<< Feb 21|         HISTORY “4” “2”DAY          |Feb 23 >>
Events, deaths, births, of FEB 22

[For Feb 22 Julian go to Gregorian date
(leap years one day earlier) 1583~1699: Mar 041700s: Mar 051800s: Mar 061900~2099: Mar 07]
ALTERNATE SITES    ALL FOR 030222      ANY DAY  OF THE YEAR IN HISTORY     ART “4” FEB 22
• Cease~fire in Sri Lanka... • Congress votes funds as US prepares to enter WW I ... • US purchases Florida... • 85th day of USSR aggression against Finland... • Rembrandt Peale is born... •  Lady Windermere's Fan... • Counterattack around Saigon... • 1'000'000th Chevrolet... • Fall of the Turkish lira... • First US presidential radio address... • Kennan recommends cold war policies... • CIA traitor is arrested... • Edna St. Vincent Millay is born... • Montana law against sedition... • New Cray supercomputer... • Westmoreland asks for Marines... • Woolworth's retail revolution... • US President orders evacuation of Philippines... • Basque terrorist killing... • Lewinsky interviews... • Popcorn poppycock...
On a February 22:
^ 2002 Cease-fire in Sri Lanka.
      Thanks to Norway's mediation, Ranil Wickremesinghe, prime minister of Sri Lanka (since December 2001) and Velupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, sign a cease-fire agreement to become effective the next day. It provides that Norway will lead a mission to monitor the cease fire, which will include Sweden, Denmark and Finland. It provides for greater freedom of movement for unarmed troops, an end to attacks on civilians, the unimpeded flow of all non-military goods into Tamil-Tigers-held territory and the opening of roads and railway lines. The Tigers are considered terrorists by the US, UK, Canada and Sri Lanka itself. For the coming negotiations to be successful, the Tigers would have to give up the goal, for which they have been fighting since 1983: a separate nation for the country's mostly Hindu Tamil minority. The government, dominated by the mainly Buddhist Sinhalese majority, would have to grant the Tamils far greater autonomy to rule themselves. President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who will remain in office until 2005, though her coalition was defeated by Wickremesinghe's in 2001 elections, and who was nearly killed in a Tigers suicide bomb attack in 1999, immediately objected that the negotiatiors had ignored "constitutional provisions to obtain presidential approval, as well as not informing the cabinet of ministers and parliament."
^ 2001 The Turkish lira falls 29% against the dollar
      The Turkish government abandoned exchange-rate controls to fight the financial crisis made worse by dissension between President Ahmet Necdet Sezer and Prime Minister Ahmet Necdet Sezer, whom the President accuses of being soft on corruption.
     The exchange rate closes at is 962'499 liras to $1 (having touched 1'020'000 during the day), compared with 685'400 lira the previous day. The devaluation of the lira helps the stock market to recover part of its 18% drop on 21 February.
     The inflation rate stands at about 30%, down from 70% in 1999. Since Turkey began its anti-inflation program backed by $11 billion in loans from the International Monetary Fund, it had set daily currency rates for the lira against the dollar and euro. Overnight lending rates reached an annualized 7500% on 21 February. By dropping the exchange-rate controls, Turkey is abandoning a key element of its economic stabilization program. The government said it remains committed to the program, including the rapid privatization of the state-owned fixed-line telephone monopoly. The economic stabilization program has been under pressure since November 2000 when foreign investors were scared off by allegations of corruption in the banking sector.
2001 The first new Constitution of the State of Vatican City since it was constituted by the 1929 Lateran treaty, takes effect. It removes anachronisms such as the death penalty, which has never been applied under the 1929 constitution, though it was previously, with hangings as late as the pontificate of Pius IX.
2000 La policía española detiene a siete personas en Barcelona y Tarragona por su relación con las actividades presuntamente ilícitas de la asociación Energía Universal y Humana, una de las "sectas prohibidas y peligrosas de la Unión Europea".
1999 Unos 40'000 agricultores protestan en Bruselas por la reducción de ayudas tras la reforma de la Política Agrícola Común.
1999 Monica Lewinsky interviews
(1) ABC News will air Monica Lewinsky's first television interview in a two-hour special on 03 March, ABC News President David Westin announces. In a tele-conference with reporters, Westin describes the interview, conducted by veteran anchor Barbara Walters, as "educational." "I learned this was a much more complicated and subtle story than has been seen in the press," says Westin. Walters, who is also on the tele-conference, describes Lewinsky as "full and frank." "She doesn't paint a glorious picture of herself," Walters says.
(2) A British television journalist who secured another of the first interviews with Monica Lewinsky says the interview would show the ordeal of a young woman "raped by the American constitution.''
  • Jon Snow of Channel Four Television describes Lewinsky as "very collected, very focused, with a photographic and excellent memory." "She has a brilliant television presence and is very effective in telling how she was raped by the American constitution," Snow tells a news conference. "She was bursting to tell her story," Snow says. "She was exceedingly isolated. She's been aggrieved at the picture that emerged of her." Snow says 24-year-old Lewinsky was very nervous at the start of the interview but that he felt that it had been a cathartic experience for her to put across her point of view after a year of frenzied media coverage.
  • The hour-long interview will be one of the first television interviews with Lewinsky since her affair with President Clinton that brought about his impeachment and Senate trial. The interview will be screened on 04 March, less than 24 hours after Lewinsky talks to ABC television's Barbara Walters.
  • Snow, whose channel paid 400'000 pounds ($600'000) for the Lewinsky interview, says he interviewed Lewinsky Feb. 21 for eight hours in her mother's penthouse overlooking New York's Central Park. Lewinsky was emotional at times but did not cry, he says.
  • The interview was subject to restrictions imposed by independent counsel Kenneth Starr, one being that Lewinsky was prohibited from talking about the way she had been treated by him, Channel Four officials say.
  • 1998 El secretario General de la ONU, Kofi Annan, consigue un acuerdo con el presidente iraquí, Saddam Husein, por el que se paraliza un posible ataque norteamericano.
    1998 El presidente colombiano Ernesto Samper, Ernesto realiza una sorprendente oferta de dimisión para mejorar las relaciones de su país con Estados Unidos.
    1998 Los ministros de Finanzas y de Trabajo de los siete países más industrializados del mundo y Rusia (G-8) aprueban el Londres un plan de acción para impulsar la creación de empleo.
    1996 Russia and the head of the International Monetary Fund reached a deal for a loan of more than $10 billion dollars to back up free-market reforms.
    ^ Cray stock price1995 Cray introduces a new supercomputer
          Cray Research Inc. presents a new supercomputer, three-to-five-times faster than its predecessor. The company, founded by early computer scientist Seymour Cray (who also worked on UNIVAC, one of the first commercial computers) held about two-thirds of the world market for supercomputers costing $5 million or more. Supercomputers were the predecessor of microcomputers and are still used for military and large business purposes. However, the demand for supercomputers rapidly declined at the end of the Cold War.
         In 1957, Cray co-founded Control Data Corp., where he built the first computer to use radio transistors instead of vacuum tubes. The transistors made the machines more reliable and allowed for the miniaturization of components, which enhanced the performance of desktop computers.In the 1960s, he designed the world's first supercomputer at Control Data, then left in 1972 and co-founded Cray Research Inc.There, he built the Cray-1 and Cray-2 supercomputers, which helped the defense industry create sophisticated weapons systems and the oil industry construct geographic models that predicted mineral deposits.At his third company, Cray Computer Corp., he failed to raise $20 million for operating costs and filed for bankruptcy in March 1995. It closed soon afterward. In August, Cray started a new company called SRC Computers Inc.
          Cray Inc. (NASD: CRAY), formed from the March 2000 merger of Tera Computer Company and Cray Research, is the global market leader in high-end supercomputers. But, one year later, it is still a gigaflop as far as profits are concerned, just as its predecessor [see stock price charge above].
