1970 ~ Death of Mark Rothko, American painter.

1982 ~ Birthday of Jamie Lynn, Porn Actress.

1986 ~ Corazon Aquino assumed the Philippine presidency after Ferdinand E. Marcos fled.

1994 ~ Baruch Goldstein opened fire inside the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the West Bank, killing 29 Muslims before he was beaten to death.

1999 ~ Death of Glenn T. Seaborg, Nuclear Chemist & Public Servant, awarded the 1951 Nobel Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

2004 ~ Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" was released in the U.S., and became the highest-grossing R-rated film ever made.

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Eudaimonia

1797 ~ The Bank of England issued the first one pound note.

1802 ~ Birthday of Victor Hugo, Poet.

1848 ~ Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published “The Communist Manifesto” in London.

1918 ~ Birthday of Theodore Sturgeon, Science Fiction writer.

1935 ~ Robert Watson-Watt gave the first demonstration of RADAR.

1852 ~ Birthday of Julia Bond, Porn Actress.

1991 ~ Tim Berners-Lee introduced WorldWideWeb, the first web browser.

1991 ~ On Baghdad Radio, Saddam Hussein announced that he had ordered his forces to withdraw from Kuwait.

1993 ~ A van bomb parked below the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City exploded, killing 6 and injuring over a thousand.

2001 ~ The Taliban destroyed two giant Buddha statues in Bamyan, Afghanistan.

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Eudaimonia

1807 ~ Birthday of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Poet (The Song of Hiawatha, The Village Blacksmith, Paul Revere's Ride).

1827 ~ The first Mardi Gras was celebrated in New Orleans.

1900 ~ The British Labour Party was formed.

1902 ~ Birthday of John Steinbeck, Writer, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature 1962.

1912 ~ Birthday of Lawrence Durrell, Writer.

1933 ~ Germany's parliament building in Berlin, the Reichstag, caught fire. The Nazis, blaming the Communists, used the fire as a pretext for suspending civil liberties.

1951 ~ In a victory for freedom lovers, the Twenty-second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, limiting Presidents to two terms, was ratified.

1991 ~ President Bush declared "Kuwait is liberated, Iraq's army is defeated", and announced a Gulf War ceasefire.

1992 ~ Death of S. I. Hayakawa, Canadian-American linguist and politician.

2008 ~ Death of William F. Buckley, Jr., Conservative author and commentator.

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Eudaimonia

1827 ~ The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was incorporated, becoming the first railroad offering commercial transportation of both people and freight.

1833 ~ Birthday of Alfred von Schlieffen, German field marshal.

1854 ~ The U.S. Republican Party was organized in Ripon, Wisconsin as a party opposed to the expansion of slavery.

1916 ~ Death of Henry James, American writer (The Portrait of a Lady, The Turn of the Screw, The Ambassadors).

1901 ~ Birthday of Linus Pauling, double Nobel Prize winner: Chemistry 1954 and Peace 1962.

1935 ~ Wallace Carothers discovered Nylon.

1953 ~ James Watson and Francis Crick announced that they had determined the chemical structure of DNA. The formal announcement followed in the April 25 publication of Nature. For those who would like to learn more about this interesting development. In Crick’s own words.

1986 ~ Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was shot to death in central Stockholm.

1993 ~ Four Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) agents and six Branch Davidians were killed when the agents tried to serve warrants on the Davidians.

2003 ~ Death of Roger Needham, British cryptographer.

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Eudaimonia