Born On This Day:

• Honoré Daumier, 1808
• Joseph Jefferson, 1829
• Lucien Pissarro, 1863
• Muhammad Naguib, 1901
• Ansel Adams, 1902
• Aleksey Kosygin, 1904
• Sidney Poitier, 1924
• Bobby Unser, 1924
• Gloria Vanderbilt, 1924
• Robert Altman, 1925
• Roy Cohn, 1927
• Amanda Blake, 1931
• Nancy Wilson, 1937
• Buffy Sainte-Marie, 1941
• Phil Esposito, 1942
• Sandy Duncan, 1946
• J. Geils, 1946
• Peter Strauss, 1947
• Jennifer O'Neill, 1949
• Gordon Brown, 1951
• Patty Hearst, 1954
• Kelsey Grammer, 1955
• Charles Barkley, 1963
• Cindy Crawford, 1966
• Kurt Cobain, 1967
• Rihanna (Robyn Rihanna Ferity), 1988

Died On This Day:

• King James I of Scotland murdered, 1437
• Emperor Joseph II, 1790
• Frederick Douglass, 1895
• Robert Edwin Peary, 1920
• Laurence Housman, 1959
• Admiral Chester Nimitz, 1966
• Walter Winchell, 1972
• Alice Roosevelt Longworth, 1980
• Robert Bolt, 1995
• Leo Rosten, 1997
• Ross Wetzsteon, 1998
• Gene Siskel, 1999
• Hunter S. Thompson, suicide, 2005
• Sandra Dee, 2005
• John Raitt, 2005
• Alexander Haig, 2010
• Garrick Utley, 2014

Today's Events:

• 1437 - Scottish noblemen led by the earl of Atholl assassinate Scottish King James I; crown goes to son James II.
• 1547 - Boy King Edward VI crowned.
• 1725 - White men scalp ten Indians in New Hampshire; public treasury paid them £100 each!
• 1790 - Leopold II of Austria becomes Holy Roman Emperor.
• 1816 - Premiere of Rossini's 'The Barber of Seville' a fiasco with bloody nosed singer and attacking cats.
• 1839 - U.S. Congress bans dueling from the District of Columbia.
• 1872 - Metropolitan Museum of Art opens doors in rented house on Fifth Avenue, New York.
• 1872 - Silas Noble and James Cooley patent machine to cut blocks of wood into toothpicks.
• 1877 - Tchaikovsky's ballet 'Swan Lake' premieres at the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow and is panned as being 'undanceable.'
• 1892 - 'Lady Windemere's Fan' first performed.
• 1915 - Panama Pacific Exposition opens in San Francisco.
• 1917 - U.S. buys Dutch West Indies.
• 1942 - Beginning this day, 110,000 Japanese-Americans moved from West coast to concentration camps.
• 1958 - At Santa Anita track, Eddie Arcaro becomes third jockey to win 4,000 races.
• 1962 - John Glenn becomes first American to enter earth's orbit in Friendship 7.
• 2010 - Torrential rains, flash floods and landslides hit the island of Madeira; 42 dead.
• 2011 - Following Tunisia and Egypt, Libya's regime attempts to crush uprising against Muammar Gaddafi's 41 year-old reign; 560 dead, 1,400 missing.

Feast Day of Saint:

• Shahdost
• Ulric of Haselbury

Non-Specific Holiday:

• TU BI-SHEBAT (Judaism) New Year for Trees, celebrated on 15th of lunar month Shebat.
• PRESIDENT'S DAY 3rd Monday in February observing births of Washington & Lincoln
• SHROVE TUESDAY (or Fat Tuesday). Day before Ash Wednesday. Also called Fasnacht (eve of the fast) in Germany and Austria, Carnival (farewell to meat) in Italy, Mardi Gras in Brazil and U.S., Street Urchins' Carnival in Denmark & Pancake Tuesday in Britain.
• ASH WEDNESDAY, moveable feast day celebrated 40 days (ex-Sundays) before Easter.
• PURIM or Feast of Lots (Jewish), celebrated on 14th or 15th of lunar month Adar.
• HOLI (Hindu festival of Spring and Vernal Fire)
• HOLA MOHALLA, Sikh Festival celebrated in India
• LENT, called Careme in France, Quaresima in Italy and the Great Fast in Eastern Orthodoxy. (between Feb and April)
• SUNDAY OF THE GREAT FIRES, first Sunday in Lent.
• CARLING SUNDAY, fifth Sunday in Lent celebrated in Britain
• MAHA SHIVARATRI, Hindu Festival of the Night of Shiva, celebrated mid-February
• TENG CHIEH, Feast of lanterns in China (Fifteenth day of the First Moon)
• CHINESE NEW YEAR celebrated all over the world in February
• SUPER BOWL SUNDAY - first Sunday in February from 2004