February 10
It’s Umbrella Day
ON THIS DAY…
1542 Queen Catherine Howard of England is confined in the Tower of London to be executed three days later for treason (adultery)
1720 Edmund Halley was appointed second Astronomer Royal of England
1749 With its tenth volume, the serialization of Tom Jones is completed
1763 The 1763 Treaty of Paris ends the war and France cedes Quebec to Great Britain
1840 Queen Victoria and her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe Coburg-Gotha, married
1846 A Book of Nonsense by Edward Lear is published
1863 Barnum star General Tom Thumb marries Lavinia Warren in New York City
1863 The fire extinguisher was patented by Alanson Crane
1870 The city of Anaheim is incorporated
1870 The YWCA is founded in New York City
1897 All the news thats fit to print appeared on the front page of The New York Times beginning this day
1923 Harold Lloyd and Mildred Davis wed
1933 The New York City-based Postal Telegraph Company introduces the first singing telegram
1933 What! No Beer?, the final MGM film to star Buster Keaton, opens in the US
1934 Disney’s Silly Symphony cartoon The Grasshopper and the Ants is released is released in the US
1935 The Pennsylvania Railroad began passenger service with its new streamlined electric locomotive
1935 Donald Duck makes his first appearance in the Mickey Mouse Sunday edition comic strip
1945 The Warner Bros. cartoon The Unruly Hare starring Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd is released in the US
1957 The styrofoam cooler is invented
1957 Roger Corman’s Not of This Earth opens in the US
1961 The Niagara Falls hydroelectric project began producing power
1962 Captured American spy pilot Francis Gary Powers is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel
1978 Candleshoe starring Helen Hayes and Jodie Foster is released in the US
1995 Danny Boyle’s thriller Shallow Grave starring Ewan McGregor and Christopher Eccleston opens in the US
1996 The IBM supercomputer Deep Blue defeats Garry Kasparov for the first time
1998 AOL raised its monthly flat access rate from $19.95 to $21.95, explaining it needed to upgrade its network to handle the onslaught of people taking advantage of its flat price
BORN:
1766 Benjamin Smith Barton, naturalist who wrote the first botanical textbook published in the US
1775 Charles Lamb, author/poet (Tales from Shakespeare, Witches and Other Night Fears, Essays of Elia)
1835 Victor Hensen, physiologist and oceanographer who first used the name plankton to describe the tiny organisms that live suspended in the sea (and in bodies of freshwater)
1840 Per Teodor Cleve, chemist and geologist who discovered the elements holmium and thulium
1846 Ira Remsen, chemist who codiscovered saccharin
1853 Victor Mordechai Goldschmidt, mineralogist who made important studies of crystallography
1885 Hardy Cross, professor of civil and structural engineering whose outstanding contribution was a method of calculating tendencies to produce motion in the members of a continuous framework, such as the skeleton of a building
1890 Boris Pasternak, poet/writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958 (Doctor Zhivago, Rupture)
1892 Alan Hale, actor (The Three Musketeers, The Inspector General, Gentleman Jim)
1893 Jimmy Durante, actor/singer (Palooka, The Man Who Came to Dinner, It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World)
1894 Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1957-1963), Chancellor of the Exchequer (1955-1957)
1897 John Franklin Enders, virologist and microbiologist who (collaborating with Frederick C. Robbins and Thomas H. Weller) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for 1954 for his part in cultivating the poliomyelitis virus in nonnervous-tissue cultures, a preliminary step to the development of the polio vaccine
1898 Bertolt Brecht, poet, playwright, and theatre director (The Threepenny Opera, Saint Joan of the Stockyards)
1901 Richard Dagobert Brauer, mathematician and educator, a pioneer in the development of algebra theory
1902 Walter H. Brattain, scientist who, with John Bardeen and William B. Shockley, won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1956 for investigating semiconductors (materials of which transistors are made) and for the development of the transistor
1906 Lon Chaney Jr. (Creighton Chaney), actor (Of Mice and Men, The Wolf Man, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man)
1920 Alex Comfort, physician and writer (The Joy of Sex: A Gourmet Guide to Lovemaking, Peace and Disobedience)
1929 Jerry Goldsmith, Academy Award-winning film composer (The Omen, Planet of the Apes, Papillon, Patton)
1930 Robert Wagner, actor (It Takes a Thief, Prince Valiant, The Pink Panther, The Towering Inferno)
1941 Michael Apted, director (Amazing Grace, The World Is Not Enough, Enigma, Agatha)
1944 Vernor Vinge, Professor of Mathematics, computer scientist, and multiple Hugo Award-winning science fiction author (A Fire Upon the Deep, A Deepness in the Sky, Rainbows End)
1950 Mark Spitz, swimmer who won 9 Olympic gold medals, 1 silver, and 1 bronze; 5 Pan American golds; 31 National US Amateur Athletic Union titles; and 8 US National Collegiate Athletic Association Championships
1963 Philip Glenister, actor (Life on Mars, State of Play, Cranford, Clocking Off)
1963 Rick Dougherty, philanthropist and devoted father
1967 Laura Dern, actress (Jurassic Park, Mask, Wild at Heart)
DIED:
1722 Bartholomew Roberts (aka Black Bart), the most successful pirate of the Golden Age of Piracy, dies at 39
1837 Alexander Pushkin, poet and novelist (Boris Godunov, A Feast During the Plague, Eugene Onegin), is killed in a duel at 37
1912 Joseph Lister, surgeon and medical scientist who was the founder of antiseptic medicine and a pioneer in preventive medicine, dies at 84
1923 Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, physicist who was a recipient of the first Nobel Prize for Physics, in 1901, for his discovery of X rays, which heralded the age of modern physics and revolutionized diagnostic medicine, dies at 77
1957 Laura Ingalls Wilder, author (Little House series of books), dies at 90
1964 Eugen Sänger, rocket propulsion engineer whose projected “antipodal bomber,” with a range far greater than that made possible by its fuel capacity alone, dies at 58
1992 Alex Haley, author (Roots: The Saga of an American Family, The Autobiography of Malcolm X), dies at 70
1997 Amron Harry Katz, physicist whose studies in aerial reconnaissance made possible the use of space satellites for collecting military intelligence as well as information to be used in conserving resources and aiding disaster victims, dies at 81
1997 Jerome Namias, meteorological researcher most noted for having pioneered the development of extended weather forecasts and who also studied the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and the El Niño phenomenon, dies at 86
2000 Jim Varney, actor (Toy Story, Ernest films), dies at 51
2005 D. Allan Bromley, nuclear physicist who was considered the “father of modern heavy ion science” for his pioneering experiments on both the structure and dynamics of atomic nuclei, dies at 78
2005 Arthur Miller, playwright and recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (The Crucible, Death of a Salesman), dies at 89