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1677 – The first medical publication in America, a pamphlet on smallpox, is distributed in Boston
1749 – The Verona Philharmonic Theatre was destroyed by fire and rebuilt in 1754
1793 – Louis XVI of France is executed by the guillotine in Paris, following his conviction for high treason
1818 – Keats writes his poem “On a Lock of Milton’s Hair
1827 – Freedom Journal begins publishing
1903 – Harry Houdini escapes from Halvemaansteeg police station in Amsterdam
1908 – New York City regulation makes it illegal for a woman to smoke in public
1922 – First slalom ski race runs in Murren, Switzerland
1942 – Bronx magistrate rules all pinball machines illegal. In the early 1940s Mayor Fiorello La Guardia banned the machines city wide, believing they robbed school children of their hard earned nickels and dimes. There were major raids throughout the city and police often destroyed the machine with sledgehammers. The ban ended when Roger Sharpe testified before a committee that pinball was a game of skill rather than chance and demonstrated this by setting up a game in the courtroom and calling out what he was going to shoot for and proceeding to do just that. He compared this move to Babe Ruth’s home run in the 1932 World Series, but supposedly acknowledges his shot was made by sheer luck
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Overhead shot of Spirit without
accumulated dust, 2008
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1954 – First gas turbine automobile exhibited in New York City
1976 – Supersonic Concorde, first commercial flights, by Britain and France
1986 – One-hundred participate in Nude Olympics race in Indiana where the temperature was thirty-eight degrees Fahrenheit
1999 – In one of the largest drug busts in American history, the U.S. Coast Guard intercepts a ship carrying four-thousand and three-hundred kilograms cocaine
2004 – NASA’s Mars Rover, Spirit, ceases communication with mission control. The problem lies with Flash Memory management and is fixed remotely from Earth on February 6. The rover completed its planned three-month mission and went on to function effectively over twenty-times longer than NASA expected, mainly due to wind removing dust from the solar panels, which resulted in higher power.
Birthdays
1921 – Barney Clark, first person to receive a permanent artificial heart
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Drawing of a hippocampus by Camillo Golgi
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Deaths
1926 – Camillo Golgi, Italian physician and medical researcher who shared the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Santiago Ramón y Cajal “in recognition of their work on the structure of the nervous system”, dies at eighty-one. The Golgi apparatus and Golgi tendon organ are named for him. Golgi is widely regarded as the greatest neuroscientist and biologist of his time
1950 – George Orwell, born Eric Arthur Blair, author remembered best for “Animal Farm” and “1984“, dies in London at forty-six
Anniversaries
1966 – Beatle George Harrison marries model Patti Boyd
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