February 9th is

Bagel Day

Pizza Day

Safer Internet Day

Toothache Day

Read in the Bathtub Day
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MORE! Natsume Sōseki, Brendan Behan and Alice Walker, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Lebanon – Saint Maroun’s Day
(patron saint of Lebanon)

Malaysia – Thaipusam
(full moon/Murugan remembrance)

Mauritius – Thaipoosam Cavadee
(full moon/Murugan remembrance)

Scotland – Inverness:
Film Festival at Eden Court
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On This Day in HISTORY

1267 – Synod of Breslau orders Jews of Silesia to wear special caps

1555 – John Hooper, Anglican Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester, is burned at the stake for heresy during Queen Mary I’s reign

1621 – Alessandro Ludovisi becomes Gregory XV, the last Pope to be elected by acclamation (voice vote)

1682 – Thomas Otway’s play Venice Preserved premieres in London, with Elizabeth Barry, one of the most highly regarded actresses of the day, playing the female lead

1741 – Henri-Joseph Rigel born in Germany, Classical composer who worked in France

1775 – British Parliament declares Massachusetts in rebellion

1825 – After no candidate receives a majority of electoral votes in the US presidential election of 1824, the United States House of Representatives elects John Quincy Adams as President of the United States

1849 – Laura Clay born, suffragist, orator, co-founder and first president of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association; her name was placed into nomination for the presidency at the 1920 Democratic National Convention

1861 – Jefferson Davis elected the Provisional President of the Confederate States of America by the Confederate convention at Montgomery, Alabama

1863 – Anthony Hope born, English novelist-playwright; The Prisoner of Zenda

1864 – Miina Härma born, Estonian woman composer and organist

1865 – Mrs. Patrick Campbell born, major English actor-manager, who made notable appearance in plays by Shakespeare and Shaw – her sharp wit enlivened the letters she exchanged with Shaw

1867 – Natsume Sōseki born, novelist widely considered the greatest modern Japanese writer; Kokoro, I Am a Cat

1870 – US President Grant signs a joint resolution of Congress establishing the U.S. Weather Bureau

1874 – Amy Lowell born, American poet; 1926 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

1885 – Alban Berg born, Austrian Composer

1889 – US President Cleveland signs a bill elevating the U.S. Department of Agriculture to a Cabinet-level agency

1893 – Giuseppe Verdi’s last opera, Falstaff, premieres at La Scala in Milan

1894 – Hershey’s Chocolate Company starts as a subsidiary of Milton Hershey’s Lancaster Caramel Company

1899 – Minnesota’s Record Low Temperature: – 59 degrees F at Leech Lake Dam

1910 – Jacques Monod born, French biologist, 1965 Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology for cell research

1913 – A group of meteors, visible across much of the eastern seaboard of North and South America, lead astronomers to conclude the source is a small, short-lived natural satellite of the Earth

1920 – Under the terms of the Svalbard Treaty, international diplomacy recognizes Norwegian sovereignty over Arctic Archipelago Svalbard, and designates it as demilitarized

1922 – Brazil becomes a signatory of the Berne Convention copyright treaty

1923 – Brendan Behan born, Irish author-political commentator

1934 – The Balkan Entente is formed by the Balkan Pact Treaty signed by Greece, Turkey, Romania and Yugoslavia, to maintain the geopolitical status quo of the post WWI years. All territorial disputes among the member nations are suspended.  Italy, Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and the Soviet Union refuse to sign.

1942 – Year-round Daylight saving time is instituted in the U.S. as a wartime measure to help conserve energy resources

1942 – Carole King born, American singer-songwriter and pianist

1944 – Alice Walker born, American author and poet, 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Literature for The Color Purple

1950 – McCarthy Red Witch Hunt: Senator Joseph McCarthy, in a speech at the Republican Women’s Club of Wheeling, West Virginia, claims to have a list of names of members of the Communist Party known to the Secretary of State who are nevertheless working and shaping policy in the U.S. Department of State – it was not illegal for an American to be a member of the Communist Party until the Communist Control Act of 1954 outlawed the Communist Party of the United States, and criminalizes membership in o r support for the Party or “Communist-action” organizations. The Supreme Court never ruled on its constitutionality, and it hasn’t been enforced by any administration, but the provisions “outlawing” the Communist Party have never been repealed either.

1959 – The R-7 Semyorka, the first intercontinental ballistic missile, becomes operational at Plesetsk, USSR

1962 – Neil Sedaka’s first recording of “Breaking Up is Hard to Do”

1964 – The Beatles make their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, performing before a “record-busting” audience of 73 million viewers across the USA

1965 – U.S. Marine Corps sends a MIM-23 Hawk missile battalion to South Vietnam, the first American troops in-country without an official advisory or training mission

1971 – Satchel Paige becomes the first Negro League player to be voted into the USA’s Baseball Hall of Fame

1971 – Apollo 14 returns to Earth after the third manned Moon landing

1975 – The Soyuz 17 Soviet spacecraft returns to Earth

1986 – Halley’s Comet appears in the inner Solar System

1991 – Voters in Lithuania vote for independence

2010 – Sade’s album, Soldier of Love, is released in the U.S.

2011 – Spain’s best-known judge Baltasar Garzón, known for issuing an international warrant to arrest Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for alleged deaths and torture of Spanish citizens, is banned from the legal profession for 11 years, without appeal, for illegal wire-tapping.  He now serves as head of Wikileaks’ Julian Assange’s legal team

2014 – Attorney General Eric Holder announces a new Department of Justice memo will instruct federal government lawyers to give same-sex marriages “full and equal recognition, to the greatest extent of the law” including joint bankruptcy filings and federal prison visitation rights for same-sex spouses
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Visuals

• Bagels in a paper sack
• Reading Great Expectations in the bathtub
• International flags
• Antique Folio Copper Plate, Martyrdom of John Hooper, circa 1775-80, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs
• Engraving by J. Collyer from an E. Roberts drawing of Spranger and Ann Barry in a 1776 production of  Thomas Otway’s Venice Preserved, Bell’s British Theatre
• Frontispiece 1898 edition Prisoner of Zenda, illustrated by Charles Dana Gibson/photo of Anthony Hope
• Natsume Sōseki and I Am a Cat quote
• Amy Lowell and Hate quote
• Brendan Behan and They took away quote
• Alice Walker and Give up power quote
• Satchel Paige and How old would you be quote

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