February 8
1587 –
Mary, Queen of Scots, is executed on suspicion of having been involved in the Babington Plot to murder her cousin,
Queen Elizabeth I.
1693 – The
College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, is granted a charter by
King William III and
Queen Mary II.
1865 – Delaware refuses to ratify the
Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Slavery was outlawed in the United States, including Delaware, when the Amendment was ratified by the requisite number of states on December 6, 1865. Delaware ratified the Thirteenth Amendment on February 12, 1901, which was the ninety-second anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.
1887 – The
Dawes Act authorizes the President of the United States to survey Native American tribal land and divide it into individual allotments.
1915 –
D. W. Griffith's controversial film
The Birth of a Nation premieres in Los Angeles.
1922 – United States President
Warren G. Harding introduces the first
radio set in the White House.
1924 – Capital punishment: The
first state execution in the United States by gas chamber takes place in Nevada.
1950 – The
Stasi, the secret police of East Germany, is established.
1963 –
Travel, financial and commercial transactions by United States citizens to Cuba are made illegal by the John F. Kennedy administration.
1971 – The
NASDAQ stock market index opens for the first time.
1973 -
Max Yasgur died of a heart attack, aged 53. He was the owner of the dairy farm in Bethel, New York at which the
Woodstock Music and Art Fair was held between August 15 - 18, 1969.
1974 – After 84 days in space, the crew of
Skylab 4, the last crew to visit American space station
Skylab, returns to Earth.
1983 – The
Melbourne dust storm hits Australia's second largest city. The result of the worst drought on record and a day of severe weather conditions, a 320 metres (1,050 ft) deep dust cloud envelops the city, turning day to night.
1986 –
Hinton train collision: Twenty-three people are killed when a VIA Rail passenger train collides with a 118-car Canadian National freight train near the town of Hinton, Alberta, west of Edmonton.
1990 - Suffering from depression, American singer/songwriter
Del Shannon died of self inflicted gunshot wounds.
1993 –
General Motors sues NBC after Dateline NBC allegedly rigs two crashes intended
to demonstrate that some GM pickups can easily catch fire if hit in certain places.
NBC settles the lawsuit the next day.
1996 – The U.S. Congress passes the
Communications Decency Act.
2013 – A
blizzard disrupts transportation and leaves hundreds of thousands of people without electricity in the Northeastern United States and parts of Canada.
Births
1700 – Daniel Bernoulli; 1820 – William Tecumseh Sherman; 1828 – Jules Verne; 1906 – Chester Carlson (invented
Xerography); 1914 – Bill Finger (co-created Batman); 1921 – Lana Turner; 1922 – Audrey Meadows; 1925 – Jack Lemmon; 1930 – Alejandro Rey; 1931 – James Dean; 1932 – John Williams♪ ♫; 1940 – Ted Koppel; 1941 – Nick Nolte; 1941 – Tom Rush♪ ♫; 1942 –
Robert Klein; 1942 – Terry Melcher♪ ♫(record producer, only child of Doris Day); 1944 – Roger Lloyd-Pack; 1948 – Dan Seals♪ ♫(England Dan & John Ford Coley, younger brother of Jim Seals of Seals & Crofts); 1949 – Brooke Adams; 1950 – Cristina Ferrare; 1953 – Mary Steenburgen; 1955 – John Grisham; 1955 – Jim 'The Anvil' Neidhart; 1960 – Stu Hamm
; 1961 – Vince Neil♪ ♫(Motely Crue); 1968 – Gary Coleman ("Watchoo talkin' 'bout, Willis?"); 1969 – Mary McCormack (
In Plain Sight); 1974 – Seth Green
Deaths
1587 – Mary, Queen of Scots
; 1725 – Peter the Great; 1936 – Charles Curtis (31st VPOTUS); 1956 – Connie Mack; 1960 – Giles Gilbert Scott (designed the
Red telephone box & Liverpool Cathedral); 1973 - Max Yasgur♪ ♫(owned the farm where Woodstock was held); 1990 – Del Shannon♪ ♫; 1994 –
Raymond Scott♪ ♫; 1999 – Iris Murdoch; 2007 – Anna Nicole Smith
