February may be short but it's also: Low Vision Awareness, African American History, American Heart, American History, Canned Food, National Cat Health, National Cherry, National Children's Dental Health, National Embroidery, National Pet Oral Health Care, National Snack Food, National Weddings, Potato Lovers, Responsible Pet Owner, Prevent Litter and National Wild Bird-Feeding Month.
1 1894 John Ford; 1902 Langston Hughes; 1904 S.J. Perelman; 1908 George Pal; 1918 Muriel Spark; 1926 Stuart Whitman; 1937 Garrett Morris; 1942 Terry Jones; 1947 Jessica Savitch; 1954 Bill Mumy; 1965 Brandon Lee; 1968 Lisa Marie Presley, Pauly Shore.
• 1650: Rene "I think, therefore I am" Descartes, ceases to "am".
• 1709: Alexander Selkirk is rescued after being marooned on a desert island; his story is the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe, Gilligan's Island and countless New Yorker magazine cartoons.
• 1887: Harvey Wilcox starts selling off 120 acres in Southern California as a real estate development known as Hollywoodland.
• 1951: First telecast of atomic explosion; also the first moving X-ray picture is demonstrated; we're sure this is just a coincidence.
• 2005: Since the lumberjacks seem okay with it, Canada legalizes same-sex marriage.
2 1882 James Joyce; 1905 Ayn Rand; 1923 James Dickey, Liz Smith; 1925 Elaine Stritch; 1926 Valery Giscard D'estaing; 1937 Tom Smothers; 1942 Graham Nash; 1947 Farrah Fawcett; 1949 Brent Spiner.
• 1887: The first Groundhog Day is observed in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.
• 1957: Liz Taylor's third marriage (Mike Todd).
• 1959: Buddy Holly's last performance.
• 1964: GI Joe debuts.
• 1982: Late Night with David Letterman premieres.
3 This Week is: "National Pride in Food Services" and "National Consumer Protection" week.
1874 Gertrude Stein; 1894 Norman Rockwell; 1904 Pretty Boy Floyd; 1918 Joey Bishop.
• 1815: First commercial cheese factory is founded in — surprise! — Switzerland.
• 1913: At date that will live in infamy! The 16th Amendment is ratified, authorizing the Federal government to impose and collect income tax.
• 1953: J. Fred Muggs, a chimpanzee, becomes a regular on NBC's Today Show; he is the most irritating performer on a morning show until Regis Philbin comes along.
• 1973 Richard Nixon signs Endangered Species Act, not realizing that his presidency will soon be among them.
4 1881 Fernand Leger; 1895 Nigel Bruce; 1902 Charles Lindbergh; 1913 Rosa Parks; 1947 Dan Quayle; 1948 Alice Cooper.
• 1945: FDR, Churchill & Stalin meet at Yalta, agree that "It's been too long, "Hey, you look great" and they "Shouldn't only get together when there's a war on."
• 1972: Senator Strom Thurmond suggests John Lennon be deported; considers him a threat to the Confederacy.
5 1900 Adlai Stevenson; 1906 John Carradine; 1914 William S. Burroughs; 1919 Red Buttons; 1930 John A. Gambling; 1934 Hank Aaron; 1940 H.R. Giger; 1948 Christopher Guest, Barbara Hershey, Errol Morris; 1964 Laura Linney.
• 1783: Sweden recognizes U.S. independence.
• 1922: First issue of Reader’s Digest; "Humor in Uniform" wasn't funny then, either.
6 1756 Aaron Burr; 1895 Babe Ruth; 1917 Zsa Zsa Gabor; 1931 Rip Torn, Mamie Van Doren; 1940 Tom Brokaw; 1945 Bob Marley.
• 1911: First old-age home opens in Prescott, Arizona; John McCain cuts the ceremonial ribbon.
7 1867 Laura Ingalls Wilder; 1885 Sinclair Lewis; 1887 Eubie Blake; 1908 Buster Crabbe; 1915 Eddie Bracken; 1956 Emo Philips; 1960 James Spader; 1962 Garth Brooks, Eddie Izzard; 1965 Chris Rock.
• 1839: Senator Henry Clay declares, "I had rather be right than president"; he gets his wish.
• 1990: The Communist Party agrees to give up power and let the Russian mafia run things.