          Cray Inc. is dedicated to helping customers solve the most-demanding, most-crucial computing problems on the planet-designing the cars and trucks we drive, creating new materials and life-saving drugs, predicting severe weather and climate change, analyzing complex data structures, safeguarding national security, and a host of other applications that benefit humanity by advancing the frontiers of science and engineering.
          Cray Inc. builds upon a rich history that extends back to 1972, when the legendary Seymour Cray, the "father of supercomputing," founded Cray Research. R&D and manufacturing were based in his hometown of Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin; business headquarters were in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
          The first Cray-1® system was installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1976 for $8.8 million. It boasted a world-record speed of 160 million floating-point operations per second (160 megaflops) and an 8 megabyte (1 million word) main memory. The Cray-1's architecture reflected its designer's penchant for bridging technical hurdles with revolutionary ideas. In order to increase the speed of this system, the Cray-1 had a unique "C" shape which enabled integrated circuits to be closer together. No wire in the system was more than four feet long. To handle the intense heat generated by the computer, Cray developed an innovative refrigeration system using Freon.
          In order to concentrate his efforts on design, Cray left the CEO position in 1980 and became an independent contractor. As he worked on the follow-on to the Cray-1, another group within the company developed the first multiprocessor supercomputer, the Cray X-MP!", which was introduced in 1982. The Cray-2!" system appeared in 1985, providing a tenfold increase in performance over the Cray-1.
          In 1988, Cray Research introduced the Cray Y-MP®, the world's first supercomputer to sustain over 1 gigaflop on many applications. Multiple 333 MFLOPS processors powered the system to a record sustained speed of 2.3 gigaflops.
          Always a visionary, Seymour Cray had been exploring the use of gallium arsenide in creating a semiconductor faster than silicon. However, the costs and complexities of this material made it difficult for the company to support both the Cray 3 and the Cray C90ä development efforts. In 1989, Cray Research spun off the Cray 3 project into a separate company, Cray Computer Corporation, headed by Seymour Cray and based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Seymour Cray died of injuries suffered in an auto accident in September, 1996 at the age of 71.
          The 1990s brought a number of transforming events to Cray Research. The company continued its leadership in providing the most powerful supercomputers for production applications. The Cray C90!" featured a new central processor with industry-leading sustained performance of 1 gigaflop. Using 16 of these powerful processors and 256 million words of central memory, the system boasted unrivaled total performance. The company also produced its first "minisupercomputer," the Cray XMS system, followed by the Cray Y-MP EL series and the subsequent Cray J90!".
          In 1993, Cray Research offered its first massively parallel processing (MPP) system, the Cray T3D!" supercomputer, and quickly captured MPP market leadership from early MPP companies such as Thinking Machines and MasPar. The Cray T3D proved to be exceptionally robust, reliable, sharable and easy-to-administer, compared with competing MPP systems.
          Since its debut in 1995, the successor Cray T3E!" supercomputer has been the world's best selling MPP system. The Cray T3E-1200E system has the distinction of being the only supercomputer to ever sustain one teraflop (1 trillion calculations per second) on a real-world application. In November 1998, a joint scientific team from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and the University of Bristol (UK) ran a magnetism application at a sustained speed of 1.02 teraflops.
          In another technological landmark, the Cray T90!" became the world's first wireless supercomputer when it was unveiled in 1994. Also introduced that year, the Cray J90 series has since become the world's most popular supercomputer, with over 400 systems sold.
          Cray Research merged with SGI (Silicon Graphics, Inc.) in February 1996. In August 1999, SGI created a separate Cray Research business unit to focus exclusively on the unique requirements of high-end supercomputing customers. Assets of this business unit were sold to Tera Computer Company in March 2000.
    1995 The Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), a federally funded center at Carnegie Melon University, warned the public that a security flaw could let hackers penetrate UNIX machines through the Web and read, write, or destroy nearly any file in the system.
    1995 Steve Fossett completes first balloon crossing of Pacific Ocean (9600 km)
    1995 El Senado español aprueba los Estatutos de Autonomía de Ceuta y Melilla, con lo que queda cerrado el mapa autonómico (pero no menciona el islote Perejil, lo que resultará en una confrontación con Marruecos en julio 2002).
    1994 El Sínodo de la Iglesia anglicana aprueba los nuevos cánones para la ordenación de mujeres.
    ^ 1994 CIA traitor is arrested
          CIA operative Aldrich Ames is arrested for selling secrets to the Soviet Union. Ames had access to the names and identities of all US spies in Russia, and by becoming a double agent he was directly responsible for jeopardizing the lives of CIA agents working in the Eastern bloc. At least 10 men were killed after Ames revealed their identities, and more were sent to Russian gulags. Maria del Rosario Casas Ames, Aldrich's wife and an ex-CIA employee herself, was also charged for her role in accepting approximately $2.7 million (the most the Soviets ever paid a foreign spy) for providing the highly confidential information to the KGB. It was the Ames' spending that finally led to their downfall, but for many years no one questioned their ability to buy expensive cars and homes (paid for with cash) on his government salary. Ames picked up the cash at secret drops in the Washington, DC, area and in unauthorized travels to Colombia and Venezuela.
          Aldrich Ames was the biggest success of the Soviet Union's reinvigorated espionage program. After the disastrous invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the Russians decided that spying was their best bet for improving their strategic position vis-à-vis the United States. Dimitri Yakushkin was put in charge of a team called Group North. Yakushkin put more emphasis and money into clandestine operations and was rewarded when they turned Ames into a double agent. Ames, who had worked for the CIA since 1962, and whose main duties had included contacting Soviet sources, was the crown jewel for Group North. His information destroyed almost the whole US intelligence program in Russia. Later, a Senate Intelligence Committee issued a report that harshly criticized the CIA leadership for their negligence in allowing Ames to get away with his subterfuge for so long.
         Aldrich Ames would be sentenced to life in prison; his wife to 5 years.
    1993 La ONU aprueba la creación de un Tribunal Internacional de crímenes de guerra en la ex Yugoslavia.
    1991 Bush and US Gulf War allies give Iraq 24 hours to begin Kuwait withdrawal. — EE.UU. da a Irak un ultimátum para que se retire de Kuwait, bajo la amenaza de una ofensiva inmediata.
    1987 Entra en vigor en Argentina la Ley del Punto Final, con lo que se pone fin a las denuncias contra los militares de la dictadura.
    1983 Finaliza en Argel la reunión del Consejo Nacional Palestino, con la reelección de Yasir Arafat como presidente de la OLP.
    1980 Afghanistan declares martial law.
    1979 St Lucia gains independence from Britain.
    1974 Ethiopian police shoot at demonstrators.
    1973 US and Communist China agree to establish liaison offices in Beijing and Washington DC.
    1972 President Nixon, meets with Chinese Premier Chou En-Lai in Beijing
    1972 Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani becomes Amir and Prime Minister of Qatar
    1971 Lieutenant General Hafiz al-Assad becomes President of Syria.
    1969 Huelga en España de 25'000 mineros asturianos.
    ^ 1967 Suharto becomes dictator of Indonesia.
          Indonesian President Achmad Sukarno surrenders all executive authority to Indonesian premier and military dictator General Suharto, remaining president in title only. Two years earlier, General Suharto, the Indonesian army chief of staff, led the army in suppressing a Communist coup against President Sukarno. Following the failed coup, Suharto and his officers sought out Communist suspects across the country, killing scores and arresting thousands. Over the next two years, Suharto gradually took over the reins of government from Sukarno, and in 1967, assumed full executive power. Elected as president in 1968, and reelected every five years since, Suharto stabilized his nation and oversaw its economic progress, but was highly criticized for his 1975 invasion of Timor, which left an estimated 200,000 Timorese dead from famine, disease, or warfare.
