This Day in History

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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 – André Citroën (Citroën 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