Friday, February 1, 2013

THIS DAY IN HISTORY – FEBRUARY 1


HISTORICAL EVENTS

1790 – The first session of the United States Supreme Court begins, in New York.

1861 – Texas secedes from the union, the 6th state to do so. Subseuently, then Governor Sam Houston is replaced when he refuses to take an oath to the Confederacy.

1884 – The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) debuts. The 20 volume set consists of 22,000 pages, has 301,100 main entries, 616,500 total word-forms, 137,000 pronunciations, 249,300 etymologies, 577,000 cross-references and 2,412,400 usage quotations. I.e., it's huge!

2003 The Columbia space shuttle mission ends in disaster over Texas killing all seven crew members. Interestingly, the space shuttle Challenger exploded on launch four days earlier on January 28th (in 1986).



FAMOUS BIRTHS



1901 – Actor Clark Gable (born William Clark Gable) is born in Cadiz, OH, mistakenly listed as "female" on his birth certificate.




1931 – Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, President of Russian SSR is born in Butka, Russian SFSR.



1969
  Andrew Breitbart, conservative blogger and publisher is born in LA, CA (died 2012).



FAMOUS DEATHS


1851 - Frankenstein author, Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelly, in Somers Town, London (53).



1976 - Werner C. Heisenberg, physicist and author of the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics for which he won the Nobel Prize in Physics (1932), dies at 74. The uncertainty principle is inherent in the properties of all wave-like systems.




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