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Be merry, be merry ...
'Tis merry in hall, when beards wag all
And welcome merry Shrovetide.
William Shakespeare, Henry IV

... as fit as a pancake for Shrove Tuesday.
Shakespeare; All's Well that Ends Well

Pancakes are eat by greedy gut,
And Hob and Madge run for the slut.
Poor Robin's Almanac, 1677 

St Matthew get candlestick new,
St Matthi [Matthias, Feb 24] lay candlestick by.
English traditional expression

If it freezes on St Matthias's Day, it will freeze for a month together.
English traditional expression

St Matthias
[Sow] Both leaf and grass.
English traditional expression

St Matthias breaks the ice; if he finds none he will make it.
English traditional expression

St Matthie all the year goes by.
English traditional expression [meaning unclear to PW]

"Saint Matthias breaks the ice ...". Picture: NOAA

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The Fugalia, or Regifugium, Roman calendar

This was a festival for men, not gods, symbolizing the end of the old year, as the old Roman New Year began on March 1 (equating to the modern Mardi Gras or Carnival). The Latin name 'Regifugium' means 'running for office'. On this day, kings of ancient Rome literally ran for office, fleeing on foot from the Forum. (Note: In the USA, political candidates 'run for office', while in most of the rest of the English-speaking world, such as Australia, candidates 'stand for election'. Another interesting quirk of the common language that divides us.)

The custom came down from an ancient annual rite in which the monarch was pursued by an eager band of would-be sovereigns. If he was overtaken by any of them, the king faced certain dethronement, and possible execution. Sounds a little like Sydney's annual City to Surf race, only harsher.

This flight (fugium) of the king (regis) is paralleled in other cultures, in which the ruler must prove his physical and spiritual stamina. According to Sir James Frazer in The Golden Bough, such a ruler in Rome underwent the Regifugium "with particular rigor to ensure that no personal defect should incapacitate him for the performance of those sacred rites and ceremonies on which, even more than on the despatch of his civil and military duties, the safety and prosperity of the community depended".

Each year on this day, a sacrifice was offered in the Comitium after which the king started running. Of course, in later years, it was merely a symbolic and festive occasion.

"… a relic of a time when the kingship was an annual office, awarded along with the hand of a princess, to the victorious athlete or gladiator who therefore figured along with his bride as a god and goddess in a sacred marriage to ensure the fertility of the earth by homeopathic magic."
Sir James George Frazer (1854 - 1941), British folklorist; The Golden Bough, 1922

St Augustine on the Fugalia
"…  instead of the obscene songs and licentious acting of players, instead of the celebration of those most filthy and shameless Fugalia¹⁰ (well called Fugalia, since they banish modesty and right feeling), the people were commanded in the name of the gods to restrain avarice, bridle impurity, and conquer ambition …" 

^"10 Fugalia. Vives is uncertain to what feast Augustin refers. Censorinus understands him to refer to a feast celebrating the expulsion of the kings from Rome. This feast, however (celebrated on the 24th of February), was commonly called Regifugium."

 Source

From Wikipedia: What exactly this observance was occasioned by is a matter of some controversy. According to Varro and Ovid, this was a festival commemorating the flight of the last king of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus, in 510 BCE. Ovid's Fasti contains the longest surviving account of the observance; he begins:

Nunc mihi dicenda est regis fuga. Traxit ab illa
     sextus ab extremo nomina mense dies.
Ultima Tarquinius Romanæ gentis habebat
     regna, vir iniustus, fortis ad arma tamen.

(Now I must tell of the flight of the King, six days from the end of the month. The last of the Tarquins possessed the Roman nation, an unjust man, but nevertheless strong in war.)

Plutarch disagrees; he holds that since the Rex Sacrorum, substitute for the former king of Rome in various religious rituals, held no civic or military role, but nevertheless was bound to offer a public sacrifice in the Comitia on this date, the "flight of the king" was the swift exit the proxy king was required to make from that place of public business.