    1967 Counterattack against Communists around Saigon begins
          Operation Junction City is started to ease pressure on Saigon. It was an effort to smash the Viet Cong's stronghold in Tay Ninh Province and surrounding areas along the Cambodian border northwest of Saigon. The purpose of the operation was to drive the Viet Cong away from populated areas and into the open, where superior American firepower could be more effectively used. In the largest operation of the war to date, four South Vietnamese and 22 US battalions were involved — more than 25'000 soldiers. The first day's operation was supported by 575 aircraft sorties, a record number for a single day in South Vietnam. The operation was marked by one of the largest airmobile assaults in history when 240 troop-carrying helicopters descended on the battlefield. There were 2728 enemy casualties by the end of the operation on March 17.
    1966 Soviets launch Kosmos 110 with Veterok and Ugolek, first 2-dog crew.
    1965 Made cardinals: Josyf Ivanovycè Slipyj [17 Feb 1892 – 07 Sep 1984], Giulio Bevilacqua [14 Nov 1881 – 06 May 1965, Federico Vignale [15 Dec 1890 – 10 Aug 1971]
    ^ 1965 US General in Vietnam asks for Marines
          General William Westmoreland, commander of Military Assistance Command Vietnam, cables Washington, DC, to request that two battalions of US Marines be sent to protect the US airbase at Da Nang. Ambassador Maxwell Taylor, aware of Westmoreland's plan, disagreed and cabled President Lyndon B. Johnson from Saigon to warn that such a step would encourage South Vietnam to "shuck off greater responsibilities." The Joint Chiefs of Staff, however, supported Westmoreland's request and on 26 February, White House officials cabled Taylor and Westmoreland that the troops would be sent, and that Taylor should "Secure GVN [Government of South Vietnam] approval." General Westmoreland later insisted that he did not regard his request as "the first step in a growing American commitment," but by 1969 there were over 540'000 American troops in South Vietnam.
    1962 Entra en funcionamiento la primera parte del conducto petrolífero del COMECON.
    1958 Indonesian air force bombs Padang, Sumatra/Menado, Celebes.
    1958 Egypt and Syria form United Arab Republic (UAR)
    ^ 1946 US envoy in Moscow recommends cold war policies to US.
          George Kennan, the American chargé d'affaires in Moscow, sends an 8000-word telegram to the Department of State detailing his views on the Soviet Union, and US policy toward the communist state. Kennan's analysis provided one of the most influential underpinnings for America's Cold War policy of containment. Kennan was among the US diplomats to help establish the first American embassy in the Soviet Union in 1933. While he often expressed respect for the Russian people, his appraisal of the communist leadership of the Soviet Union became increasingly negative and harsh. Throughout World War II he was convinced that President Franklin D. Roosevelt's spirit of friendliness and cooperation with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was completely misplaced. Less than a year after Roosevelt's death, Kennan, then serving as US charge d'affaires in Moscow, released his opinions in what came to be known as the "long telegram." The lengthy memorandum began with the assertion that the Soviet Union could not foresee "permanent peaceful coexistence" with the West. This "neurotic view of world affairs" was a manifestation of the "instinctive Russian sense of insecurity." As a result, the Soviets were deeply suspicious of all other nations and believed that their security could only be found in "patient but deadly struggle for total destruction of rival power."
          Kennan was convinced that the Soviets would try to expand their sphere of influence, and he pointed to Iran and Turkey as the most likely immediate trouble areas. In addition, Kennan believed the Soviets would do all they could to "weaken power and influence of Western Powers on colonial backward, or dependent peoples." Fortunately, although the Soviet Union was "impervious to logic of reason," it was "highly sensitive to logic of force." Therefore, it would back down "when strong resistance is encountered at any point." The United States and its allies, he concluded, would have to offer that resistance. Kennan's telegram caused a sensation in Washington. Stalin's aggressive speeches and threatening gestures toward Iran and Turkey in 1945-1946 led the Truman administration to decide to take a tougher stance and rely on the nation's military and economic muscle rather than diplomacy in dealing with the Soviets. These factors guaranteed a warm reception for Kennan's analysis. His opinion that Soviet expansionism needed to be contained through a policy of "strong resistance" provided the basis for America's Cold War diplomacy through the next two decades. Kennan's diplomatic career certainly received a boost — he was named US ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1952.
    1945 British troops take Ramree Island, Burma.
    1945 Canadian 3rd Division occupies Moyland
    ^ 1942 US evacuation of the Philippines is ordered.
          President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders Gen. Douglas MacArthur out of the Philippines, as the US defense of the islands collapses. The Philippines had been part of the US commonwealth since it was ceded by Spain at the close of the Spanish-American War. When the Japanese invaded China in 1937 and signed the Tripartite Pact with fascist nations Germany and Italy in 1940, the United States responded by, among other things, strengthening the defense of the Philippines. General MacArthur was called out of retirement to command 10'000 US Army troops, 12'000 Filipino enlisted men who fought as part of the US Army, and 100'000 Filipino army soldiers, who were poorly trained and ill prepared. MacArthur radically overestimated his troops' strength and underestimated Japan's determination. The Rainbow War Plan, a defensive strategy for US interests in the Pacific that was drawn up in the late 1930s and later refined by the War Department, required that MacArthur withdraw his troops into the mountains of the Bataan Peninsula and await better-trained and -equipped US reinforcements. Instead, MacArthur decided to take the Japanese head on — and he never recovered. On the day of the Pearl Harbor bombing, the Japanese destroyed almost half of the US aircraft based in the Philippines. Amphibious landings of Japanese troops along the Luzon coast followed. By late December, MacArthur had to pull his forces back defensively to the Bataan Peninsula — the original strategy belatedly pursued. By 02 January 1942, the Philippine capital of Manila fell to the Japanese. President Roosevelt had to admit to himself (if not to the US people, who believed that the US troops were winning the battle with the Japanese in the Philippines), that the prospects for the US forces were not good — and that he could not afford to have General MacArthur fall captive to the Japanese. A message arrived at Corregidor on February 20, ordering MacArthur to leave immediately for Mindanao, then on to Melbourne, Australia, where "You will assume command of all United States troops." MacArthur at first balked; he was fully prepared to fight alongside his men to the death if necessary. MacArthur finally obeyed the president's order in March.
    1941 Nazi SS begin rounding up Jews of Amsterdam
    1941 German assault on El Agheila Libya
    1941 I. G. Farben decides building Buna-Werke in Auschwitz Concentration Camp
    1940 Finnish troops vacate Koivisto island
    1940 German air force sinks 2 German destroyers, killing 578
    1939 Netherlands recognizes Franco-regime in Spain.
    1938 Alemania e Italia aceptan la propuesta británica sobre la retirada de voluntarios en la Guerra Civil española. Teruel, reconquistada por las fuerzas "nacionales".
    1932 Adolf Hitler, candidato a la presidencia de la República alemana por el Partido Nacionalsocialista.
    1925 La Asamblea Nacional francesa vota la supresión de embajada en El Vaticano.
    ^ 1924 First radio speech from the White House
          In Washington, DC, US President Calvin Coolidge becomes the first president to deliver a radio broadcast from the White House. Coolidge’s speech, commemorating the 192nd anniversary of George Washington’s birth, is broadcast from his White House study and heard live on forty-two radio stations from coast to coast. In 1921, Coolidge’s predecessor, Warren G. Harding, was the first president to ever have a speech broadcast on the radio. On November 5, 1921, a presidential message from Harding was broadcast in code from Washington, DC, to twenty-eight countries. The message was related to the imminent Washington Conference for Limitation of Armament, which opened in the nation’s capital six days later.
    ^ 1923 The 1'000'000th Chevrolet is produced.
