February 10 in Pop Culture History

1763 - The Treaty of Paris ended the French and Indian War and France ceded Canada to England.

1840 - Queen Victoria and her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe Coburg-Gotha, married. They had 9 children
- Victoria, Bertie, Alice, Alfred, Helena, Louise, Arthur, Leopold, and Beatrice.

1863 - General Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren were married in NYC.

1870 - The YWCA (Young Women's Christian Association) was formally founded in New York City.

1897 - All The News That's Fit To Print Day - the phrase began permanantly on the front page of The New
York Times.

1933 - In Round 13 of a infamous boxing match at Madison Square Garden; Primo Carnera knocked out
Ernie Shaaf, killing him.

1933 - The singing telegram was introduced by the Postal Telegraph Company of New York City.

1942 - The first gold record was presented to Glenn Miller for Chattanooga Choo Choo for selling 1.2
million copies. There was no official rule set at the time to qualify.

1949 - Death of a Salesman by American playwright Arthur Miller, opened at the Morocco Theatre in New
York City.

1953 - Romper Room premiered, in syndication.

1956 - My Friend Flicka debuted on CBS

1962 - Roy Lichtenstein's first solo art exhibition opened at the Castelli Gallery in NYC.

1962 - The Soviet Union exchanged captured American U2 pilot Francis Gary Powers for the Soviet spy
Rudolph Ivanovich Abe with the US.

1966 - Ralph Nader, the author of Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American
Automobile, testified before Congress for the first time about unsafe practices in the auto industry.

1992 - Mike Tyson was convicted in Indianapolis of raping Desiree Washington, Miss Black American
contestant.

1993- Oprah Winfrey interviewed Michael Jackson at his home The Neverland Ranch. It was Jackson's
first televised interview since 1979.

1996 - World chess champion Gary Kasparov lost the first game of a six-game match against Deep Blue.
He won three, and tied twice in the matchup.

February 11 in Pop Culture History

It's National Pro Sport's Wives Day

660 BC - Traditional date for the foundation of Japan by Emperor Jimmu.

1534 - Henry VIII of England is recognized as supreme head of the Church of England.

1752 - The first hospital in the United States, Pennsylvania Hospital, opened.

1808 - As an experiment, anthracite coal was burned as a fuel by Judge Jesse Fell in Pennsylvania.

1812 - Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry gerrymandered for the first time.

1858 - Marie-Bernarde Soubirous, a 14-year-old French peasant girl, first claimed to see a vision of the
Virgin Mary near Lourdes, France. In 1933, she was canonized as St. Bernadette by the Roman Catholic
Church.

1928 - The La-Z-Boy reclining chair was invented by Ed Shoemaker.

1929 - The Vatican was officially independant from Italy with the Lateran Treaty.

1939 - Nature published a theoretical paper on nuclear fission by Lise Meitner and Otto Fritsch.

1940 - NBC radio debuted The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street.

1963 - The French Chef, starring Jula Child debuted on WGBH in Boston, MA.

1989 - Rev. Barbara Harris became the first woman to be consecrated as a bishop in the Episcopal
Church.

1990 - Nelson Mandela, leader of the movement to end South African apartheid, was released from prison
after 27 years

1990 - Buster Douglas (40 to 1 odds against him winning) defeated Mike Tyson, to become the new
undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.

1994 - The 'rBGH' genetically engineered growth hormone for cows goes on sale to dairy farmers under
the name Posilac, made by Monsanto. It was the first time altered genes were allowed into live animals.

2006 - Vice President Dick Cheney accidently shot his friend Harry Whittington while the two were hunting
together

2012 - Singer Whitney Houston died in a hotel bathtub, the result of accidental drowning. Heart disease
and cocaine, which was found in her system, were determined to be contributing factors.

February 12 in Pop Culture History

Feb 12 is Darwin Day, named after the anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth (Feb 12, 1813)

881 - Charles the Fat was declared the Holy Roman Emperor.

1809 - US President Abraham Lincoln, born February 12, 1809 in LaRue County, Kentucky, died on April
15, 1865 in Washington, DC.

1870 - Women were given the right to vote, in Utah.

1879 - The first artificial ice rink opened in Madison Square Garden in NYC.

1898 - The first car crash resulting in a fatality happened to Henry Lindfield, in England.

1914 - The first stone of Washington DC's Lincoln Memorial is put into place.

1924 - Rhapsody In Blue, by George Gershwin, performed for first time at the Aeolian Hall in New York
City. Paul Whitman conducted the now classic piece of American music.

1931 - Dracula premiered in theaters.

1935 - The patent (#1,991,236) was issued to Robert Jemison Van de Graaff for his Electrostatic
Generator.

1963 - Construction began on the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.

