February 9
It’s Toothache Day
It’s also the Feast Day of St. Appolonia (Appolonia is the patron of dentists.)
ON THIS DAY…
1540 The first recorded horse race in England is held at Roodeye Fields, Chester
1555 Bishop of Gloucester John Hooper is burned at the stake
1621 Gregory XV becomes Pope, the last Pope elected by acclamation
1674 Charles II of England signs the Treaty of Westminster, ending a war with the Dutch
1775 British Parliament declares Massachusetts in rebellion
1801 France and Austria sign the Peace of Luneville, effectively ending the Holy Roman Empire
1825 After no presidential candidate received a majority of electoral votes, the United States House of Representatives elects John Quincy Adams as the sixth President of the United States
1861 Jefferson Davis is elected the Provisional President of the Confederate States of America by the Confederate convention at Montgomery, AL
1870 The United States Weather Bureau was authorized by Congress
1875 The first train passed through the Hoosac Tunnel on the Boston and Maine Railroad line
1889 The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is established as a Cabinet-level agency
1895 William G. Morgan of MA invents volleyball
1902 Doctor Eugène-Louis Doyen of Paris performed a successful operation on Siamese twins
1909 Congress passed the “Opium Exclusion Act” which banned the importation, possession and use of “smoking opium” but did not regulate opium-based “medications”
1929 Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester marry
1932 America entered the 2-man bobsled competition for the first time at the Olympic Winter Games held at Lake Placid, NY
1933 She Done Him Wrong starring Mae West and Cary Grant opens in the US
1940 My Little Chickadee starring Mae West and W.C. Fields premieres
1940 Pinocchio opens in Los Angeles
1942 Daylight saving time goes into effect in the US
1949 The first Department of Space Medicine in the world was established at the US Air Force School of Aviation Medicine at Randolph Field, Texas, and Dr. Hubertus Strughold subsequently became the first professor of Space Medicine
1950 Joe McCarthy accuses State Department employees of Communist Party affiliation: “I have here in my hand,” he states, “the names of 205 men that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist party and who nevertheless are still working & shaping the policy of the state department.” (He later admitted the paper was actually an old laundry list.)
1951 Disney’s Pluto cartoon Cold Storage is released in the US
1960 Joanne Woodward receives the first star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
1963 The very first Boeing 727 took off
1964 The Beatles make their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, performing before an audience of 73 million viewers
1964 Walt Disneys Wonderful World of Color airs part one of a three-part story called “The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh”(Unfortunately for Disney it debuts against the much anticipated debut of The Beatles)
1965 The first US combat troops are sent to South Vietnam
1969 The first test flight of the Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet takes place
1970 Zabriskie Point opens in the US
1971 Apollo 14 returns to Earth after the third manned moon landing
1979 The Warriors opens in the US
1991 Lithuanians vote by a huge majority to restore the Soviet republics pre-World War II independence
1996 Broken Arrow starring John Travolta and Christian Slater opens in the US
1997 With the airing of episode 167 on Fox-TV, The Simpsons surpassed The Flintstones to become the longest-running prime time animated series
2001 Jim Henson’s Muppet Vision 3D debuts at Disney’s California Adventure
2001 A surfacing US nuclear submarine, the USS Greeneville, struck and sank a Japanese fishing trawler off Hawaii, killing nine of the 35 people on board
BORN:
1748 Luther Martin, politician and one of US’ Founding Fathers, but refused to sign the Constitution because he felt it violated states’ rights