          Chevrolet began when William Durant hired Louis Chevrolet, a Swiss racecar driver and star of the Buick Racing Team, to design a new car. Durant hoped to challenge the success of the Ford Model T with an affordable, reliable car. Chevrolet wanted to design a finer sort of automobile, however. Their product, the Classic Six, was an elegant car with a large price tag. But Durant built two more models, sturdier and cheaper, and Chevy was on its way. Durant eventually made over a million dollars in profits on his Chevrolet marque, money that allowed him to reacquire a majority interest in GM stock. Durant eventually merged the two companies and created GM’s current configuration. Louis Chevrolet left the company before the merger, leaving only his name to benefit from the company’s success.
    1923 first successful chinchilla farm in US (Los Angeles CA)
    1921 Se crea en la URSS el Gosplán, para duplicar la producción industrial.
    1918 Germany claims Baltic states, Finland and Ukraine from Russia.
    ^ 1918 Montana, in war hysteria, passes law against sedition
          Swept along by hysterical fears of treacherous German spies and domestic labor violence, the Montana legislature passes a Sedition Law that severely restricts freedom of speech and assembly. Three months later, Congress adopted a federal Sedition Act modeled on the Montana law. The roots of the Montana Sedition Law lay with the hyper-patriotic sentiments inspired by World War I and growing fears of labor unrest and violence in the state. A sizeable number of Montanans had resisted American entry in WWI, and the Montana congresswoman Jeanette Rankin (the first women elected to Congress) had voted against US involvement in the Great War. Once the US did become involved, though, many pro-war Montanans viewed any further criticism of the war effort as treasonous-especially if it came from the state's sizeable German-American population. At the same time, the perceived need for wartime unity sharpened many Montanans' distrust of radical labor groups like the socialist International Workers of the World (IWW). The Montana mining town of Butte had been rocked by labor violence in recent years.
          In 1914, a group of men who may have been IWW members destroyed the offices of an opposing union with dynamite. An IWW leader named Frank Little had also recently given speeches in Butte condemning American involvement in the war, claiming it was being fought for big business interests. Determined to silence both antiwar and radical union voices, the Montana legislature approved a Sedition Law that made it illegal to criticize the federal government or the armed forces during time of war. Even disparaging remarks about the American flag could be grounds for prosecution and imprisonment.
          Through the efforts of Montana's two senators, the act also became the model for the federal Sedition Law of May 1918. Like the Montana law, the federal act made it a crime to speak or write anything critical of the American war effort. Later widely viewed as the most sweeping violation of civil liberties in modern American history, the federal Sedition Law led to the arrests of 1500 American citizens. Crimes included denouncing the draft, criticizing the Red Cross, and complaining about wartime taxes.
          The Montana law led to the conviction and imprisonment of 47 people, some with prison terms of 20 years or more. Most were pardoned when the war ended and cooler heads prevailed, but the state and federal Sedition Laws proved highly effective in destroying the IWW and other radical labor groups that had long attacked the federal government as the tool of big business. Since many of these radicals were vocal opponents of much of the government wartime policy, they bore the brunt of the Sedition Law rebukes, and suffered sorely as a result.

    ^ 1917 US Congress appropriates $250 million to prepare for war with Germany
         The US Congress passes a $250 million arms appropriations bill intended to make the United States ready for war with Germany, which, on 31 January had announced the renewal of unlimited submarine warfare in the Atlantic German torpedo-armed submarines were prepared to attack any and all ships, including civilian passenger carriers, said to be sited in war-zone waters. On 03 February, the United States broke diplomatic relations with Germany, and just hours after that the American liner Housatonic was sunk by a German U-boat. None of the 25 US nationals on board was killed, and all were later picked up by a British steamer.
          When World War I erupted in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson had pledged neutrality for the United States, a position that the vast majority of Americans favored. Britain, however, was one of America's closest trading partners, and tension soon arose between the United States and Germany over the latter's attempted quarantine of the British isles. Several US ships traveling to Britain were damaged or sunk by German mines, and in February 1915 Germany announced unrestricted warfare against all ships, neutral or otherwise, that entered the war zone around Britain.
          One month later, Germany announced that a German cruiser had sunk the William P. Frye, a private American vessel that was transporting grain to England when it disappeared. President Wilson was outraged, but the German government apologized and called the attack an unfortunate mistake. The Germans' most formidable naval weapon was the U-boat, a submarine far more sophisticated than those built by other nations at the time. The typical U-boat was 65 m long, carried 35 men and 12 torpedoes, and could travel underwater for two hours at a time. In the first few years of World War I, the U-boats took a terrible toll on Allied shipping. In early May 1915, several New York newspapers published a warning by the German embassy in Washington that Americans traveling on British or Allied ships in war zones did so at their own risk. The announcement was placed on the same page as an advertisement of the imminent sailing of the British-owned Lusitania ocean liner from New York to Liverpool.
          On 07 May, the Lusitania was torpedoed without warning just off the coast of Ireland. Of the 1959 passengers, 1198 were killed, including 128 Americans. The German government maintained that the Lusitania was carrying munitions, but the US demanded reparations and an end to German attacks on unarmed passenger and merchant ships. In August, Germany pledged to see to the safety of passengers before sinking unarmed vessels but in November sunk an Italian liner without warning, killing 272 people, including 27 Americans. Public opinion in the United States began to turn irrevocably against Germany. In 1917, Germany, determined to win its war of attrition against the Allies, announces the resumption of unrestricted warfare.
          On 24 February, British authorities gave the US ambassador to Britain a copy of the "Zimmermann Note," a coded message from German foreign secretary Arthur Zimmermann to Count Johann von Bernstorff, the German ambassador to Mexico. In the telegram, intercepted and deciphered by British intelligence, Zimmermann stated that, in the event of war with the United States, Mexico should be asked to enter the conflict as a German ally. In return, Germany promised to restore to Mexico the lost territories of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. On 01 March, the US State Department published the note, and US public opinion was galvanized against Germany. In late March, Germany sunk four more US merchant ships, and on 02 April President Wilson appeared before Congress and called for a declaration of war against Germany. On 04 April the Senate voted 82 to six to declare war against Germany. Two days later, the House of Representatives endorsed the declaration by a vote of 373 to 50, and the US entered World War I.
          On 26 June the first 14'000 US infantrymen landed in France to begin training for combat. After four years of bloody stalemate along the western front, the entrance of America's well-supplied forces into the conflict was a major turning point in the war. When the war finally ended, on 11 November 1918, more than two million American soldiers had served on the battlefields of Western Europe, and some 50'000 of these men had lost their lives.

    1917 Los socialdemócratas, liberales de izquierda y nacional liberales exigen en el Reichstag que se adopte el sistema de Gobiernos parlamentarios.
    1916 I Guerra Mundial: Las fuerzas rusas se baten en retirada en la región de los lagos Masurianos ante la ofensiva alemana del general Hindenburg.
    1916 Alemania declara la guerra submarina total en aguas británicas, en respuesta a las medidas de bloqueo del Reino Unido.
    1915 Germany begins "unrestricted" submarine war.
    1909 Great White Fleet, first US fleet to circle the globe, returns to Virginia
    1907 first cabs with taxi meters begin operating in London
    1903 Due to drought the US side of Niagara Falls runs short of water
    1900 Battle at Wynne's Hill, South-Africa (Boers vs British army)
    1900 Hawaii became a US territory
    1889 President Cleveland signs bill to admit Dakotas, Montana and Washington state to the Union.
    1887 Union Labor Party organized in Cincinnati
    1879 first 5¢ and 10¢ store opened by Frank W Woolworth in Utica NY
    1878 Greenback Labor Party formed (Toledo OH)
    1872 first national convention of the Prohibition Party (Columbus OH)
    1872 Labor Reform Party formed at Columbus OH
    1865 Tennessee adopts a new constitution abolishing slavery
    1865 Battle of Wilmington NC (Fort Anderson) occupied by Federals.
    1865 Wilmington, North Carolina, is captured by Union forces.
    1865 Joseph E. Johnston is placed in command of Confederate forces trying to oppose Sherman's march through the Carolinas.
