February 8
It’s Boy Scout Day and Kite Flying Day and National Molasses Bar Day
It’s also…Saint Amand’s Day: Cheers! (The Seventh Century itinerant preacher Amand is the patron saint of innkeepers and bartenders.)
ON THIS DAY…
1587 Mary, Queen of Scots was executed at the age of 44 upon the suspicion of having been involved in the Babington Plot to murder her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I of England
1622 King James I of England disbands the English Parliament
1672 Isaac Newton read his first optics paper before Royal Society in London
1692 A doctor in Salem Village, Massachusetts Bay Colony suggests that two girls in the family of the village minister may be suffering from bewitchment, leading to the Salem witch trials
1693 The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia is granted a charter by King William III and Queen Mary II
1725 Catherine the Great becomes the Empress of Russia
1872 The first performance in Italy of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Aida takes place in his home town of Milan
1879 Sandford Fleming first proposes adoption of Universal Standard Time at a meeting of the Royal Canadian Institute
1898 John Sherman of Worcester, MA received a patent for the first machine to fold and seal envelopes
1900 British troops are defeated by Boers at Ladysmith, South Africa
1904 A surprise torpedo attack by the Japanese at Port Arthur, China starts the Russo-Japanese War
1910 The Boy Scouts of America is incorporated by William D. Boyce
1915 D.W. Griffith’s controversial silent film, The Birth of a Nation, premiered in Los Angeles
1918 The Stars and Stripes, the weekly newspaper of the American Expeditionary Forces, was published for the first time
1922 President Warren G. Harding had a radio installed in the White House
1924 The gas chamber is used for the first time in an American state prison; 29-year-old Chinese immigrant Gee Jon, who had murdered a member of a rival gang, was executed in Nevada
1926 Walt Disney Studios is formed
1928 John Logie Baird’s transmission of a TV image was received across the Atlantic ocean using short wave radio, from station 2 KZ at Purley, England to Hartsdale, NY
1936 Jay Berwanger becomes the first person to be selected by a National Football League draft, by the Philadelphia Eagles
1942 Congress advises FDR that Americans of Japanese descent should be locked up en masse so they wouldn’t oppose the US war effort
1952 The Disney animated film Lambert, the Sheepish Lion, featuring the narration of Sterling Holloway, is released. (It will win an Oscar for Best Animation.)
1960 US Congressional investigators began exploring the influence of payola in the radio and record industries
1960 Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom issued an Order-in-Council, stating that she and her family would be known as the House of Windsor, and that her descendants will take the name “Mountbatten-Windsor”
1963 Travel, financial and commercial transactions by United States citizens to Cuba are made illegal by the John F. Kennedy administration
1968 Disney’s live-action feature Blackbeard’s Ghost – starring Peter Ustinov, Dean Jones, Suzanne Pleshette, and Elsa Lanchester – is released
1968 Planet of the Apes premieres in New York City
1969 The last issue of the Saturday Evening Post was published, ending a magazine tradition that began in 1821
1971 The Nasdaq stock market index debuts
1974The third and final astronaut crew returned from the US earth-orbiting Skylab Space Station
1974 Ringo Starr’s single “You’re 16” is released in the US
1976 Taxi Driver opens in the US
1980 The Fog, starring Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis and Janet Leigh, opens in the US
1985 The Dukes of Hazzard ended its 6-1/2 year run on CBS-TV
1991 The Simpsons premiered on TV in Argentina
1991 Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, starring Tim Roth and Gary Oldman, opens in the US
1992 Right Said Fred’s single “Im Too Sexy” hit #1 in the US
2001 Disney’s second Anaheim park California Adventure officially opens
BORN:
1777 Bernard Courtois, chemist who discovered the element iodine
1795 Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge, chemist considered to be the originator of the widely used analytic technique of paper chromatography and he also developed a process for obtaining sugar from beet juice
1820 William Tecumseh Sherman, American soldier, businessman, educator, and author; he was a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War (186165)
1825 H. W. Bates, naturalist and explorer whose demonstration of the operation of natural selection in animal mimicry (the imitation by a species of other life forms or inanimate objects), published in 1861, gave firm support to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution
