February 5
Today is
Superbowl Sunday in the United States. The
New England Patriots and the
Atlanta Falcons will meet in Houston, Texas to decide the NFL Championship.
Today is also
Nat'l Weatherpersons' Day in the U.S., but, I'd still look out the window.
Events
1597 A group of
early Japanese Christians are
killed by the new government of Japan for being seen as a threat to Japanese society.
1778 South Carolina becomes the second state to ratify the
Articles of Confederation.
1807 HMS Blenheim (1761) and HMS Java
disappear off the coast of Rodrigues.
1852 The New
Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, one of the largest and oldest museums in the world, opens to the public.
1869 The largest alluvial gold nugget in history, called the "
Welcome Stranger", is found in Moliagul, Victoria, Australia.
1909 Belgian chemist
Leo Baekeland announces the creation of
Bakelite, the world's first synthetic plastic.
1913 Greek military aviators,
Michael Moutoussis and
Aristeidis Moraitinis perform the first naval air mission in history, with a
Farman MF.7 hydroplane.
1919 Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith launch
United Artists.
1924 The Royal Greenwich Observatory begins broadcasting the hourly time signals known as the
Greenwich Time Signal.
1945 World War II:
General Douglas MacArthur returns to Manila.
1958 A hydrogen bomb known as the
Tybee Bomb is lost by the US Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, never to be recovered.
1994
Byron De La Beckwith is convicted of the 1963 murder of civil rights leader
Medgar Evers.
Births
1840 John Boyd Dunlop (tires); 1840 Hiram Maxim; 1878 Andrι Citroλn (Citroλn cars); 1900 Adlai Stevenson II; 1906 John Carradine; 1914 William S. Burroughs; 1919 Red Buttons; 1919 Tim Holt; 1934 Hank Aaron; 1940 H. R. Giger; 1941 Stephen J. Cannell; 1941 Cory Wells; 1942 Roger Staubach; 1943 Nolan Bushnell (founded Atari); 1943 Michael Mann; 1944 Al Kooper; 1946 Charlotte Rampling; 1947 Darrell Waltrip; 1948 Christopher Guest; 1948 Barbara Hershey; 1948 Errol Morris; 1961 Tim Meadows; 1962 Jennifer Jason Leigh; 1964 Laura Linney; 1964 Duff McKagan; 1967 Chris Parnell; 1969 Bobby Brown; 1969 Michael Sheen; 1971 Sara Evans; 1986 Reed Sorenson
Deaths
1881 Thomas Carlyle; 1922 Slavoljub Eduard Penkala (invented the Mechanical pencil); 1967 Leon Leonwood Bean; 1991 Dean Jagger; 1995 Doug McClure; 1998 Tim Kelly; 2008 Maharishi Mahesh Yogi