    1864 Battle of Okolona, Mississippi, ends on its 2nd day.
    1864 Battle at Dalton, Georgia
    1864 Skirmish at Calfkiller Creek (Sparta) Tennessee
    1862 Jefferson Davis is inaugurated as President of the Confederate States of America
    ^ 1862 Lincoln orders armies to advance
         US President Lincoln issues General War Order No. 1, ordering all land and sea forces to advance on 22 February 1862. This bold move sent a message to his commanders that the president was tired of excuses and delays in seizing the offensive against Confederate forces. The unusual order was the product of a number of factors. Lincoln had a new Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, who replaced the hopelessly corrupt Simon Cameron. Lincoln was much more comfortable with Stanton. The president had also been brushing up on his readings in military strategy. Lincoln felt that if enough force were brought to bear on the Confederates simultaneously, the Confederates would break.
          This was a simple plan that ignored a host of other factors, but Lincoln felt that if the Confederates "...weakened one to strengthen another," the Union could step in and "seize and hold the one weakened." The primary reason for the order, however, was General George McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac in the east. McClellan had a deep contempt for Lincoln that had become increasingly apparent since Lincoln appointed McClellan in July 1861. McClellan had shown great reluctance to reveal his plans to the president, and he exhibited no signs of moving his army in the near future.
          Lincoln wanted to convey a sense of urgency to all the military leaders, and it worked in the West. Union armies in Tennessee began to move, and General Ulysses S. Grant captured Forts Henry and Donelson on the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, respectively. McClellan, however, did not respond. Lincoln's order called for strict accountability for each commander who did not follow the order, but the president had to handle McClellan carefully. Because McClellan had the backing of many Democrats and he had whipped the Army of the Potomac into fine fighting shape over the winter, Lincoln had to give McClellan a chance to command in the field.
    1856 first national meeting of the Republican Party (Pittsburgh)
    1854 first meeting of the Republican Party, Michigan.
    ^ 1847 Battle of Buena Vista begins
          During the Mexican-American War, Mexican General Santa Anna surrounds the outnumbered forces of US General Zachary Taylor at the Angostura Pass in Mexico, and demands an immediate surrender. As Taylor refuses, allegedly replying "Tell him to go to hell," Santa Anna dispatches some 15'000 soldiers against the 5000 US soldiers early the next morning. The superior US artillery is able to halt one of the two advancing Mexican divisions, while Jefferson Davis’s Mississippi riflemen lead the defense of the extreme left flank, ending the other Mexican advance. By five o’clock in the afternoon, the Mexicans begin to withdraw. The Mexican-American War began with a dispute over the US government’s 1845 annexation of Texas. In January of 1846, President James K. Polk, a strong advocate of westward expansion, ordered General Zachary Taylor to occupy disputed territory between the Nueces and Rio Grande rivers. Mexican troops attacked Taylor’s forces, and on 13 May 1846, Congress approved a declaration of war against Mexico. At Buena Vista in February of 1847, and at Monterrey in September, Taylor proved a brilliant military commander, earning the nickname "Old Rough and Ready," while emerging from the war a national hero. He won the Whig presidential nomination in 1848, and defeated the Democratic candidate, Lewis Cass, in November. The other hero of the Battle of Buena Vista, Jefferson Davis, becomes secretary of war under President Franklin Pierce in 1853 and president of the Confederate States of America.
    1835 HMS Beagle/Charles Darwin leave Valdivia Chile
    1828 Russia and Persia sign Peace of Turkmantsjai
    1825 Russia and Britain establish Alaska-Canada boundary
    ^ 1819 The US acquires Spanish Florida
          Spanish minister Do Luis de Onis and US Secretary of State John Quincy Adams sign the Florida Purchase Treaty, in which Spain agrees to cede the remainder of its old province of Florida to the United States. Spanish colonization of the Florida peninsula was initiated at St. Augustine in 1565. Although the Spanish colonists enjoyed a brief period of relative stability, by the seventeenth century Spanish Florida was under frequent attack from resentful Native Americans and ambitious English colonists to the north. Spain’s last-minute entry into the French and Indian War on the side of France cost it Florida, which the British acquired through the first Treaty of Paris in 1763. However, after twenty years of British rule, Florida was returned to Spain as part of the second Treaty of Paris ending the American Revolution in 1783. Spain’s hold over Florida, however, was tenuous in this period, and numerous boundary disputes developed with the United States. In 1819, after years of negotiations, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams won a diplomatic coup with the signing of the Florida Purchase Treaty, which officially put Florida into US hands at no cost beyond the US assumption of some five million dollars of claims by US citizens against Spain. Formal US occupation began in 1821 and General Andrew Jackson was appointed military governor. Florida was organized as a US territory in 1822, and was admitted into the Union as a slave state in 1845.
    1813 Las Cortes españolas abolen el Tribunal del Santo Oficio en las colonias americanas.
    1784 First US ship to trade with China, Empress of China, sails from New York.
    1775 Jews expelled from outskirts of Warsaw Poland
    1775 First US joint stock company (to make cloth) offers shares at £10
    1746 French troops conquer Brussels
    popcorn poppycock1744 Battle at Toulon English-French and Spanish fleet.
    1689 Guillermo de Orange y María Estuardo aceptan el ofrecimiento del trono inglés.
    1630 Contrary to pop culture, Amerindian Quadequina, brother of Wampanoag chief Massasoit, did not introduce the Pilgrims (English colonists in America) to popcorn, at their first Thanksgiving dinner. This poppycock originated from this passage of the 1889 novel Standish of Standish by Jane Goodwin Austin [25 Feb 1831 – 30 Mar 1894]: [Quadequina’s attendant pours onto a table] “something like a bushel of popped corn, a dainty hitherto unseen and unknown by most of the Pilgrims. All tasted, and John Howland, hastily gathering up a portion upon a wooden plate, carried it up to the Common house for the delectation of the women, that is to say, for Elizabeth Tilley, whose firm young teeth craunched it with much gusto.” Actually the only historic description of the first Thanksgiving (fall of 1621) comes from Mourt’s Relation (1622), in which there is no mention of popcorn.
    1530 Carlos I de España y V de Alemania es coronado emperador en Roma por el Papa.
    1495 French King Charles VIII enters Naples to claim the crown
    1349 Jews are expelled from Zurich Switzerland
    1300 Pope Boniface VIII delegates degree
    1288 Girolamo Masci elected Pope Nicolas IV
    1281 Simon de Brion elected Pope Martin IV
    1198 Pope Innocent III, who would make the strongest claims for the papacy of the Middle Ages, is consecrated. Under his pontificate the Church affirmed that the Eucharist is Christ's body and blood.
    1076 Pope Gregory (Hildebrand) excommunicates all who attended the Diet of Worms which "deposed" him at Emperor Henry II's instigation.
    0896 Pope Formosus crowns as emperor king Arnulf of Karinthie/French, who had just conquerered Rome.
    0506 Alarico II, rey visigodo, promulga la Lex Romana Visigothorum o Breviario de Alarico II, que resumía toda la legislación aplicable a sus súbditos hispanorromanos y galorromanos.
    0057 -BC- Origin of Vikrama Samvat Era (India)
    TO THE TOP
    Deaths which occurred on a February 22:    ^top^
    2003 Sami Halawi, 42, and Walid el-Masri, 22, Palestinians, shot in the casbah of Nablus, West Bank, by Israeli soldiers. Halawi is shot at the entrance to his home, the Israelis say that he left his home during a curfew and was holding a large suspicious object. El-Masri is shot in the head during clashes between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers (none of which is hurt) who say that he threw a firebomb at them from the roof of a home. The Reuters body count of the al-Aqsa intifada is now “at least“ 1862 Palestinians and 705 Israelis.
    2002 Gordon Matthews, 65, of complications of a 20 Feb stroke, inventor of voice mail, founding a company that would become VMX Inc. (“Voice Message Express”). In the 1980's the equipment, which might fill part of a room, would cost $180'000 for 20 hours of recording capacity, down to $13'000 by 1992.