Roman festivals and notable days in the Book of Days    More

Feast day of St Adela

Feast day of St Betto

Feast day of St Ethelbert of Kent (St Aethelbert; St Æthelbert; St Aethelberht), first Christian king of England
(Great fern, Osmunda regalis, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)
This is according to William Hone, whose entry is for February 24. However, most sources give February 25 (qv).

(Note: The authority William Hone, has his entry at February 24. However, most sources, such as Patron Saints Index and Saints O' the Day give his feast day as February 25. The latter writes: "There seems to have been an unofficial cultus at Canterbury from early times, but his feast is found in calendars only from the 13^th century, and generally on February 25 or 26, because Saint Matthias occupied February 24. He is commemorated in both the Roman and British Martyrologies.")

Feast day of the First and Second Finding of St John the Baptist's Head, Greek Orthodox Church
"The first finding came to pass during the middle years of the fourth century, through a revelation of the holy Forerunner to two monks, who came to Jerusalem to worship our Saviour's Tomb. One of them took the venerable head in a clay jar to Emesa in Syria. After his death it went from the hands of one person to another, until it came into the possession of a certain priest-monk named Eustathius, an Arian. Because he ascribed to his own false belief the miracles wrought through the relic of the holy Baptist, he was driven from the cave in which he dwelt, and by dispensation forsook the holy head, which was again made known through a revelation of Saint John, and was found in a water jar, about the year 430, in the days of the Emperor Theodosius the Younger, when Uranius was Bishop of Emesa."   Source

Feast day of St Ida of Hohenfels

Feast day of St John Theristus

"Matthias breaks the ice ..."

Feast day of St Matthias the Apostle (Matthias of Jerusalem)

[From Wikipedia: In the New Testament Acts of the Apostles, the author of the Gospel of Luke records that Matthias was the Apostle chosen by the remaining eleven apostles to replace Judas Iscariot, following Judas's betrayal of Jesus and his suicide (Acts 1:21 - 26). St Matthias is venerated with a feast day in the Roman Catholic Church that was February 24, until it was moved in the 20^th century to May 14, and in the Eastern Orthodox Church with a feast celebrated on August 9.]

As most of the ancient folklore associated with this saint is associated with the older feast day of February 24, this is where most of the information and lore about this saint is kept in the Book of Days.

Also known as the 'thirteenth apostle', because he replaced Judas, St Matthias was first stoned and then beheaded with an axe, or, so it is said. His symbol is a battleaxe and he is patron of woodcutters and carpenters.

Folklore has it that if there is sharp frost on his day it will last several days, something that happens on a February morning here in Australia about … never. A weather proverb also says:

Matthias breaks the ice, if he finds it;
If he does not break it, he makes it all the harder.

"Mentioned in the New Testament only in Acts 1:21-26, where, after the Ascension of Jesus, Matthias was selected by lot to replace Judas Iscariot. As Saint Peter is quoted in the Acts of the Apostles, Matthias was "one of the men who accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day he was taken up from us." Matthias, says Peter, was a 'witness to Christ's resurrection.'

""For some time a Gospel, said to be authored by Matthias, circulated in the early Christian world, but this has now been lost, apart from a few sentences quoted in other writers. 

"Unreliable legend had him preaching in Judea, Cappadocia, and on the shores of the Caspian Sea, where he endured great persecutions; he suffered martyrdom, perhaps at Colchis or Jerusalem.
His alleged relics were removed by Empress Saint Helena and are now venerated at Saint Matthias's Abbey in Trier, Germany. There appears to be some confusion between Matthias and Matthew in some of the early writings and legends (Attwater, Benedictines, Bentley, Delaney, White).