1828 Jules Verne, visionary author (Journey to the Center of the Earth, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Around the World in 80 Days)
1834 Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev, chemist who developed the periodic classification of the elements; in his final version of the periodic table he left gaps, foretelling that they would be filled by elements not then known and predicting the properties of three of those elements
1886 Charles Ruggles, Tony Award-winning actor who appeared in over 100 films beginning with The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1914) and was memorable as narrator of the “Aesop’s Fables” segment of The Bullwinkle Show
1894 King Vidor, director (The Big Parade, Show People, Stella Dallas)
1906 Chester F. Carlson, physicist who invented xerography, an electrostatic dry-copying process that found applications ranging from office copying to reproducing out-of-print books
1921 Lana Turner, actress (The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Three Musketeers, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde)
1922 Audrey Meadows, Emmy Award-winning actress (The Jackie Gleason Show, The Honeymooners)
1925 Jack Lemmon (John Uhler Lemmon III), two-time Academy Award-winning actor (Save the Tiger, Mister Roberts, Hamlet, The China Syndrome)
1926 Neal Cassady, author, Merry Prankster and icon of the Beat Generation (The First Third)
1928 Jack Larson, actor, (The Adventures of Superman, Superman Returns)
1930 Alejandro Rey, actor (The Flying Nun, Fun in Acapulco, Mr. Majestyk, Satan’s Triangle)
1931 James Dean, actor (Rebel Without a Cause, East of Eden, Giant)
1932 John Williams, five-time Academy Award-winning composer (Schindler’s List, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Star Wars, Jaws, Fiddler on the Roof)
1937 Joe Raposo, composer (“C is for Cookie,” “Three’s Company Theme”)
1940 Ted Koppel, journalist and news anchor (Nightline)
1941 Nick Nolte, actor (Hotel Rwanda, 48 Hrs., The Hulk)
1942 Robert Klein, actor/comedian (The Owl and the Pussycat, Radioland Murders)
1942 Terry Melcher, musician, record producer and son of Doris Day
1944 Roger Lloyd-Pack, actor (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The Vicar of Dibley, Only Fools and Horses)
1953 Mary Steenburgen, Academy Award-winning actress (Melvin and Howard, Time after Time, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape)
1955 John Grisham, author (The Pelican Brief, The Firm, The Client)
1955 Ethan Phillips, actor (Star Trek: Voyager, Critters, Benson, From the Earth to the Moon) 1961 Vince Neil, singer (Mötley Crüe)
1968 Gary Coleman, actor (Diff’rent Strokes, The Kid with the 200 I.Q.)
1974 Seth Green, actor (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Austin Powers trilogy, Family Guy, Robot Chicken)
1981 Ralf Little, actor (Two Pints of Lager (And a Packet of Crisps), The Royle Family)
DIED:
1725 Tsar Peter I of Russia, dies at 52
1957 John von Neumann, mathematician who made important contributions in quantum physics, logic, meteorology, and computer science, dies at 53
1964 Ernst Kretschmer, psychiatrist who attempted to correlate body build and physical constitution with personality characteristics and mental illness, dies at 75
1974 Fritz Zwicky, astronomer and physicist, who made valuable contributions to the theory and understanding of supernovas, dies at 75
1975 Sir Robert Robinson, chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1947 for his research on a wide range of organic compounds, notably alkaloids (complex, naturally occurring, nitrogen-containing organic compounds that can have profound effects on living things), dies at 88
1979 Dennis Gabor, electrical engineer who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1971 for his invention of holography, a system of lensless, three-dimensional photography that has many applications, dies at 78
1988 Allan Cuthbertson, actor (Tunes of Glory, The Guns of Navarone, Half a Sixpence), dies at 67
1989 Cyril Luckham, actor (Billy Budd, The Venturers, To Serve Them All My Days, Doctor Who), dies at 81
1990 Del Shannon (Charles Westover), singer (“Runaway,” “Hats off to Larry”) shot himself in the head with a .22 caliber rifle at his home in Santa Clarita, CA; he was 50
1994 Raymond Scott, musician/composer whose music is familiar to millions because of its adaptation by Warner Bros. in over 120 classic Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck and other Warner Bros. animated features, dies at 85
2004 Julius Schwartz, longtime editor at DC Comics and co-publisher of what is believed to be the very first science fiction fanzine, dies at 88
2007 Anna Nicole Smith, model/entertainer, dies at 39