Today in History

[Looger]

Originally Posted by TimSJ

Feb 1 1861
Texas secedes from the Union, becoming independent once again. Since the articles of statehood passed by the U.S. Congress give Texas this right, it is perhaps the only state whose secession was legal.

yeah - that whole civil war business is still a touchy issue! amazing...

'the war of northern agression' - jeez just this week i heard on texan radio the term 'carpetbagger' referring to an illinoisan who had moved south!

the south shall rise again...

Originally Posted by TimSJ

Feb 1 1964
Governor Matthew Welsh of Indiana declares "Louie, Louie" as recorded by The Kingsmen (originally by Richard Berry & The Pharaohs) "pornographic". And while the FCC couldn't figure out the lyrics, the governor's move backfires by making the song one of the most covered titles in existence.

see also england and marilyn manson. most had never heard of the hack before that, i knew of manson only from reading my roomate's heavy metal magazine that manson had performed a certain (ahem) fellacious act on trent reznor of nine inch nails on stage in front of his parents. lovely.

Originally Posted by TimSJ

Feb 1 1968
In Saigon, South Vietnam's national police chief Brig. Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan summarily executes an accused Viet Cong spy with a bullet to the head. Unfortunately for the general, he happens to shoot him right in front of NBC cameraman Vo Suu and Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams.

that's almost as famous a photo from the vietnam war (if it's the one i'm thinking of) as johnson collapsed over a white house baordroom chair in front of that tape recorder playing the dying whimpers of his cousin's son in country.

Originally Posted by TimSJ

Feb 1 1970
US Government report reveals that 31% of college students have tried pot, man.

something tells me that the number may have been 'higher'...

Originally Posted by TimSJ

Feb 1 1974
A fire on the 12th floor of the 25 story Joelma Bank Building in Sao Paulo Brazil, killing 177 and seriously burning 293. A crowd of 10,000 spectators hampered firefighters near the building. The new building's cheap construction was primarily at fault.

cheap construction, in brazil? no problemo!

Originally Posted by TimSJ

Feb 1 1976
Heisenberg may have died today.

BAD joke.

Originally Posted by TimSJ

Feb 1 1998
Michael King of Clayton, Georgia is charged with the baseball bat beating death of Kenneth Paul Smith. King urinated in Smith's front yard, and after the property owner complained, he was severely beaten with a bat kept in King's Ford Mustang.

neighbours - isn't there some bad reality show documenting this kind of thing? bizarre.

Originally Posted by TimSJ

Feb 1 2003
The Space Shuttle Columbia blows up on re-entry, with its debris hitting homes and businesses in Nacogdoches Texas.

these shuttles are getting long in the tooth, i really hope a replacement pops up soon.

[TimSJ]

Feb 2 1793
Czech composer Franz Kotzwara, who penned "The Battle of Prague," dies from autoerotic asphyxiation in a London brothel.

Feb 2 1852
The first public toilet is inaugurated, located at 95 Fleet Street in London, by the Society of Arts.

Feb 2 1971
Idi Amin assumes power in Uganda, taking the government from President Milton Obote. One of his favorite pastimes seems to have been eating the brains of live prisoners. Also while in office, he eats one of his own sons.

Feb 2 1979
Sid Vicious, bassist for the Sex Pistols, dies in his sleep of a heroin overdose. He was waiting to stand trial for the stabbing death of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen.

Feb 2 1982
President Hafiz al-Asad orders destruction of Syrian city of Hama after its occupation by Muslim Brotherhood forces seeking to topple the Syrian regime. Estimates of total deaths in this city of 180,000 ranged from 10,000 to 25,000 killed.

Feb 2 1997
Marv Albert, nationally known sportscaster, allegedly bites a 42 year old woman after an evening of watching pornographic movies. By September he is on trial for sodomy. Yessss!

Feb 2 1998
Actor Daniel Baldwin is discovered by police in his Plaza Hotel room totally naked and disoriented, with a porno movie playing at high volume. He was checked into a New York hospital in critical condition, apparently coming down from a cocaine binge. It is not clear why any Baldwin would be unable to handle his cocaine.

[TimSJ]

Feb 3 1882
P.T. Barnum purchases the elephant Jumbo. He keeps him for three years until the animal's skull is crushed by a train. After his death, Jumbo gets extra exposure, as his stuffed skin and skeleton are shown separately.