    2002 Valerie Achmir, 56, Israeli from Beit Shemesh, shot from a passing car as he was driving alone on the West Bank road between Atarot and Givat Ze'ev, north of Jerusalem, in the direction of Givat Ze'ev.
    2002 Mohammed Tawfiq Shamali, 24, Palestinian from the village of Douha, next to Bethlehem, West Bank, shot by an armed shopper after Shamali set off a small explosion but failed to fully detonate his explosive belt, in a supermarket in the Jewish enclave settlement of Efrat, where Shamali was a construction worker who had a permit to reside inside Israel.
    2002 Jonas Malheiro Savimbi, at 15:00, in a fight with Angolan government forces, in Moxico province. Born on 03 August 1934, Savimbi founded in 1966 the independentist organization UNITA (União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola), which, supported by the US and apartheid South Africa, had fought for independence along with rival rebel groups including the Soviet-backed Marxist MPLA (Movimento Popular para a Libertação de Angola) which took power after Portugal granted independence on 15 January 1975, and which UNITA kept fighting. A 01 May 1991 peace accord between the MPLA government and UNITA was broken after UNITA refused to accept the results of September 1992 elections. A 20 November 1994 peace treaty did not hold either.
    2001 Josu Leonet Azkona, 31, and José Angel Santos Larranaga, 40, by explosives rigged to a car parked about 200 m from the train station in San Sebastian, Vascuña, and set off by remote control at about 08:00, just as workers were arriving for jobs in the industrial neighborhood. This is thought to be the work of ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna). Leonet is thought to have been a member of Euskal Herritarrok, ETA's political wing He and Santos were co-worker at Electra, an electrical component and installation company. Among four injured were Ignacio "Inaki" Dubrueil Churruca, 40, a Socialist councilor from nearby Ordizia, and his bodyguard. Dubrueil may have been the target of the blast. He teaches at an institute in San Sebastian and arrives regularly at that hour by train.
    — José Ángel Santos y Josu Leonet, empleados de la empresa Elektra, fallecen en San Sebastián en un atentado con coche bomba perpetrado por ETA.
    2000 Fernando Buesa (y su escolta), portavoz del grupo socialista en el Parlamento vasco, en el segundo atentado de ETA tras la ruptura de la tregua.
    1998 José María Areilza y Martínez Rodas, político español.
    1995 At least 99 prison rioters, killed by Algiers police.
    1987 Andy Warhol, in a New York City hospital, US Pop artist born on 06 August 1928. Author of The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), Portraits of the Seventies (1979), Andy Warhol's Exposures (1979). — MORE ON WARHOL AT ART “4” FEBRUARYLINKSSelf-PortraitLizCampbell's Tomato SoupCampbell's Tomato Soup (from a banner) — The Velvet Underground and Nico (a banana) — Kimiko Powers 1971-1972FlowersSandro-BotticBeethoven
    1985 Salvador Espriu i Castello, escritor catalán.
    1984 Newman, mathematician.
    1983 Some 3000 Moslems killed by Hindus, in Assam.
    1982 René Jules Dubos, ecologista y bacteriólogo francés.
    1980 Oskar Kokoschka, Austrian Expressionist painter born on 01 March 1886. — MORE ON KOKOSCHKA AT ART “4” FEBRUARYLINKSSelf-PortraitEzra PoundBride of the Wind
    1975 Perron, mathematician.
    1973: 106 persons, as Israeli fighter planes shoot down a Libyan commercial airliner.
    1973 Winthrop Rockefeller, 60, US Governor (Arkansas)
    1958 Mathurin Méheut, French artist born in 1882.
    1948 Some 50 persons in Arab terrorist bomb attack in Jerusalem.
    1944 More than 800 persons bombed by mistake in Enschede, Arnhem and Nijmegen, by US 8th Air Force.
    ^ 1940 Day 85 of Winter War: USSR aggression against Finland.
    More deaths due to Stalin's desire to grab Finnish territory.

    Enemy unable to break through intermediary defenses

          The extremely cold winter has made the Gulf of Finland excellent terrain for mounting an assault on the Finnish coast, the hard freeze making the ice thick enough to drive a truck on it.
          In the morning, the Russian 43rd Division launches an assault on the Koivisto islands from the mainland. The islands are lost to the enemy. Before abandoning them, the Finnish garrison destroys the guns and fortifications and then, under cover of a snowstorm, withdraws across Viipurinlahti bay to Säkkijärvi.
          On the Isthmus the enemy assaults on the intermediary defensive positions are successfully repulsed.
          Soviet troops take Lasisaari island in Viipurinlahti bay.
          The staff of II Army Corps reports that it has run out of 37 mm anti-tank shells. Fresh supplies arrive during the night.
          Northern Finland: in Kuhmo, Finnish dugouts are destroyed by direct laying fire from heavy field guns.
          Ladoga Karelia: the enemy's 204th Reconnaissance Parachute Brigade is sighted on the front on the coast of Lake Ladoga.
          Sweden is afraid that giving military aid to Finland would end up dragging it into a major war. The Swedish Government's policy on Finland is approved by the first chamber of the Swedish Parliament. The chamber nevertheless urges the Swedish people to give whatever voluntary aid they can to Finland.
          The constant enemy bombing on the home front is hampering work in factories and other workplaces. The Finnish Government decides that the working day may be extended by up to two hours to take account of the time lost due to air raids. It also issues pay guidelines for such a contingency.
          Members of the public are urged to buy 1939 government bonds.
          There has been an increase in the number of volunteers from the United Kingdom since the British Government announced that men aged 27 or over are free to serve in Finland.

    ^ Vihollisen hyökkäykset väliasemassa torjutaan Talvisodan 85. päivä, 22.helmikuuta.1940
           Suomenlahdesta tulee viholliselle hyvää hyökkäysmaastoa kovien pakkasien tehdessä jääpeitteet kuorma-autojen kestäviksi.
          Venäläisten 43. Divisioonan joukot hyökkäävät aamulla mantereelta käsin kohden Koiviston saarta. Suomalaiset menettävät Koiviston saaret. Tykit ja varustukset tuhotaan saarilla ja joukot vetäytyvät lumimyrskyn suojissa Viipurinlahden yli Säkkijärvelle.
          Vihollisen hyökkäykset väliasemassa torjutaan. Viipurinlahdella Neuvostojoukot valtaavat Lasisaaren.
          II Armeijakunnan esikunta toteaa 37 mm:n panssarin-torjuntatykkiensä ammusten loppuneen.
          Täydennystä saadaan yöstä alkaen.
          Kuhmossa tuhotaan korsuja raskaan kenttätykistön suorasuuntaustulella.
          Laatokan Karjalassa vihollisen 204. Desanttiprikaati havaitaan olevan rintamalla Laatokan rannalla.
          Ruotsi pelkää sotilaallisen avunannon Suomelle kietovan sen suursotaan.
          Ruotsissa maan Suomen-politiikka saa ensimmäisen kamarin hyväksymisen. Kaikki vapaaehtoinen apu kuitenkin kehotetaan antamaan Suomelle.
          Vihollisen jatkuvat ilma-hyökkäykset kotirintamalle vaikeuttavat työskentelyä tehtaissa ja liikelaitoksissa.
          Valtioneuvosto päättää, että ilmahälytyksen takia työntekijöiden työpäivää voidaan pidentää enintäin kahdella tunnilla ja antaa ohjeet palkkauksesta.
          Suomen valtio vetoaa kansalaisiin, jotta nämä ostaisivat valtion vuoden 1939 obligaatioita.