1999 - President Bill Clinton was acquitted on both articles of impeachment against him: perjury and
obstruction of justice.

2004 - The city and county of San Franciso began to issue marriage license to same-sex couples
2004 - Mattel officially announced the split of Barbie and Ken

February 13 in Pop Culture History

It's World Whale Day

1633 - Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome to face charges of heresy by the Catholic Church for advocating
Copernican theory, which held that the Earth revolved around the Sun.

1741 - The first magazine was published in America - The American Magazine.

1906 -The patent (#812,554) was issued to Alfred Einhorn for his synthesis of procaine, which was given
the tradename of Novocain.

1914 -The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP ) was established to protect
the copyrighted musical compositions of its members.

1915 - The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), headed by Victor Herbert,
was founded.

1946 - The world's first electronic digital computer, ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and
Calculator) was first demonstrated at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of
Pennsylvania, by John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert.

1993 - Double Dare game show ended

2000 - Two days after Charles M Schulz died, February 11, the last original Peanuts comic strip was
printed in newspapers

2004 - Astronomer Travis Metcalfe of the Harvard - Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics believed he
discovered the largest diamond in the known universe at the center of the white dwarf star, BPM 37093.
Observations claim that the core of the star is a diamond crystal 4000km in diameter.

February 14 in Pop Culture History

Ferris Wheel Day, named after George Ferris, born Feb. 14, 1859.
It is also National Donor Day & St. Valentine's Day.
Valentines day originates from a celebration called "Lupercalia" where Roman men would whip women
with the pelts of freshly skinned animals.

278 - Valentine, a priest in Rome in the days of Emperor Claudius II, was beheaded for performing (illegal
at the time) marragige ceremonies.

1779 - Captain James Cook, the great English explorer and surveyor in the Royal Navy, was murdered by
natives of Hawaii during his third visit to the Pacific island group.

1822 - The patent (#X003456) was issued for the first practical grass mowing machine to Jeremiah Bailey
of Chester county, Pennsylvania.

1859 - Oregon Joined the United States.

1876 - Both Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray applied for a telephone patent. Alexander's was later
approved.

1903 - The United States Department of Commerce and Labor is established (it was later split into the
Department of Commerce and the Department of Labor).

1912 - Arizona was admitted at the 48th state of the United States.

1920 - The League of Women Voters formed in Chicago, IL.

1929 - Sir Alexander Fleming left a plate of staphylococcus bacteria uncovered, and noticed the mold had
killed much of the bacteria. He identified the mold as penicillium notatum, and shortened the name to
Penicillin.

1929 - Four men came in, dressed as police at Bugs Moran's headquarters on North Clark Street in
Chicago, killing seven of Bugs's men in what is called the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Moran was a
rival of of Al Capone.

1938 - Former silent film actress Hedda Hopper began her gossip column in The Los Angeles Times.

1961 - Element 103, Lawrencium, was first synthesized at the University of California.

1970 - Live at Leeds by The Who was recorded.

1989 - Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa encouraging Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie,
author of The Satanic Verses.

2000 - NEAR Shoemaker became the first spacecraft to orbit around an asteroid, 433 Eros

2002 - The final Family Guy episode aired after Fox announced its cancellation. It came back after DVD
sales indicated a huge auduence for the show.

2005 - Youtube.com was launched.

February 15 in Pop Culture History

1758 - Mustard was first advertised for sale in America, by Benjamin Jackson, in Philadelphia, PA.

1764 - The city of St. Louis was established in Spanish Louisiana (now in Missouri, USA).

1898 - An explosion sank the battleship USS Maine in Cuba's Havana harbor, killing 260 of the fewer than
400 American crew members aboard, sparking the Spanish-American war.

1903 - The first Teddy Bear was introduced in Brooklyn, NY.

1946 - ENIAC, the first electronic general-purpose computer, was formally dedicated at the University of
Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

1950 - Disney's Cinderella cartoon feature opened in theaters. It was one of the biggest films of the year,
and was theatrically re-released several time s- 1957, 1965, 1973, 1981 and 1987.

1961 - The whole 18-member US figure skating team was killed in a plane crash in Berg-Kampenhout,
Belgium. The team was on its way to the 1961 World Figure Skating Championships in Prague,
Czechoslovakia.

1965 - The flag we know today, the red and white maple leaf was designed as the new flag of Canada.
Prior to that, the official flag was Britain's Union Jack.

1992 - Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced in Milwaukee to life in prison.

2003 - It was estimated that between 8,000,000-30,000,000 people in 600 cities worldwide, the protest of
the Iraq War was the largest protest in the history of the world.

2005 - YouTube was activated online.