8 1819 John Ruskin; 1820 William Tecumseh Sherman; 1878 Martin Buber; 1880 Franz Marc; 1894 King Vidor; 1921 Lana Turner; 1922 Audrey Meadows; 1925 Jack Lemmon; 1926 Neal Cassady; 1931 James Dean; 1940 Ted Koppel; 1941 Nick Nolte; 1942 Robert Klein; 1953 Mary Steenburgen; 1955 John Grisham.
• 1587: The beheading that launched a thousand melodramas; Mary, Queen of Scots, is executed for plotting to murder Queen Elizabeth I.
• 1922: President Warren G. Harding brings first radio in the White House; spends the afternoon trying to be the first caller who knows "The Phrase That Pays."
• 1960: Congress opens hearings looking into payola in the music industry and how to get in on the action.
9 1909 Carmen Miranda; 1914 Gypsy Rose Lee, Ernest Tubb, Bill Veeck; 1928 Roger Mudd, Frank Frazetta; 1942 Carole King; 1943 Joe Pesci; 1945 Mia Farrow; 1952 Mookie Wilson.
• 1870: U.S. Weather Bureau established; it's all anyone can talk about.
• 1871: Federal fish protection office authorized by Congress; the fish are given new identities and relocated to different states.
• 1891: First shipment of asparagus arrives in San Francisco; recipients refuse to take delivery without proof that it's "like, totally organic, was grown cruelty free and harvested by well-paid, union labor."
• 1964: The Beatles first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
10 This Week is: "National Crime Prevention" and "Cardiac Rehabilitation" week.
1893 Jimmy Durante; 1906 Lon Chaney Jr.; 1929 Jerry Goldsmith; 1930 Robert Wagner; 1937 Roberta Flack; 1944 Peter Allen; 1950 Mark Spitz; 1955 Greg Norman; 1961 George Stephanopoulos.
• 1863: In what is described as a "small gathering," P.T Barnum's world-famous dwarfs General Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren marry.
• 1933: A Dutch sea-plane bombs a Dutch ship; this sort of thing explains why the Dutch are no longer a world power.
• 1940: Hanna Barbera's Tom & Jerry debuts.
11 1847 Thomas Alva Edison; 1917 Sidney Sheldon; 1921 Lloyd Bentsen, Eva Gabor; 1922 Leslie Nielsen; 1934 Tina Louise, Mary Quant; 1936 Burt Reynolds; 1938 Manuel Antonio Noriega; 1969 Jennifer Aniston.
• 1960: Jack Paar walks off his own TV show.
• 2006: Vice President Dick Cheney shoots his hunting companion in the face; Cheney's upcoming deep-sea fishing trip is cancelled when everybody slated to go suddenly remember previous engagements that don't involve getting fishhooks in their eyes.
12 1663 Cotton Mather; 1809 Charles Darwin, Abraham Lincoln; 1915 Lorne Greene; 1923 Franco Zeffirelli; 1930 Arlen Specter; 1955 Arsenio Hall; 1968 Josh Brolin; 1980 Christina Ricci.
• 1994 Edvard Munch's painting "The Scream" is stolen from an Oslo museum; strangely, no one hears anything.
13 1892 Grant Wood; 1919 Tennessee Ernie Ford; 1923 Chuck Yeager; 1933 Kim Novak; 1934 George Segal; 1942 Peter Tork; 1944 Jerry Springer; 1950 Peter Gabriel; 1963 Penelope Ann Miller.
• 1924: King Tut's tomb opened; the translated hieroglyphics reveal the boy king's birthplace is Arizona.
• 1959: Barbie goes on sale, forever distorting toy makers' expectations of profits.
• 1971: While golfing Vice President Spiro Agnew hits a couple of tee shots into the crowd, injuring 2; what is it with vice presidents, anyway?
14 Valentine's Day
1894 Jack Benny; 1913 Mel Allen; 1921 Hugh Downs; 1922 Murray The K; 1934 Florence Henderson; 1936 Fanne Foxe, Andrew Prine; 1941 Donna Shalala, Paul Tsongas; 1942 Michael Bloomberg; 1944 Carl Bernstein, Alan Parker.
• 1848: James K. Polk is the first President photographed in office; his security detail roughs up shutterbug Matthew Brady and breaks his camera.