          Englantilaisten vapaaehtoisten määrä on lisääntynyt, kun maan hallitus ilmoittaa, että 27 vuotta täyttäneet miehet saavat lähteä Suomeen sotapalvelukseen

    ^ Fiendens attacker vid mellanställningen avvärjs Vinterkrigets 85 dag, den 22 februari 1940
           Den hårda kölden gör isen på Finska viken tjock nog att bära lastbilar - en ypperlig anfallsterräng för fienden.
          Den ryska 43. Divisionens trupper anfaller på morgonen från fastlandet öar vid Björkö. Finland förlorar öarna vid Björkö. Kanonerna och utrustningen på öarna förstörs och trupperna retirerar i skydd av en snöstorm över Viborgska viken till Säkkijärvi.
          Fiendens attacker vid mellanställningen avvärjs. I Viborgska viken intar de ryska trupperna ön Lasisaari. Staben för den II Armékåren konstaterar att ammunitionen för sina 37 mm:s pansarvärnskanoner har tagit slut. På natten kompletteras förråden.
          I Kuhmo förstörs bunkrar med tung direkt eld av fältartilleriet.
          I Ladoga-Karelen upptäcker man att fiendens 204. Desantbrigad är vid fronten på stranden av Ladoga.
          Sverige befarar att militärt bistånd till Finland skulle dra landet med i ett storkrig. Finlandspolitiken i Sverige godkänns av den första kammaren. Men man uppmanar att ge all frivillig hjälp åt Finland.
          Fiendens ständiga luftangrepp mot hemmafronten försvårar arbetet i fabrikerna och affärsinrättningarna. Statsrådet beslutar att arbetarnas arbetsdag kan förlängas med högst två timmar på grund av flyglarm och ger anvisningar om löneberäkningen.
          Den finska staten vädjar till medborgarna att dessa skulle köpa statsobligationerna för år 1939.
          Antalet engelska frivilliga har stigit sedan landets regering meddelat att 27 år fyllda män får åka till Finland för att tjänstgöra i den finska armén.
    1939 Antonio Machado, escritor español.
    1933 Some 50 persons shot by SA/SS-police, as Göring forms it.
    1913 Ferdinand Mongin de Saussure, 55, Swiss linguist.
    1913 Francisco Indalecio Madero, 39, Mexican President, assassinated in military coup led by Victoriano Huerta.
    1906 Adrien Moreau, French artist born on 18 April 1843.
    1898 Black postmaster lynched, his wife and 3 daughters shot in Lake City SC
    1832 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe poet, Weimar, Germany.
    1827 Charles Wilson Peale, US painter born on 15 April 1741. He had 17 children including Raphaelle Peale, Rembrandt Peale, Titian Peale, Rubens Peale. James Peale was his younger brother, Charles Peale Polk was his nephew. — MORE ON PEALE AT ART “4” FEBRUARYLINKSSelf-PortraitThe Peale FamilyRaphaelle PealeThe Staircase Group (Raphaelle Peale and Titian Ramsey Peale) — The Artist in His MuseumWashington at the Battle of Princeton January 3, 1777Washington and His Generals at YorktownMordecai GistDisinterment of the Mastodon
    1823 Jacques Albert Senave, Belgian artist born on 12 September 1758.
    1810 Charles Brockden Brown, "Godwin", escritor estadounidense.
    1792 Nicolas-Guy Brenet, French painter born on 30 June 1728. — LINKS
    1750 Pietro Filippo Scarlatti, 71, composer.
    1687 Jean-Baptiste Lully Paris, composer.
    1681 Leendert van Cooghen, Dutch artist born in 1610 or 1632 [!!!]
    1677 Karel van der Pluym, Dutch artist born in 1625.
    1512 Amerigo Vespucci, 61, Italian explorer (America)
    1371 David II Bruce, 46, king of Scotland (1331-71).
    1076 Godfried III with the Hump, duke of Lower Lorraine, murdered
    0606 Pope Sabinian (604-606)
    Wadlow 1936, with brotherBirths which occurred on a February 22:
    1945 Arab League forms (Cairo).
    1934 Blasco Peñaherrera Padilla, político, abogado y periodista ecuatoriano.
    1932 Edward Kennedy (MA Democrat: US Senator; brother of 35th US President John F. Kennedy and US Attorney General Robert Kennedy; drown-and-run driver at Chappaquidick)
    1918 Robert Pershing Wadlow, in Alton, Illinois, weight 3.8.kg. At 18 months he weighed 30 kg. At age 2, he had a double hernia operation which may be the reason why he never stopped growing fast. By age 5 he was 1m63 tall and weighed 48 kg. On his 8th birthday, he weighed 77 kg and was 1m83 tall. At 13 he was 2m13 tall, and 2m44 at age 17. [1936 photo with brother  >] On 27 June 1940 Wadlow’s height was 2m72. A week later, he was fitted with a brace on his right leg. The brace fit poorly and inflamed his ankle, causing cellulitis. Robert Wadlow died from the infection on 15 July 1940. A coffin was made especially for him: 3m28 long, 81 cm wide, 76 cm deep. He weighed a 199 kg, wore shoes size 37AA, and a size-25 ring, his hands measured 32cm from the wrist to the tip of the middle finger. His arm span was 2m89.
    1915 Pedro Mozos, pintor español.
    1914 Renato Dulbecco, virólogo estadounidense de origen italiano, Premio Nobel de Medicina 1975.
    1908 Rómulo Betancourt President of Venezuela (1945-48, 1958-64)
    1904 Peter Hurd, US Contemporary Realist painter, printmaker and illustrator who died on 09 July 1984. — LINKSA Ranch on the Plains.
    1903 César González Ruano, escritor y periodista español.
    1903 Frank Ramsey, mathematician.
    1900 Sean O'Faolain, Irish short-story writer and teacher who died on 20 April 1991.
    1895 Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre founder (Peruvian Aprista Party)
    ^ 1892 Edna St. Vincent Millay, poet
          Edna St. Vincent Millay is born in Rockland, Maine. One of three daughters of a divorced nurse, Millay learned independence and self-reliance early, and transmitted those qualities to her poetry. She began publishing poetry in high school. In 1912, the year she turned 20, her poem "Renascence" appeared in a literary review and drew the attention of a benefactor who made it possible for Millay to attend Vassar. The year she graduated, in 1917, her first volume of poetry, Renascence and Other Poems, appeared. Millay moved to New York City, where she lived a hectic, glamorous life as a writer and actress in Greenwich Village. One of the first women to write openly and without shame about her lovers, Millay had numerous affairs. In 1920, her famous poem "First Fig" set the tone for the 1920s, with its resounding lines, "My candle burns at both ends, it will not last the night." Millay's fast-paced life took a toll. Exhausted, she traveled to Europe for a long rest in 1921. There she met and married Dutch importer Jan Boissevan, who gave up his business to devote himself to Millay. In 1923, the couple moved to a farm in upstate New York, where Millay continued to write verse and plays. That year, she published The Harp Weaver and Other Poems, for which she became the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize. A passionate proponent of civil liberty, she was arrested and jailed for supporting Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, anarchists condemned to death for robbery and murder. In the 1930s, she wrote anti-totalitarian poetry for newspapers, as well as radio plays and speeches. She suffered a nervous breakdown in 1944 and endured two years of writer's block afterward. She broke down again after her husband's death in 1949, and she died of a heart attack on 19 October 1950.
    1892 David Dubinsky Russian-born US labor leader (Freedom Award, 1969 Medal of Freedom). He died on 17 September 1982.
    1892 José Antonio Montalvo Berbeo, político colombiano.
    Oscar Wilde 1892 Lady Windermere's Fan, play by Oscar Wilde, opens, at London's St. James's Theater.
         Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Oscar Wilde was born on 16 October 1854 and grew up in Ireland. He went to England to attend Oxford, where he graduated with honors in 1878. A popular society figure known for his wit and flamboyant style, he published his own book of poems in 1881. He spent a year lecturing on poetry in the United States, where his dapper wardrobe and excessive devotion to art drew ridicule from some quarters.