"In art, Saint Matthias is an elderly apostle holding or being pierced with an axe (German images), lance (Italian images), halberd, scimitar, or sword (Appleton, Roeder, Tabor). He is often confused with Saint Matthew, who should not hold a halberd, and with Saint Jude, who is generally represented as a younger man ..."   Source

Feast day of St Modestus

Feast day of Ss Montanus, Lucius, Flavian, Julian, Victorius, Primolus, Rhenus, and Donatian, martyrs at Carthage

Feast day of St Moss of Carragheen

Feast day of St Praetextatus, archbishop of Rouen, martyr

Feast day of St Simon of Saint Bertin

Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days    Shop saints

Powamu, Pueblo/Hopi purification ceremony, (Feb 12 - 28)

Sounkyo Ice Festival, Sounkyo Onsen (spa), Hokkaido, Japan (Jan 29 - Mar 5)

N'cwala, Zambia
"N'cwala is een Thanksgiving festival. Sinds een paar jaar wordt dit feest weer gevierd, nadat het 80 jaar niet is gedaan. Op dit feest wordt er traditioneel gedanst, muziek gemaakt en het nieuwe bier van het jaar, gebrouwen door Chief Mpenezi, gedronken. Het feest wordt gehouden in Chipata."   Source

("N'cwala is a Thanksgiving festival. For 80 years it was not celebrated, but has been for the last couple of years. At this festival there is traditionally dancing, music making, and the new beer of the year, brewed by Chief Mpenezi, is drunk. The festival is held in Chipata.") This might be an approximate translation. If your Afrikaans language is good, you might like to advise your almanackist. Thank you.

Bissextile
We have an extra day (February 29) in February in leap year, but the Romans counted February 24 twice, and called it dies bissextus (sexto calendas Martius), the sextile or sixth day before March 1. This day was reckoned twice (bis) in leap year, which was called annus bissextus.

Independence Day (1918), Estonia

Día de la Bandera (Flag Day), Mexico

Dragobete, Romania
Dragobete is a traditional Romanian holiday. Dragobete was the son of Baba Dochia. It is known as "the day when the birds are getting engaged". This day is supposed to protect one from fever. If the weather allows it, girls and boys are supposed to pick snowdrops or other early spring plants for the one they are courting.

1557 Mathias, Holy Roman Emperor

1709 Jacques de Vaucanson (d. November 21, 1782), French engineer and inventor who is credited with creating the world's first true robots, as well as for creating the first completely automated loom

1786 Wilhelm Grimm (pictured at right), German philologist, folklorist and fairy tale author (d. 1859), brother of Jakob (or, Jacob, at left).

Jakob and his younger brother Wilhelm, were professors at Berlin, investigators of the early history and literature of Germany.

They published a large dictionary of the German language (Deutsches Wörterbuch), and their famous Grimm's Tales. They were better known in their day – and still are highly reputed – as linguists. They proposed the Great Vowel Shift of the 15th century, when English vowels changed from their Continental values. Jakob propounded Grimm's law  (an informal name for what is formally known as the First Germanic Consonant Shift), the first description of systematic phonetic transformation within a language.

"Wilhelm Grimm was born in Hanau in 1786. He collaborated with philological researches, led by his famous brother Jacob Grimm. They both studied Law at Marbourg. In 1814 he was named Secretary at Kassel Library and later on he joint [sic] his brother at Gottingen Library. But due to political ideals they both had to quit university studies. In 1841 he became a member of the Science Faculty of Berlin.

"Wilhelm Grimm, Jacob Grimm and Gorres published Children's and Household Tales in 1812, where 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves' and 'Hansel and Gretel' first appeared.

"He died in Berlin on December 1859."   Source

Grimm Brothers Home Page

Winslow Homer watercolours    Winslow Homer prints

1838 Medway Day (d. July 8, 1905), English-born Australian labor journalist and Baptist minister; chairman of the South Australian Baptist Association, 1870 - 71; nicknamed 'Judgement Day' by fellow journalists. Day had been leader writer for the Register in Adelaide, editor of Voice and became editor of Australian Worker in 1894. Although strongly influenced by the writings of Henry George, he eschewed the epithet 'Single Taxer'. However, in 1892 he was editor of the Single Tax League's paper, Pioneer. The Australian Dictionary of Biography says that "He so strongly championed the co-operative village settlements on the Murray that the Bulletin could say they were 'largely of his making'." A strong proponent of the co-operative movement, in the late-1890s he was manager of the Trades' Council Co-operative Store in Sydney.

Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson

1846 Luigi Denza (d. 1922), composer

1848 Andrew Inglis Clark (d. 1907), Tasmanian politician

1852 George Moore (d. 1933), writer

1885 Chester Nimitz (d. 1966), United States admiral

1885 Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (aka 'Witkacy'; d. 1939), Polish writer and painter

1890 Marjorie Main (d. 1975), actress

1909 August Derleth, (d. 1971) writer

1914 Zachary Scott (d. 1965), actor

1921 Abe Vigoda, actor

1922 Richard Hamilton, pop-art painter

1922 Steven Hill, actor

1932 Michel Legrand, French composer, noted for film scores (Portnoy's Complaint; Dingo; Oscars: Summer of '42; Yentl)

1934 Bettino Craxi (d. 2000), Prime Minister of Italy

1934 Renata Scotto, Italian soprano

1938 Phil Knight, founder of Nike, Inc.

1942 Joseph Lieberman, politician, candidate for Vice President of the United States

1942 John Neumeier, choreographer

1943 George Harrison?

The date of Beatle George Harrison's (d. 2001) birthday is disputed. At time of writing (Feb 23, 2004) Wikipedia places it at February 24, 1943 and says: "Note: Until Harrison was in his 40s, he believed that he was born on February 25."

However, for reasons outlined on February 25 at the Book of Days, I will keep George on that day until further notice. 

1945 Barry Bostwick, actor

1947 Edward James Olmos, actor

1948 J Jayalalithaa, Indian politician

1948 Dennis Waterman, English actor (TV series: Minder) who had a top ten hit in the UK with the song 'I Could Be So Good for You' (October, 1980)

Upsetting The Apple Cart: The Genius of Steve Jobs (an excellent documentary on BBC)

Steve Jobs at ABC    Steve Jobs at BBC

1956 Paula Zahn, journalist

1958 Sammy Kershaw, musician

1962 Michelle Shocked, American singer/songwriter

"Raised in an extremely large, extremely poor, extremely strict fundamentalist Mormon household, spending summers with her hippie-atheist father, she left home for good at 16. Putting herself though the University of Texas with no financial support from her family, she managed to graduate with a degree in, curiously enough, Oral Interpretation of Literature …

"Now she was caught up in the cycle of homelessness that swept across America in the 1980s. By the time Reagan was re-elected, she'd had enough. "You can be poor anywhere", she says. She air-hitched to Europe – anywhere in Europe – courtesy of a clandestine outfit that gave no advance notice and no choice whatsoever about which country but got you there for next to nothing. She landed in Paris, and hitch-hiked to Amsterdam. After an anti-nuclear protest in Sicily, she was raped, and by a Green Party activist. In Amsterdam, she worked with a pirate radio station and shared a squat with a stranded British reggae band from Birmingham. She survived on a supremely careful daily ration of alfalfa sprouts, soaking new seeds each day to grow her dinner seven nights away. She was poor, but she'd never not been poor. She'd never been free before."   Source

Michelle Shocked Quotes    Website

1974 Chad Hugo, musician and producer (The Neptunes)

1975 Ashley MacIsaac, Cape Breton fiddler

1976 Zuzana Belohorcova, Slovak actress

1999 Anthony Bain, actor

1999 Michael Bain, actor

Phew!! Have a rest before the big This day in history section

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303 Galerius, Roman Emperor, published his edict that began the persecution of Christians in his portion of the Empire.

616 Death of St Ethelbert of Kent (St Aethelbert; St Æthelbert; St Aethelberht), first Christian king of England, king of Kent and Bretwalda. Ethelbert (b. c. 552) was King of Kent from around 580 or 590 until his death. Bede lists Ethelbert as being the third king to hold imperium over other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. In the late 9^th-Century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Ethelbert is referred to as a Bretwalda.