Feb 3 1913
In one of the blackest days in U.S. history, the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. This amendment created the income tax.

Feb 3 1959
The Day the Music Died: A small plane carrying The Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson), Buddy Holly, and Richie Valens crashes near Mason City, Iowa, while en route to a show in Fargo, North Dakota.

Feb 3 1998
The tail of a U.S. marine tactical surveillance jet on a training mission severs a tram cable at a ski resort near Trento in northern Italy, sending 20 skiers nearly 300 feet to their deaths.

Feb 3 1998
Female axe murderer Karla Faye Tucker executed by lethal injection at Huntsville State Prison, Texas. Tucker had brutally murdered Jerry Dean and Deborah Thornton with a pickaxe in 1983. The last woman executed in Texas was also an axe murderer, Chipita Rodriguez, who was hanged in 1863.

[pope04]

Originally Posted by TimSJ

Feb 3 1959
The Day the Music Died: A small plane carrying The Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson), Buddy Holly, and Richie Valens crashes near Mason City, Iowa, while en route to a show in Fargo, North Dakota.

I recently read that the Big Bopper's remains will be exhumed to put to rest once and for all the rumours that a gun was fired during the flight. Evidently, when Buddy Holly's pistol was recovered at the crash site it had been recently fired.

The exhumation will also try to determine whether or not the Bopper died immediately or some time later. His remains were discovered some distance away from the crash site, and some feel that he may've been walking for help before he perished.

http://www.guidelive.com/sharedconte...2.29193a9.html

[TimSJ]

Feb 4 1783
A large earthquake in Calabria Italy leaves 50,000 dead.

Feb 4 1899
On patrol in the city of Manila, Private William Grayson shoots three Filipino soldiers when they fail to halt. The next morning, U.S. forces launch an artillery assault on the Filipino army, killing 3,000. Thus begins the three-year Philippine-American War, a brutal and disastrous campaign foreshadowing the Vietnam War.

Feb 4 1932
The first Winter Olympics were held in the United States at Lake Placid, NY.

Feb 4 1974
Patty Hearst kidnapped

Feb 4 1983
Karen Carpenter dies of anorexia nervosa. She frequently took laxatives and induced vomiting to prevent weight gain. At the time of her death she was pencil thin.

Feb 4 1987
Pianist/homosexual Liberace dead from AIDS in Palm Springs, California. Nobody even suspected the man was gay.

Feb 4 1998
Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates is assaulted with a direct hit by a fluffy cream pie during a three-pronged attack in Brussels. He was in Belgium attending meetings with industry and government leaders. Rumor is that the attack was engineered by Noel Godin, infamous for his other pie throwings at government officials.

Feb 4 1999
Gary Coleman was sentenced to a $400 fine, a suspended 90-day jail sentence, and ordered to attend 52 anger-management classes. The sentence stemmed from Coleman assaulting an autograph seeker on July 30, 1998.

[Frank the Tank]

Originally Posted by TimSJ

Feb 3 1882
P.T. Barnum purchases the elephant Jumbo. He keeps him for three years until the animal's skull is crushed by a train. After his death, Jumbo gets extra exposure, as his stuffed skin and skeleton are shown separately.

And he was killed in St. Thomas, Ontario, where my dad grew up. There is now a life size monument and mini-museum in a rail car to mark the spot where he was killed.

[TimSJ]

Feb 5 1861
The "Peep Show" machine patented by Samuel Goodale of Cincinnati.

Feb 5 1914
Beat author William S. Burroughs born in St. Louis, MO.

Feb 5 1958
The US Air Force manages to lose an H-bomb somewhere off the coast off Savannah, Georgia. Way to go!

Feb 5 1979
Woodrow Bussey files suit against the Adolf Coors Brewing Company for failing to warn him that their product, Coors Beer, is an intoxicating beverage.

Feb 5 1998
The cold war era Checkpoint Charlie sign -- "You Are Leaving The American Sector" -- is stolen in Berlin.

Feb 5 1999
Mike Tyson was sentenced to a year in jail for assaulting two people after a car accident on August 31, 1998. Tyson was also fined $5,000, had to serve 2 years of probation, and had to perform 200 hours of community service upon release.

[TimSJ]

Feb 6 1911
Ronald Reagan, who appeared in such films as Jap Zero, Girls on Probation, and Bedtime for Bonzo, born in Tampico IL.