1773 William Henry Harrison, American military leader, politician (first Governor of the Indiana Territory and later as a US Representative and Senator from Ohio) and the ninth President of the United States (1841 – shortest term in history of only 31 days)
1791 Jean Cruveilhier, pathologist, anatomist, and physician who wrote several important works on pathological anatomy
1846 Wilhelm Maybach, engineer, engine designer (who invented the spray carburettor) and the chief designer of the first Mercedes automobiles
1854 Aletta Henriette Jacobs, physician who pioneered family planning with the world’s first birth control clinic
1859 Robert Hope-Jones, organ builder whose innovations created the theatre organ and its orchestral sounds
1863 Anthony Hope, author (The Prisoner of Zenda, Sophy of Kravonia)
1865 Erich Dagobert von Drygalski, geographer and glaciologist who discovered a volcano, free of ice, on the Antarctic continent
1871 Howard T. Ricketts, pathologist who discovered the causative organisms and mode of transmission of Rocky Mountain spotted fever and epidemic typhus
1883 Garnet Carter, inventor of miniature golf
1891 Ronald Colman, Academy Award winning-actor (A Double Life, Random Harvest, Bulldog Drummond, Champagne for Caesar)
1901 Brian Donlevy, actor (Beau Geste, Destry Rides Again, The Quatermass Experiment, Quatermass 2)
1909 Carmen Miranda (Maria do Carmo Miranda Da Cunha), actress/entertainer (That Night in Rio, Week-End in Havana, Springtime in the Rockies)
1914 Gypsy Rose Lee (Rose Louise Hovick), actress, burlesque entertainer, and writer (Gypsy)
1916 Alec Zino, ornithologist and conservationist who gave his name to Zino’s petrel, Europe’s rarest breeding bird
1922 Kathryn Grayson, actress (Rio Rita, Show Boat, Kiss Me Kate)
1923 Norman E. Shumway, surgeon and pioneer in heart transplant surgery, who began the heart transplantation program at Stanford Medical Center
1928 Frank Frazetta, fantasy and science fiction artist (“Conan the Barbarian”, “The Death Eater”, “Bran Mak Morn”)
1936 Clive Swift, actor (Born and Bred, Peak Practice, Keeping Up Appearances)
1942 Carole King, four-time Grammy Award winning-artist (“Will You Love Me Tomorrow”, “Some Kind of Wonderful”, “The Loco-Motion”, “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman”)
1943 Joe Pesci, Academy Award-winning actor (Goodfellas, Raging Bull, Casino)
1945 Mia Farrow, actress (Rosemary’s Baby, The Great Gatsby, Supergirl, The Purple Rose of Cairo)
1953 Ciarán Hinds, actor (Rome, Calendar Girls, The Sum of All Fears, Oscar and Lucinda, Mary Reilly)
1955 Charles Shaughnessy, actor (The Nanny, Saints & Sinners)
DIED:
1811 Nevil Maskelyne, astronomer noted for his contribution to the science of navigation, dies at 78
1865 James Melville Gilliss, U.S. naval officer and astronomer who founded the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., the first U.S. observatory devoted entirely to research, dies at 53
1881 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, novelist (Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, Notes from Underground), dies at 59
1883 William E. Dodge, industrialist, cofounder of Phelps, Dodge & Company, which was one of the largest mining companies in the US for more than a century, dies at 77
1966 Sophie Tucker, singer and comedian, dies at 81
1969 George “Gabby” Hayes, character actor and best remembered as Western sidekick to stars such as John Wayne, Roy Rogers, and Randolph Scott, dies at 83
1977 Sergey Vladimirovich Ilyushin, aircraft designer who created the famous Il-2 Stormovik armoured attack aircraft, the most used and the most produced plane during WWII by the Soviet Union Air Force, dies at 82
1981 Bill Haley, musician/songwriter (“Rock Around the Clock,” “See You Later Alligator” and “Shake Rattle & Roll”), dies at 55
1997 Brian Connolly, musician (Sweet), dies at 51
2001 Herbert Alexander Simon, social scientist who was a pioneer of the development of computer artificial intelligence, dies at 84
2002 Princess Margaret of the United Kingdom, younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II, dies at 71
2007 Ian Richardson, actor (House of Cards, Murder Rooms, Gormenghast, Brazil, Hogfather), dies at 72