1776 ~ Birthday of E.T.A. Hoffmann, Poet & Composer.

1888 ~ Birthday of Ernst Heinkel, aircraft designer.

1908 ~ The first Boy Scout troop was organized in England by Robert Baden-Powell.

1927 ~ Alfred Hitchcock released his first film, “The Pleasure Garden”.

1945 ~ Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz.

1961 ~ Marilyn Monroe divorced Arthur Miller.

1965 ~ Death of Winston Churchill, Englishman.

1984 ~ The Apple Macintosh went on sale. Only 24 years ago! [requires QuickTime – worth the wait]

1993 ~ Death of Thurgood Marshall, U.S. Supreme Court justice.

2003 ~ The U.S. Department of Homeland Security officially began operation.

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Eudaimonia

1627 ~ Birthday of Robert Boyle, Chemist.

1759 ~ Birthday of Robert Burns, Poet.

1882 ~ Birthday of Virginia Woolf, Writer.

1890 ~ Nellie Bly completed her round-the-world journey in 72 days.

1919 ~ The League of Nations was founded.

1947 ~ Death of Al Capone, Gangster.

1971 ~ General Idi Amin becomes Ugandan President Idi Amin after a coup.

1977 ~ Rene Levesque told a Wall Street audience at the Economic Club of New York that “separation is inevitable”.

1998 ~ During his visit to Cuba, Pope John Paul II called for the release of political prisoners and political reforms and also condemned American isolation of the country.

2004 ~ Opportunity landed on Mars.

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1885 ~ Troops loyal to the Mahdi conquered Khartoum.

1905 ~ The Cullinan Diamond was found near Pretoria, South Africa.

1905 ~ Birthday of Maria von Trapp, Singer.

1925 ~ Birthday of Paul Newman, Actor.

1961 ~ Birthday of Wayne Gretzky, Canadian hockey Player, Coach, Owner.

1972 ~ Death of Mahalia Jackson, Gospel Music singer.

1988 ~ The musical "Phantom of the Opera", by Andrew Lloyd Webber opened at Broadway's Majestic Theater.

1996 ~ First lady Hillary Clinton testified before a grand jury connected to the Whitewater probe.

1998 ~ U.S. President Clinton denied on television he had "sexual relations" with Monica Lewinsky.

2005 ~ Following her confirmation by the Senate, Condoleezza Rice was sworn in as U.S. Secretary of State.

Feastdays & Holidays

Australia~ Australia Day

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1606 ~ The trial of Guy Fawkes and other Gunpowder Plot conspirators began.

1756 ~ Birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Composer.

1832 ~ Birthday of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who wrote “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” under the pen name Lewis Carroll.

1945 ~ The Red Army liberated the concentration camp at Auschwitz in southern Poland.

1967 ~ More than 60 nations signed a treaty banning the orbiting of nuclear weapons.

1967 ~ Astronauts Grissom, White and Chaffee were killed in a fire during a test of the Apollo 1 spacecraft.

1977 ~ The Vatican reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church's ban on female priests.

1997 ~ It was revealed that French museums had retained nearly 2,000 pieces of art stolen by Nazis.

1998 ~ U.S. First Lady Hillary Clinton called the attacks against her husband part of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" on the “Today Show”.

2009 ~ Death of John Updike, American Novelist.

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1521 ~ The Diet of Worms began.

1547 ~ Death of Henry VIII, King of England.

1596 ~ Death of Sir Francis Drake, Explorer & Soldier.

1788 ~ The first penal colony was established at Botany Bay, Australia.

1822 ~ Birthday of Alexander Mackenzie, Prime Minister of Canada.

1887 ~ Birthday of Artur Rubinstein, Polish Pianist.

1935 ~ Iceland became the first country to legalize abortion.

1939 ~ Death of William Butler Yeats, awarded the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature.

1986 ~ Space Shuttle Challenger exploded just after takeoff killing all seven astronauts onboard.

2004 ~ Lord Hutton published his report into the death of Dr. David Kelly.

Feastdays & Holidays

Catholicism ~ Feast day of St. Thomas Aquinas.

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1788 ~ The first penal colony was established at Botany Bay, Australia???

The flag was raised on the 26th January 1788. The colony itself was proclaimed on the 7th February that year.

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Calm, quiet, smooth, devastating

Ah well, I was close.

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Eudaimonia

Yes, I've lost the occasional weekend as well. No biggie.

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Calm, quiet, smooth, devastating

Lol!

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Eudaimonia

1845 ~ Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven" was first published, in the New York Evening Mirror.

1856 ~ Queen Victoria instituted the Victoria Cross.

1880 ~ Birthday of W.C. Fields, Actor.

1933 ~ Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg.

1936 ~ The first members of baseball's Hall of Fame, including Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth, were named in Cooperstown, N.Y.

1956 ~ Death of H. L. Mencken, Journalist.

1962 ~ Death of Fritz Kreisler, Austrian violinist.

1963 ~ Death of Robert Frost, Poet.

1996 ~ France ended nuclear testing.

2002 ~ In his State of the Union Address, President Bush coined the term "Axis of Evil".

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1649 ~ King Charles I of England was beheaded.

1862 ~ The first Union ironclad warship, the USS Monitor was launched.

1933 ~ The first episode of the ''Lone Ranger'' radio program was broadcast on station WXYZ in Detroit.

1937 ~ Birthday of Boris Spassky, World Chess Champion.

1948 ~ Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated.

1968 ~ Viet Cong guerillas and North Vietnamese soldiers launched the Tet offensive.

1969 ~ Last public performance by The Beatles.

1972 ~ Thirteen Roman Catholic civil rights marchers were shot to death by British soldiers in Northern Ireland on what became known as "Bloody Sunday”.

1991 ~ The first major ground battle of the Gulf War was fought at the frontier port of Al Khafji in Saudi Arabia.

2003 ~ Richard Reid, the "Shoe bomber" jailed for life.

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Eudaimonia

With the Monitor, it's interesting the trend toward calling the Merrimack the CSS Virginia.

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Calm, quiet, smooth, devastating

The loss of Mahatma Gandhi was truly one of those horribly sad events in the world's history. A great man of peace was lost making the world a poorer place.

An unusual choice of words.

Ghandi would have been happier with the world as a poorer, simpler and nicer place in keeping with his ascetic ideals. It was never going to happen, but it was a lovely thought.

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Calm, quiet, smooth, devastating

With distance come perspective.

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Eudaimonia