Feb 6 1917
Zsa Zsa Gabor born in Budapest.

Feb 6 1943
Actor Errol Flynn acquitted of raping an adolescent. The woman had actually tried this shakedown with other celebrities and wasn't quite an adolescent despite her testifying with pigtails and a lollipop. Flynn had just finished a film called "Gentleman Jim" and at the end of the film when he says to Maureen O'Hara: "I never said I was a Gentleman." Peals of knowing laughter rang out from audiences.

Feb 6 1943
Having left the Tommy Dorsey Band four months prior, Frank Sinatra makes his vocalist debut on the radio show, "Your Hit Parade."

Feb 6 1951
Radio personality Paul Harvey is arrested for trying to break into Argonne Atomic Lab.

Feb 6 1983
Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyon" who had been living as a mild-mannered Bolivian businessman, charged with Nazi war crimes. He is later sentenced to life imprisonment and dies in 1991.

Feb 6 2004
President and Alzheimer's sufferer Ronald Reagan dies from pneumonia in Los Angeles, CA. Praise for the man gushes in from all over the world, dominating the news cycle for a week.

[Mean Mr. Mustard]

Ronald Reagan died in June did he not?

[oddsrule]

Originally Posted by Mean Mr. Mustard

Ronald Reagan died in June did he not?

Yes he did, which any Flames fan can tell you. Game 6 of the SCF, forget the date but remember the game.

[Frank the Tank]

I thought it was odd that the list above said he died on his birthday. I looked it up and it says he died June 5th, 2004.

[North East Goon]

Tim is making all these dates up - busted!

I'm Paul Harvey.............g'day!

[TimSJ]

oops.. you caught me...lol.

sorry for the error..

Here are todays.

Feb 7 1812
New Madrid earthquake shakes Missouri with an estimated magnitude of 8.2, as strong as any in the West. The quake destroys 150,000 acres of forest, and would have caused massive damage had it occurred in modern times.

Feb 7 1845
A drunken visitor to the British Museum smashes the irreplaceable Portland Vase into over 200 pieces. The elaborate glass amphora was created when Augustus was Caesar and is about ten inches high. It takes months to repair.

Feb 7 1968
"It became necessary to destroy the town to save it." -- U.S. Army Major, regarding the village of Ben Tre, Vietnam, in an AP dispatch.

Feb 7 1969
Beatle George Harrison has his tonsils removed. He had them destroyed to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands.

Feb 7 1989
Washed up tennis player Bjorn Borg has his stomach pumped after he overdoses on sleeping pills in Madrid, Spain.

Feb 7 1991
Mortar rounds are fired by the IRA at No. 10 Downing Street, the residence of British Prime Minister John Major. No injuries resulted but the door was severely dented.

Feb 7 1995
Rapper Tupac Shakur sentenced to 4.5 years for grabbing somebody's ass (sexual abuse, "forcibly touching the buttocks").

[TimSJ]

Feb 8 1910
Boy Scouts founded by Lord Robert Baden-Powell, a man who enjoyed seeing naked boys swimming just a little too much. It is odd that such a homophobic organization would be founded by a repressed homosexual.

Feb 8 1924
Gee Jong is the first man to die in the gas chamber, at Nevada State Prison in Carson City. A pound of sodium cyanide crystals was lowered into a vessel of diluted sulfuric acid, producing hydrogen cyanide gas which asphyxiated Jong. "At first there is evidence of extreme horror, pain, and strangling. The eyes pop. The skin turns purple and the victim begins to drool."

Feb 8 1960
Beer heir Adolph Coors III (who was ironically allergic to beer), killed after a failed kidnapping attempt in Colorado. By October, Joseph Corbett Jr. is arrested in Canada after an national manhunt.

Feb 8 1990
After "60 Minutes" commentator Andy Rooney expresses his view that "blacks have watered down genes because the less intelligent ones are the ones that have the most children", he is suspended for a month by CBS. Rooney claims the remarks are fabricated.

Feb 8 1994
During an argument Jack Nicholson destroys the windshield of a car with a golf club, screaming "You cut me off!" Charges were dismissed on May 2 after the matter was settled privately. Nicholson did this one month before he was to host the annual Los Angeles Police-Celebrity Golf Tournament. D'oh!

[kermitology]

Jules Verne, author of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and others was born today as well.