• 1899 U.S. Congress first uses voting machines; immediately holds hearings to find out who this George W. Bush fellow is.
• 1912: Arizona becomes 48th state; flagmakers rejoice.
• 1954: Senator John Kennedy appears on Meet the Press.
• 1962: Jacqueline Kennedy conducts White House tour on TV; footage of her walking in on JFK and Marilyn Monroe in flagrante delicto is cut from broadcast.
15 1820 Susan B. Anthony; 1874 Sir Ernest Shackleton; 1882 John Barrymore; 1907 Cesar Romero; 1918 Allan Arbus; 1948 Art Spiegelman; 1954 Matt Groening.
• 1898: USS Maine becomes memorable.
• 1903: First Teddy Bear introduced; namesake Teddy Roosevelt declares it "Bully," and then shoots it.
• 1941: Duke Ellington records Take the A Train; string section arrives late due to subway delays.
16 1710 King Louis XV Of France; 1903 Edgar Bergen; 1935 Sonny Bono; 1957 Levar Burton; 1958 Ice-T; 1959 John Mcenroe.
• 1905: American Esperanto club first meets in Boston; at least that's who we think they said they were, we couldn't really understand them.
• 1964: Beatles' second appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
• 1982: The '70s are declared officially over on this day when Lee Majors & Farrah Fawcett divorce.
17 1818 Frederick Douglass; 1924 Margaret Truman; 1925 Hal Holbrook; 1934 Alan Bates, Barry Humphries; 1935 Christina Pickles; 1936 Jim Brown; 1954 Rene Russo; 1981 Paris Hilton.
• 1598: Boris Godunov chosen Tsar of Russia; embittered, his cousin, Boris Badenov, begins his obsessive quest for Moose and Squirrel.
• 1801: An electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr is resolved by the House of Representatives, rather than Burr's suggestion of pistols at dawn.
18 Presidents Day
This Week is: "Child Passenger Safety Awareness" and "Pay Your Bills" week.
• 1848 Louis Comfort Tiffany; 1892 Wendell Willkie; 1919 Jack Palance; 1930 Gahan Wilson; 1931 Johnny Hart, Toni Morrison; 1932 Milos Forman; 1933 Yoko Ono; 1950 John Hughes, Cybill Shepherd; 1954 John Travolta; 1964 Matt Dillon; 1968 Molly Ringwald.
• 1885: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn published.
• 1929: First Academy Award nominations are announced.
• 1995: Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee wed
19 1473 Nicolaus Copernicus; 1911 Merle Oberon; 1917 Carson McCullers; 1924 Lee Marvin; 1952 Amy Tan; 1955 Jeff Daniels; 1963 Seal.
• 1899: Warmest summer ever had there was this winter day in San Francisco at 80º F.
• 1981 George Harrison is fined $587,000 for "subconscious plagiarism" due to the undeniable resemblance of his song My Sweet Lord to the Chiffon's He's So Fine; but he still gets off scott-free for annoying the hell out of everyone with all the hare krishna bullshit.
20 1899 Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney; 1924 Gloria Vanderbilt; 1925 Robert Altman; 1927 Roy Cohn, Sidney Poitier; 1942 Phil Esposito; 1946 Sandy Duncan, J. Geils; 1954 Patty Hearst; 1960 Joel Hodgson; 1963 Charles Barkley; 1964 French Stewart; 1966 Cindy Crawford; 1967 Kurt Cobain, Lili Taylor.
• 1950: Dylan Thomas arrives in New York for his first U.S. poetry reading tour; original schedule deteriorates into Thomas holding forth at the White Horse Tavern, endlessly reciting his epic work, "Another Round for Me and My Friend, Here!"
• 1992: Ross Perot announces he'll run for President of Larry King Live.
21 1903 Anais Nin; 1907 W. H. Auden; 1925 Sam Peckinpah; 1927 Erma Bombeck; 1936 Barbara Jordan; 1943 David Geffen; 1953 Christine Ebersole, William Petersen; 1955 Kelsey Grammer; 1962 David Foster Wallace; 1963 William Baldwin; 1979 Jennifer Love Hewitt; 1986 Charlotte Church.
• 1925: The New Yorker publishes its first issue.