2013 - A meteor exploded in the sky over Russia's Ural Mountains, near Chelyabinsk, shattering glass
and setting off car alarms for miles. Also, asteroid DA14 came with 18,000 miles of Earth.

February 16 in Pop Culture History

1852 - Studebaker Brothers wagon company was established.
1894 - Gunslinger John Wesley Hardin is pardoned after spending 15 years in a Texas prison for murder.
Hardin shot and killed a man just for snoring, by firing through the wall at the sleeping snorer.

1923 - In Thebes, Egypt, English archaeologist Howard Carter entered the sealed burial chamber of the
ancient Egyptian ruler King Tutankhamen. He had been looking for King Tut's tomb since his first trip the
Egypt in 1891. The outer chambers were discovered in November, 1922.

1959 - Fidel Castro was sworn in as prime minister of Cuba after leading a Communist guerrilla campaign
that forced dictator Fulgencio Batista into exile.

1964 - The Beatles appeared in the Ed Sullivan Show for the second time.

1968 - Haleyville, Alabama was the first town to use the 911 emergency number.

1983 - The Ash Wednesday brushfires in Southern Austalia took the lives of 71 people, becoming
Australia's worst fire ever.

2005 - The National Hockey League canceled the entire 2004-2005 regular season and playoffs.

February 17 in Pop Culture History

1621 - Myles Standish was appointed as first commander of the English Plymouth Colony in North
America.

1859 - Dmitri Mendeleev began creating what we now call The Periodic Table.

1904 - Giacomo Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly premiered at the La Scala theatre in Milan, Italy. It was
one of the firts world-wide pop culture event 'hits'.

1933 - The magazine Newsweek was published for the first time. In October 2012, it was announced that
Newsweek would cease print publication with the December 31, 2012.

1958 - Pope Pius XII designated St. Clare of Assisi the patron saint of television.

1959 - Vanguard 2 - The first weather satellite waslaunched to measure cloud-cover distribution.

1968 - The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame opened in Springfield, MA

1972 - With the 15,007,034th Volkswagen Beetle coming off the assembly line, the VW Beetle broke the
world car production record held for more than four decades by the Ford Motor Company's Model T,
which was in production from 1908 and 1927.

1979 - A Prairie Home Companion premiered on Minnesota Public Radio.

1995 - Colin Fergson was convicted of the 1993 Long Island Rail Road shootings and recieved a 200+
year sentence to jail

1996 - In the final game of a six-game match, world chess champion Garry Kasparov defeated Deep Blue,
IBM's chess-playing computer, and won the match, 4-2. But in 1997, Deep Blue defeated Kasparov in a
rematch.

2009 - 368 US Television stations permanently shut off their analog transmission signals, becoming
digital.

February 18 in Pop Culture History

1856 - The "Known-Nothing Party," convened in Philadelphia to nominate its first presidential candidate.
The Know-Nothing movement began in the 1840s, when an increasing rate of immigration led to the
formation of a number of groups to combat "foreign" influences in American society.

1861 - Jefferson Davis became the provisional president of the Confederate States of America. He was
'provisional' becuase he was not elected by the people, but appointed by the Confederate Congress.
1885 - Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckberry Finn was published for the first time.

1913 - Pedro Lascuráin becomes President of Mexico for 45 minutes, the shortest term to date of any
person as president of any country.

1929 - The first Academy Awards were announced in 1929 for 1928's films.

1930 - A cow named Ollie was milked over St. Louis, MO. Her milk was cartoned and parachuted down.

1930 - Ex-planet Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh.

1954 - The first Church of Scientology was established in Los Angeles.

1978 - The first Ironman Triathlon competition took place on the island of Oahu and is won by Gordon
Haller.

2001 - Race car legend Ralph Dale Earnhardt was killed in a crash in the last lap of the Daytona 500 .
Richard Petty won the race.

February 19 in Pop Culture History

1600 (Volcano Eruption) Huaynaputina

1847 - Of the 89 original members of the Donner Party, only 45 reached California. They had been
trapped, with no provisions and little survival skills since late October of 1848, about 13 miles northwest of
Lake Tahoe.

1864 - The Kights of Pythias was established in Washington, DC.

1884 - More than sixty tornadoes struck the Southern United States in one of the largest tornado
outbreaks in US history.

1878 - The patent (#200,521) for Thomas Edision's phonograph was granted.

1942 - US President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the removal of any
or all people from military areas "as deemed necessary or desirable." This was the basis for the Japanses
Internment camps, which held over 100,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans until January 2, 1945. In
1988, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill to repay every surviving internee with a tax-free payment
of$20,000 and an apology from the US government.

1963 - The Feminine Mistique by Betty Friedan was published.