He is regarded as the first Christian king of England, and was the monarch when St Augustine arrived bringing monasticism to that island. On Whitsunday, June 2, 597 Augustine baptised King Ethelbert, commencing official recognition of Christianity in the British Isles.

He was the son of Eormenric, whom he succeeded as king, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Gregory of Tours, who was a close acquaintance of Queen Ingoberg (the mother of Ethelbert's wife Berthe), twice calls him simply "a man of Kent", indicating that he was not king at the time Gregory's History of the Franks was written, and that Ethelbert more likely became king closer to 590.

Ethelbert founded the world-famous Canterbury Cathedral, and built many churches; he was also founder of another famous church, St Paul's in London. Ethelbert is also sometimes called St Albert. After his death, he was regarded as a saint (feast day February 25).

Note: The year of Ethelbert's death may have been slightly later, perhaps 618.  Source

1582 Pope Gregory XIII devised the Gregorian calendar, replacing the Julian calendar which Julius Caesar had introduced. It was implemented on October 15 that year (or October 4, depending upon which calendar one uses).

Gregory's calendar

"How do we keep track of time? When do we plant our crops, how do we know when to observe religious holidays? Societies need some way to keep track of time, and complex calendars (the word comes from the Roman term for the beginning of the month) were developed early in human history. In agricultural societies the seasonal cycle of the Sun is crucial, but for shorter periods the lunar cycle suggests itself as well. Historically the problem was that the year does not contain a whole number of days or months. The mean interval between successive vernal equinoxes (365.2424 days), is about 11 minutes less than 365 1/4 days; the synodic period of the Moon (the time between successive full moons or new moons) is about 29 1/2 days, and thus 12 months add up to about 354 days. Constructing a calendar that incorporates both the movements of the Sun and Moon is therefore not a simple business. Various solutions have been tried …"  Source

"The Julian calendar, standardized in 46 B.C.E., was revised by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 C.E. The length of the year in the Julian calendar was figured at 365.25 days, which is greater than the correct length of 365.2422 days by 0.0078 days. The error accumulated over time and Pope Gregory XIII revised the calendar by omitting the accumulated portion which totaled 10 days at the time, from the month of October, 1582. He ordained that Thursday, October 4, be followed by Friday, October 15. The leap-year rule was also revised, making the century years 1700, 1800, 1900, 2100, 2200, etc., non-leap years. The years 1600, 2000, 2400, etc. which are divisible by 400 were made into leap years. In this way, the average year-length of the calendar was brought down to 365.2425 days, the residual error now being 1 day every 3300 years."  
Calendar Convergence, by Judith Paulson, at the Scriptorium

1711 The London premiere of Rinaldo by George Friderich Handel, the first Italian opera written for the London stage.

1803 The Supreme Court of the United States, in Marbury v. Madison, established the principle of judicial review.

1804 London's Drury Lane Theatre burned to the ground, leaving owner Richard Brinsley Sheridan destitute. (On July 7, 1816, he died in poverty.)

1809 England: Mr Jennings's precognition of death.

"On the 24th of February, 1809, died Mr. Jennings, of Galley-lane, near Barnet, Herts. A few days previous to his decease he called on Mr. Wm. Salmon, his carpenter, at Shenley-hill, to go with him and fix upon a spot for his vault. On the Sunday before his death he went on horseback to Shenley-hill, and stopped at the White Horse to have a glass of warm wine, with the same intention of going to Ridge; and afterwards, seeing the rev. Mr. Jefferson, endeavoured to buy the ground, but differed with him for two guineas. On the Monday, he applied to Mr. Mars, of Barnet, for a vault there, but Mr. Jefferson sending him a note acceding to his terms, he opened it before Mr. Salmon and Dr. Booth, and after he had read it, showed it them, with this exclamation – 'There see what the fellows will do!' The day before he died he played at whist with Dr. Rumball, Dr. Booth, and his son, in bed: in the course of the evening he said, 'The game is almost up.' He afterwards informed his son, he had lent a person some money that morning, and desired him to see it repaid. To some friends he observed, that he should not be long with them, and desiring them to leave the room he called back his son, for the purpose of saying to him, 'I gave William money for coals this morning; deducting the turnpike, mind he gives you eleven and eightpence in change when he comes home. Your mother always dines at three o'clock, get your dinner with her, I shall be gone before that time – and don't make any stir about me.' He died at half-past two. This account is from the manuscript papers of the late Mr. John Almon, in possession of the editor."
William Hone, The Every-Day Book, or a Guide to the Year, William Tegg and Co., London, 1878; 1825-26 edition online

