February 2nd is

Change Your Windshield Wipers Day *

Heavenly Hash Day

Hedgehog Day *

World Ukulele Day

Sled Dog Day *

Tater Tot Day

World Wetlands Day *
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MORE! Havelock Ellis, Sylvia Beach and James Joyce, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Christianity – Candlemas (purification of Mary/presentation of Jesus)

Canada – Groundhog Day

France – Avec Crêpe Day
(eat crepes day)

Malaysia –
Kuala Lumpur: Thaipusam
(Hindu self-scarification for Murugan)

United Kingdom – Leeds YKS:
Town Hall Film Festival

United States –
Alaska: Marmot Day
Yuma, AZ: Yuma Village Jazz Series
Punxsutawney PA: Groundhog Day
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On This Day in HISTORY

506 AD – Visigoth King Alaric II appoints Anianus as head of a committee to make an  abstract Roman laws and imperial decrees I as a governing code for his Roman subjects, now known as the Breviary of Alaric

880 AD – Louis III, King of West Francia, is defeated by the Norse Great Heathen Army at Lüneburg Heath in Lower Saxony; the Danish-Norwegian alliance routs the French in a snowstorm, and his troops are killed or captured

1141 – During ‘the Anarchy’ civil war, Empress Matilda’s allies capture Stephen, the rival claimant to the English throne, during the Battle of Lincoln

1207 – Terra Mariana (Medieval Livonia) established (present-day Estonia and Latvia)

1653 – New Amsterdam (now New York City) is incorporated

1669 – Louis Marchand born, French organist and composer

1714 – Gottfried August Homilius born, German organist and composer

1754 – Charles Maurice de Talleyrand born, cynical and crafty French politician

1795 – The French government offers a prize of 12,000 francs for a method of preserving food for the French army; eventually won by Nicholas Appert, inventor of a successful food canning method

1848 – The first ship with Chinese immigrants arrives in San Francisco

1848 – Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo ends the U.S.- Mexican War

1851 – José Guadalupe Posada, influential Mexican satirical illustrator and engraver

1859 – Havelock Ellis – English essayist and social reformer

1861 – Solomon R. Guggenheim, American businessman and philanthropist, founder of the Guggenheim Museum

1868 – Pro-Imperial forces capture Osaka Castle from the Tokugawa shogunate and burn it to the ground

1869 – James Oliver invents the removable steel plow blade

1875 – Fritz Kreisler born in Vienna, violin master and composer

1882 – James Joyce born, controversial Irish writer, and poet

1883 –  Johnston McCulley, American author and screenwriter, created Zorro

1887 – The first Groundhog Day is observed in Punxsutawney PA

1892 – William Painter patents a crown-cork bottle cap with a cork seal, used until the cork was replaced by a plastic liner in the 1970s

1897 – Howard D. Johnson is born, founder of Howard Johnson’s; and Alfred L. Cralle patents an ice cream scooper

1901 – Jascha Heifetz born in Russia, American master violinist

1912 – Burton Lane born, American composer lyricist; Finian’s Rainbow and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever; discovered Frances Gumm, aka Judy Garland

1918 – Hella Haasse born, Dutch author, the “Grand Old Lady” of Dutch literature

1920 – Estonia and Soviet Russia sign the Tartu Peace Treaty, ending the Estonian War of  Independence; Estonia had been a province of Imperial Russia since 1710; the treaty, among other provisions, established the Estonian-Russian border, the right of Estonians  and Russians to return to their respective countries, and return to Estonia of movable property “evacuated” to Russia during WWII

1922 – Sylvia Beach publishes Ulysses by James Joyce in Paris

1923 – James Dickey born, American novelist and poet; Deliverance

1925 – Sled Dog Day * The ‘Great Race of Mercy’ aka ‘the Serum Run to Nome’ Alaska, which began on January 27, arrives in Nome with the first batch of diphtheria serum via a dogsled relay that covered 674 miles in 127 ½ hours in extreme subzero temperatures in a near-blizzard and hurricane-force winds. Several of the dogs died, and the dog mushers suffered from frostbite and hypothermia. The modern-day Iditarod race is run over the same route in tribute to the teams who overcame such hardship

1927 – Stan Getz born, American jazz saxophonist

1931 – Judith Viorst born, American author and journalist

1934 – FDR establishes by executive order the Export–Import Bank of the United States (abbreviated as Ex-Im Bank), the official export credit agency of the federal government, operating as a government corporation. Ex-Im Bank finances and insures foreign purchases of United States goods for customers unable or unwilling to accept credit risk

1935 – Polygraph tests are administered to two murder suspects, the first time polygraph evidence is admitted in a U.S. court

1938 – Gene MacLellan born, Canadian singer-songwriter

1942 – Norwegian sabotage organization the Osvald Group stages the first major anti-Nazi resistance in Norway, to protest the installation of Vidkun Quisling as Minister-President of the puppet government under the supervision of Nazi Reichskommissar Terboven, hated not only by Norwegians, but by many in the German occupying force

1942 – Graham Nash born, English-American singer-songwriter;  The Hollies,
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

1948 – Al McKay born, American musician-songwriter-producer; Earth, Wind & Fire

1952 – Rick Dufay born, American rock guitarist; Aerosmith

1959 – The Coasters song “Charlie Brown” is released

1963 – Eva Cassidy born, American vocalist-guitarist, almost unknown until her recordings were played on BBC Radio 2, after her death at age 33 from melanoma

1971 – Idi Amin overthrows President Milton Obote to take control of Uganda

1971 – World Wetlands Day *  Date of the adoption of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands in the Iranian city of Ramsar on the Caspian Sea

1980 – First reports the FBI’s Abscam operation targets allegedly corrupt Congressmen

1982 – Syrian President Hafex al-Assad orders troops to quell an anti-government  Muslim Brotherhood uprising in Hama, a stronghold of the group which wants Syria to be a fundamentalist Muslim state; the fighting turns into a 27-day siege in which at least 2,000 Syrian citizens, mostly civilians,  are killed while large sections f the old city are destroyed, and the Syrian Arab Army suffers about a 1,000 casualties

1989 – The last Soviet armoured column leaves Kabul, Afghanistan

1990 – South African State President  F. W. de Klerk announces the unbanning of the African National Congress and promises to release Nelson Mandela.

1994 – Hedgehog Day, * an ancient Roman tradition is celebrated by the U.S. opening of the movie Sonic The Hedgehog 3

2007 – World’s leading climate scientists warn about global warming

2009 – Hillary Rodham Clinton sworn in as U.S Secretary of State

2012 – (year not certain) Change Your Windshield Wipers Day *  The National Highway Transportation Board recommends changing your windshield wipers at least once a year, but every six months if you use them a lot
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Visuals

• Heavenly Hash ice cream
• Groundhog and Hedgehog playing ukuleles
• International flags
• Visigoth coin issued during Alaric II’s reign and map of his kingdom 
• Oaxaqueña calavera del montón by José Guadalupe Posada
• Havelock Ellis – art of living quote
• James Joyce – writing in English quote
• Sylvia Beach and James Joyce in the Shakespeare & Co doorway
• James Dickey – poet quote
• Judith Viorst – advantage of marriage quote
• World Wetlands Day banner
• Hillary Rodham Clinton being sworn in as Secretary of State

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