• 1952: Liz Taylor's second marriage (Michael Wilding)
• 1953: Francis Crick and James D. Watson discover the structure of DNA.
• 1972: Nixon goes to China.
22 1732 George Washington; 1892 Edna St. Vincent Millay; 1907 Sheldon Leonard, Robert Young; 1908 Sir John Mills; 1925 Edward Gorey; 1932 Ted Kennedy; 1950 Julius Erving; 1975 Drew Barrymore.
• 1819: Spain sells Florida to the U.S. for $5 million. Neglects to mention the swamps, hurricanes, bugs, humidity or the long lines at Epcot.
• 1900: Hawaii became a US. territory
• 1992: Kurt Cobain & Courtney Love get married.
23 1633 Samuel Pepys; 1904 William L. Shirer; 1932 Majel Barrett; 1940 Peter Fonda; 1944 Johnny Winter.
• 1660: Charles XI becomes king of Sweden and, so far as we know, still is.
• 1886: London Times publishes world's first classified ad, "Prpr gntlm sks scy wnch fr spnkg & notty fun. No fatties."
• 1903: Guantanamo, Cuba leased to U.S. (London bookies favor the odds that we'll never get our security deposit back).
24 1786 Wilhelm Grimm; 1836 Winslow Homer; 1926 Jean Alexander; 1942 Joe Lieberman; 1947 Rupert Holmes, Edward James Olmos; 1962 Michelle Shocked; 1968 Mitch Hedberg.
• 1918: Estonia declares independence from Russia and isn't heard from again until 1991.
• 1998: Elton John knighted; it is not, however, the first time he's knelt before a queen.
25 1873 Enrico Caruso; 1901 Zeppo Marx; 1917 Anthony Burgess; 1928 Larry Gelbart; 1929 Tommy Newsom; 1950 Neil Jordan; 1966 Tea Leoni.
• 1870: Hiram Rhodes Revels, Republican from Mississippi, is sworn in as a United States Senator, becoming the first African American ever to sit in the U.S. Congress. Sure, they make him sit way at the back, but still.
• 1950 Your Show of Shows with Sid Caesar & Imogene Coca premieres.
• 1957: Buddy Holly & the Crickets record That'll Be the Day; that day turns out to be February 3, 1959.
• 1982: Final episode of The Lawrence Welk Show airs; even he can't believe it was still on.
26 1564 Christopher Marlowe; 1802 Victor Hugo; 1808 Honoré Daumier; 1829 Levi Strauss; 1908 Tex Avery; 1916 Jackie Gleason; 1928 Fats Domino; 1932 Johnny Cash; 1934 Robert Novak; 1945 Mitch Ryder; 1951 Lee Atwater; 1953 Michael Bolton.
• 1815: Able is Napoleon to escape from Elba without the aid of an anagram.
• 1933: Golden Gate Bridge ground-breaking ceremony.
• 1936: Hitler introduces Ferdinand Porsche's "Volkswagen."
• 1936: Military coup in Japan; no Toyotas are rolled out.
• 1975: First televised kidney transplant, broadcast on the Today Show; viewers will look back fondly at such tasteful morning programming after Al Roker's colonoscopy in 2005.
27 272 Constantine I; 1807 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; 1902 John Steinbeck; 1913 Irwin Shaw; 1917 John Connally; 1930 Joanne Woodward; 1932 Elizabeth Taylor; 1934 Ralph Nader; 1940 Howard Hesseman; 1962 Adam Baldwin.
• 1974: People magazine commences publication; national IQ drops 18 points.
• 1986: The U.S. Senate allows its debates to be televised; sales of men's hair coloring and corsets skyrocket in Washington, DC.
28 1820 John Tenniel; 1901 Linus Pauling; 1903 Vincente Minnelli; 1906 Bugsy Siegel; 1907 Milton Caniff; 1915 Zero Mostel; 1929 Frank Gehry; 1939 Tommy Tune; 1940 Mario Andretti; 1945 Bubba Smith; 1948 Bernadette Peters, Mercedes Ruehl; 1953 Paul Krugman; 1957 John Turturro; 1961 Rae Dawn Chong.
• 1692: Salem witch hunt begins; whoever gets back at the end of the day with the most witches wins.
• 1983 Millions tune into finale of MASH under mistaken impression they'll never see show again.