1810 Death of Henry Cavendish, (b. 1756) scientist who calculated Newton's gravitational constant.

1815 Death of Robert Fulton, (b. 1765) inventor.

1815 In New Zealand, land was sold to Europeans for the first time, for a mission church.

1817 The unfortunately named Barron Field, the first Supreme Court judge in Australia and sometime poet, arrived in Sydney from England. 

1825 Death of Thomas Bowdler (b. 1754), physician and editor.

1826 The signing of the Treaty of Yandaboo marked the end of the First Burmese War.

1831 The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, the first removal treaty in accordance with the Indian Removal Act, was proclaimed. The Choctaws in Mississippi ceded land east of the river in exchange for payment and land in the West.

1839 William Otis received a patent for the steam shovel.

1848 King Louis-Philippe of France abdicated the throne and went into exile in England. France became a republic for the second time; rioters invaded the French Chamber of Deputies.

1856 Death of Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky (b. 1792), Russian mathematician.

1863 Arizona was organized as a United States territory.

1868 After Andrew Johnson tried to dismiss United States Secretary of War Edwin M Stanton, he became the first President of the United States to be impeached by the United States House of Representatives. Johnson would later be acquitted by the United States Senate.

More

1868 The first American parade to have floats was staged at Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Louisiana.

1881 China and Russia signed the Sino-Russian Treaty.

1887 Paris and Brussels established a telephone link, the first cities to do so.

1888 Louisville, Kentucky, USA, adopted the 'Australian' (or, secret) ballot.

"The so-called Australian ballot, introduced to eliminate corruption in elections, requires that all candidates' names appear on a single, official ballot, which is printed at public expense and distributed at a polling place. It also allows secrecy while voting."   Source

1889 France: Emile Pouget's Le Pere Peinard began publishing. A signatory to the 'Charter of Amiens' (1906), endorsed by the CGT, Pouget also wrote numerous books and pamphlets, including Direct Action (1910), and Sabotage.

1891 The term 'honky tonk' was introduced, appearing in an Oklahoma paper, The Daily Ardorite, which reported "the honk-a-tonk last night was well attended".

1903 The United States signed an agreement acquiring a naval station at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

1905 Death of Fanny Cochrane Smith, (b. c. 1834), Tasmanian Aborigine known for her wax-cylinder recordings of Aboriginal songs, made in 1903, which comprise the only audio recordings of an indigenous Tasmanian language.

Here her on YouTube    More

1909 The Hudson Motor Car Company was founded.

1912 USA: Labor activist Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (pictured above) headed the 'Bread and Roses' Lawrence Textile Strike of 20,000 women in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Police attacked 150 children and their parents at the town railroad station.  

"It was a wonderful strike, the most significant strike, the greatest strike that has ever been carried on in this country or any other country. And the most significant part of that strike was that it was a democracy. The strikers had a committee of 56, representing 27 different languages. The boss would have to see all the committee to do any business with them. And immediately behind that committee was a substitute committee of another 56 prepared in the event of the original committee's being arrested. Every official in touch with affairs at Lawrence had a substitute selected to take his place in the event of being thrown in jail."
Big Bill Haywood, IWW leader; Bill Haywood's Book   Source

Many strikers were sending their kids to safe homes with friendly families in other cities. The exodus had generated so much publicity that Lawrence authorities resolved to crush it.

On this day they forced 35 women and their children into patrol wagons. After charging the women with neglect and handing jail sentences and fines to the organizers, the town fathers sent 10 of the kids to the Lawrence poor farm. This prompted only more publicity, forcing Congress to investigate the strike. Sixteen children would testify, describing the poverty that led them to leave school and take jobs in the mill.