          After returning to Britain, Wilde married and had two children, for whom he wrote delightful fairy tales, which were published in 1888. Meanwhile, he wrote reviews and edited Women's World. In 1890, his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was published serially, appearing in book form the following year. He wrote his first play, The Duchess of Padua, in 1891 and wrote five more in the next four years. His plays, including The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), were successful and made him a popular and well-known writer.
          In 1895, the Marquess of Queensberry denounced Wilde as a homosexual, accusing him of having an affair with the marquess's son. Wilde sued for libel, but lost his case when evidence strongly supported the marquess's observations. Homosexuality was classified as a crime in England at the time. Wilde was arrested, found guilty, and sentenced to two years of hard labor. Wilde was released from prison in 1897 and fled to Paris, where his many loyal friends visited him. He started writing again, producing The Ballad of Reading Gaol, based on his experiences in prison. He died of on 30 November 1900 from an ear infection that had spread to his brain turning into acute meningitis, in a Paris hotel room after saying of the room's wallpaper: "One of us had to go."
         Oscar Wilde won the Newdigate Prize in 1878 with a long poem, Ravenna. In 1881 he published Poems. In 1888 he published The Happy Prince and Other Tales, a romantic allegory in the form of a fairy tale. His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray was published in 1890. In Intentions (1891), he grouped previously published essays. In 1891 also, he published two volumes of stories and fairy tales: Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, and Other Stories and A House of Pomegranates. Wilde is best known as the writer of the plays Lady Windermere's Fan, Salomé (in French), A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and, above all, The Importance of Being Earnest.
    Other sites for WILDE ONLINE: Collected WorksLady Windermere's Fan  
    1891 "Chico" Marx, New York NY, actor/comedian (Marx Brothers, Animal Crackers)
    1883 (or 23 Feb) Guy Carleton Wiggins, US Impressionist painter who died in 1962. — MORE ON WIGGINS AT ART “4” FEBRUARYLINKSWall Street WinterWinter at the LibraryWashington Square WinterNY Public Library WinterMidtown Fifth Avenue WinterEntrance to Central Park Winter
    ^ 1879 The first Great 5 cents Store.
          Frank Winfield Woolworth starts a retail revolution by opening the Great 5 Cents Store in Utica, New York. Pledging to sell "nothing" that cost more than a nickel, Woolworth packed his store with a smorgasbord of goods, ranging from items for the kitchen to beauty products. Though the Utica store ultimately failed, Woolworth hit pay dirt that same year when he opened another discount variety store in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The shop, which was expanded to include items that cost up to a dime, proved to be a fast success with Pennsylvanians and emboldened Woolworth to establish an empire of discount stores. The dawn of 1890s saw Woolworth's "five and ten" stores dot America's East Coast; by 1904 he had opened some 120 stores in twenty-one states, including chunks of the West and the District of Columbia. In 1911, he cemented his dominance of the burgeoning variety store field by merging with four rival companies. The move armed Woolworth with a fleet of 596 stores and, in 1912, he christened the shops with the now familiar name, F.W. Woolworth. Though Woolworth’s stores continued to flourish during the first half of the century, the years following World War II were not so kind to the company. The sprawl of suburbs, and the attendant spread of malls, coupled with the recent rise of super-sized discount rivals like Target and Wal-Mart, ultimately spelled the end for Woolworth's. In 1997, the granddaddy of five-and-tens threw in the towel and closed its last 400 shops.
    1870 Alejandro Pérez Lugín, novelista español.
    1865 Otto Modersohn, German artist who died in 1943.
    1864 Jules Renard France, writer (Poil de Carotte).
    1863 Pedro Morales Pino, músico y pintor colombiano.
    1857 Heinrich Hertz, radio pioneer, is born German physics professor Heinrich Hertz was the first person to send and receive radio waves. His studies of electromagnetic waves led to a method of measuring the length and velocity of radio waves. The hertz, a unit of frequency measurement, was named for him.
    1857 Lord Robert Baden-Powell founder (Boy Scouts, Girl Guides)
    1849 Sonin, mathematician.
    1846 Giuseppe de Nittis, Italian artist who died on 24 August 1884.
    Washington by Rembrandt Peale1840 August Bebel, German co-founder of the Social Democratic Party who died on 13 August 1913.
    1838 Pierre Jules Cesar Janssen, discoverer of hydrogen in Sun.
    1819 James Russell Lowell, US poet, critic, essayist and diplomat who died on 12 August 1891.
    1817 Borchardt, mathematician.
    1810 Frédéric-François Chopin Polish / French pianist / composer (more than 200 compositions for solo piano)
    1806 Antoine Joseph Wiertz, Belgian painter who died on 18 June 1865. He specialized in Historical Subjects. — MORE ON WIERTZ AT ART “4” FEBRUARYLINKSTriptych Christ in the Tomb: left section: Eve experiencing her first guilt after sinning _ right section: The Angel of EvilThe Beautiful Rosine.
    1797 William I Berlin, King of Prussia (1861-88)/German Emperor (1871-88)
    1796 Adolphe Quetelet, mathematician.
    1788 Arthur Schopenhauer Germany, philosopher (Great Pessimist). He died on 21 September 1860.
    1778 Rembrandt Peale, US painter and writer.   [portrait of George Washington >]. Born on the 46th birthday of George Washington (of whom he would paint many portraits) he was the son of Philadelphia artist and museum proprietor Charles Willson Peale, who died on Rembrandt Peale's 49th birthday. — MORE ON REMBRAND PEALE AT ART “4” FEBRUARYLINKSRubens Peale with a Geranium _ Rubens Peale with Geranium, (1801) — Portrait of Rosalba Peale (1820) — Michael Angelo and Emma Clara Peale (1826) — Falls of Niagara Viewed from the American Side (1831) — George Washington (1814) — Porthole Portrait of George WashingtonGilbert StuartThomas Jefferson
    1772 Karl Jacob Wagner composer.
    1732 George Washington, at his parents' plantation in the Virginia Colony, truthful cherry tree chopper, slave owner, general, first US President (1789-97). He died on 14 December 1799. — portrait of Washington by Rembrandt Peale.
    1715 Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Younger, French draftsman, engraver, and writer, who died in 1790. — LINKS12 prints at FAMSF
    1649 Bon de Boulogne (or Boullongne), French artist who died on 16 May 1717.
    1599 Anthony Van Dyck, Antwerp, Belgium, painter.
    1440 Ladislaus V Posthumus, King of Hungary/Bohemia.
    1403 Charles VII, king of France (1422-1461), drove out English (with prodding from Jeanne d'Arc). He died on 22 July 1461.
    Holidays British Commonwealth : Girl Guides Thinking Day (1857) / Central African Republic : President's Birthday / Egypt, Syria : Unity Day (1958) / India : Mothers Day / México : National Mourning Day (Francisco I Madero-1913) / Qatar : Amir's Assumption of Amirship (1972) / St Lucia : Independence Day (1979) / Virgin Island : Donkey Races Day /
    Celebrations: Christian : Feast of Blessed Isabel / Roman Catholic : Chair of St Peter at Antioch / Roman Catholic : St Margaret of Cortona, Franciscan tertiary / La cátedra de San Pedro en Antioquía. Santos Abilio y Pascasio.
    Thought for the day: “The crude commercialism of America, its materializing spirit are entirely due to the country having adopted for its national hero a man who could not tell a lie.” — Oscar Wilde, Irish-born dramatist (1854-1900). [Is Wilde telling a wild lie?]
    TO THE TOP
    PLEASE CLICK HERE TO WRITE TO “HISTORY 4 2DAY”
    http://h42day.0catch.com/history/h4feb/h4feb22.html
    http://members.xoom.virgilio.it/all42day/history/h4feb/h4feb22.html
    updated Saturday 22-Feb-2003 17:47 UT

    safe site
    site safe for children safe site