The American Woollen Company had no choice but to yield to the strikers' demands.

Source: The Daily Bleed et al

Retrospective History of the US Working Class    Communist party of the USA    Links

1917 World War I: United States ambassador to the United Kingdom, Walter H Page, was given the Zimmermann Telegram, in which Germany offered to give the American Southwest back to Mexico if Mexico would declare war on the United States. British naval intelligence had intercepted the document and notified US president Woodrow Wilson, precipitating America's reluctant entry into the First World War.

1920 The National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi Party) announced its program for establishing the Third Reich.

1920 American-born Nancy Astor (1879 - 1964) became the first woman to speak in Britain's House of Commons; she gave a speech in support of temperance.  

A world chronology of women's suffrage, in the Scriptorium

1923 The Flying Scotsman fast train service between London and Edinburgh went into operation.

1925 USA: A thermite (magnesium bomb) was used for the first time to break up a 250,000-ton ice jam clogging the St Lawrence River near Waddington, New York.

1938 A nylon bristle toothbrush produced by the DuPont company became the first commercial product to be made with nylon yarn.

1942 Propaganda: The Voice of America began broadcasting.

1942 "... the United States Army mistook a weather balloon off the coast of Southern California for a Japanese bomber and attacked. Thus began 'The Battle of Los Angeles.'

"In February 1942, the country was still reeling from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The West Coast was particularly afraid of another Japanese assault; housing prices had dropped dramatically as people moved away from 'invasion beaches.' And they did have some cause for concern. On the 23^rd, a Japanese sub had shelled an oil field in Southern California. On the 24th, naval intelligence issued an alert, stating that an attack was imminent. When an unidentified radar signature was discovered 120 miles off the coast of Los Angeles, California, in the early hours of February 25, antiaircraft batteries went to Green Alert – 'ready to fire.' The target drifted in toward the coast. As it approached, the regional controller ordered a blackout. Reports of 'enemy planes' began pouring in. Finally, a balloon carrying a red flare was spotted over Santa Monica. Four antiaircraft batteries opened fire, and the sky above Los Angeles 'erupted like a volcano.'

"For the next three hours, madness reigned. 'Swarms' of planes and balloons were reported, flying at every elevation and speed. Over 1,400 rounds of anti-aircraft ammunition were fired from the ground, but the mysterious enemy suffered no losses, despite reports that four planes had been shot down, and that one had crashed in flames in Hollywood. American fighter planes did circle the city, but quickly returned to their home base. With a limited number of fighters available, the Army preferred to keep them in check until the size and direction of the attack could be ascertained.

"People all over Southern California watched the display, as searchlights and antiaircraft rounds lit up the night sky. As the rounds burst, the smoke reflected the lights and added to the confusion. Sanity returned at dawn. Streets were discovered to have been damaged, not by Japanese bombs, but by American artillery. Three civilians had been trampled, three others died in car accidents as they sped through the darkened streets, and there was at least one death from heart failure …"   Source

1945 Egyptian Premier Ahmad Mahir Pasha was killed in Parliament after reading a decree.

1946 Juan Perón was elected president of Argentina.

1948 Cold War: The Communist Party seized control of Czechoslovakia. 

1961 British anthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey uncovered a 1,750,000-year-old skull and other bones of a child, which they called Homo habilis – 'handy man', because it was believed to have been the earliest toolmaker.  

Leakeys

1966 An army coup deposed Dr Kwame Nkrumah, first president of Ghana.

 

1968 Vietnam War: The Tet Offensive was halted - South Vietnam recaptured Hué.

South Vietnamese and American troops recaptured the ancient Vietnamese imperial citadel of Hue, which the Viet Cong had held for a month, where they massacred an unknown, but large, number of civilians. That action ('the Tet Offensive') had begun during Tet, Vietnamese Lunar New Year. Australian troops were also involved in counter-Tet Offensive operations, especially around Bien Hoa province. As the situation appeared now to be more critically against the communist advance, pro-Vietcong 'peace movement' cadres in the West increased their anti-Vietnam activities and propaganda, as we now know from Kremlin files, much of it funded by the KGB. Within a year, 500,000 Americans were marching on the White House.

"The average Australian soldier in Vietnam was 20 years old and saw 314 days of combat in a period of one year. The average World War II soldier in the South Pacific had been 26 years old (and) saw 40 days of combat in a period of four years."  Source

Curiously, while in the Gulf War, most Westerners and coalition military personnel were relatively unaware of the many major atrocities committed by the USA and its allies (such as the killing of hundreds of thousands, and the 'Turkey Shoot' during which the coalition forces bulldozed countless people – some alive – into a ditch, an event known as the Highway of Death), in Vietnam the opposite tended to be the case:

"Most Americans knew well about the My Lai massacre of US Army Lieutenant Calley where from 200 to 350 persons were killed. The '68-massacre in Hue however, has not been covered at the same proportion by the English language media. When a Tet Offensive documentary film by South Vietnamese reporters was shown to the American audience of more than 200 US Army officers in Fort Benning, Ga. in November 1974, almost 90 percent of them hadn't been informed of the facts. Many even said that had they known the savage slaughter at the time, they would have acted differently while serving in Vietnam."   Source

"The Hue massacre was the most shocking example of the North's barbaric policy. On January 30, 1968, the Vietcong, on instructions from Hanoi, broke the Tet truce by launching an offensive against the South. Hue, an administrative centre just south of the border, was over run [sic] by communist forces who quickly set about their cold-blooded business of calculated mass murder. Thousands of [people] were thrown into trenches and then buried, even though some were still alive …

"… What prompted us to make our readers believe that the Communists, once in power in all of Viet Nam, would behave benignly? What made us, first and foremost Anthony Lewis, belittle warnings by U.S. officials that a Communist victory would result in a massacre? Why did we ignore the fact that the man responsible for the executions of 50,000 peasants, Truong Chinh, was — and still is — one of the most powerful figures in Hanoi? What made us think that he and his comrades would have mercy for the vanquished South Vietnamese?"   Source

 

1970 USA: National Public Radio was founded.

1975 Hard rock band Led Zeppelin released the classic double album Physical Graffiti.

1977 US president Jimmy Carter cut off aid to countries with bad records on human rights – Argentina, Uruguay and Ethiopia.

1981 Buckingham Palace announced the engagement of Prince Charles, Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer.

1981 USA: Jean Harris was convicted of murdering Dr Herman Tarnower, the author of the bestselling The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet.

1983 A special commission of US Congress released a report condemning the practice of Japanese internment during World War II.

1988 The Supreme Court of the United States sided with Larry Flynt's Hustler magazine by overturning a lower court decision to award Jerry Falwell USD $200,000 for defamation.

1988 Campaigning as a member of the 'Wild Party', rocker Alice Cooper announced he was going to run for Governor of Arizona.

1989 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini offered a US$3 million bounty for the death of The Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie.

1989 A United Airlines Boeing 747 bound to New Zealand from Honolulu, Hawaii ripped open during flight, sucking nine passengers and crew out of the first-class section.

1995 The Corona reconnaissance satellite program, in existence from 1959 to 1972, was declassified.

1996 The last occurrence of February 24 as a leap day in the European Union and for the Roman Catholic Church.

1999 LaGrand Case: The State of Arizona, USA, executed Karl LaGrand, a German national involved in an armed robbery that led to a death. Karl's brother Walter was executed a week later, in spite of Germany's legal action in the International Court of Justice to attempt to save him.

2004 Sega published its last Dreamcast game, Puyo Puyo Fever.

Tomorrow: Who said "Don't worry. Be happy."?

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Wikipedia and David Brown's prodigious Daily Bleed are both excellent resources that aid my research.
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© My own copyright policy is also liberal, but as this is my livelihood, conditions apply.

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