1980 - AC/DC vocalist Bon Scott died from alcohol poisoning

1982 - Rock legend Ozzy Ozbourne was arrested for urinating on the Alamo

1985 - William J. Schroeder became the first articifial heart patient to leave the hospital.

1985 - The Eastenders premiered in the UK.

1986 - The US Senate approved a treaty that outlawed genocide

1994 - Martin Lawrence made a sexually explicit joke during his opening monologue during his
appearance on Saturday Night Live. The joke was in reference to female genitalia and feminine hygiene.
He ended up being banned from the NBC network for a year and from SNL for life. During re-broadcast of
the episode the joke is replaced by a title card read off-screen and the joke nearly cost everyone at SNL
their jobs.

2006 - The Rolling Stones performed in front of the largest open show for the public in Copacabana
Beach in Brazil,1.3 Million people attended
2010 - Golfer Tiger Woods admitted to having several affairs, which were brought to light after an incident
in Windermere, Florida, an Orlando suburb, around 2:30 a.m. on November 27, 2009. His car crashed,
reportedly, but several eyewitness accounts said it looked like it was attacked by someone with a golf
club. Ironically, his wife, Elin Nordegren, was reportedly informed about his infidelities shortly before the
'crash.'

February 20 in Pop Culture History

1792 - The United States Post Office became a cabinet postion under President George Washington. In
1971, the Post Office became an indepedendent corporation.

1816 - Rossini's opera The Barber of Seville premiered at the Teatro Argentina in Rome.

1872 - The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened in New York City.

1872 - Luther Childs Crowell (#123,811) received the patent for a machine for manufacturing square-
bottom paper bags. We still use the design today.

1877 - Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake gave its premiere performance at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.

1931 - San Franciso got approval from the US Congress to build the San Franciso-Oakland Bay Bridge.

1943 - American movie studio executives agreed to allow the Office of War Information to censor movies.

1962 - Launching from Cape Canaveral, Florida, John Hershel Glenn Jr. successfully went into space
aboard the Friendship 7 spacecraft on the first orbital flight by an American astronaut.

1979 - This Old House premiered on PBS.

1986 - The Soviet Union launched the Mir space station into orbit.

1986 - After about a century of planning and a millennium of wishing, it was announced that the "Chunnel"
bewteen the UK and France would be built. Construction began in December 1987 and the "chunnel" was
finally completed in 1994

1995- A short called "Changes" which was the pilot for Dexter's Laboratory aired on Cartoon Network. It
was a huge success and is credited with helping launch the animation careers of Butch Hartman, Craig
McCracken and Seth McFarlane.

1996- VH1 Storytellers debuted on VH1

1998 - American figure skater Tara Lipinski became the youngest gold-metal winner at the Winter
Olympics in Nagano, Japan

2001 - FBI agent Robert Hanssen was arrested and charged with spying for the Russians for 15 years

2003 - Great White's pyrotechnics went out of control, burning down Rhode Island's 'The Station'
nightclub, and took 100 lives.

2005 - Robot Chicken premiered on Adult Swim.

2013 - The smallest extrasolar planet, Kepler-37b was discovered.

February 21 in Pop Culture History

1848 - The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, was published in London by
a group of German-born revolutionary known as the Communist League.

1878 - The first telephone directory in the US, listing about 50 names, was issued by the New Haven
Telephone Company, in New Haven, Connecticut.
1885 - The Washington Monument was dedicated. It was opened to the public about three years later. At
555 feet 5 1/8 inches, it was the tallest structure in the world until the Eiffel Tower was completed in 1889.
The 555-foot-high marble obelisk was first proposed in 1783, and had countless delays, including the
American Civil War.

1925 - The New Yorker magazine began publication.

1948 - The National Association for Stock Car Racing - NASCAR - was founded.

1953 - The structure of the DNA molecule was discovered by Francis Crick and James D. Watson

1965 - Malcom X was assassinated by members of the Nation of Islam in the Audubon Ballroom in New
York City.

1991 - Lost in Yonkers premiered in NYC at the Richard Rodger Theatre.

1997 - The all digital Wheel of Fortune board was introduced.

February 22 in Pop Culture History

1620 - Popcorn was introduced to the English colonists by an Indian named Quadequina.

1632 - Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems was published.

1732 - US President George Washington, born February 22, 1732 in Westmoreland County Virginia, died
on December 14, 1799 in Mount Vernon, Virginia.

1759 - Today is the day that middle class 27 year old George Washington married rich widow (also 27)
Martha Dandridge Curtis, and became a wealthy man (he was already a war hero).

1819 - Spanish minister Do Luis de Onis and US Secretary of State John Quincy Adams signed the
Florida Purchase Treaty, giving the United States control of all of Florida.

1855 - Pennsylvania State University was founded in State College, Pennsylvania (as the Farmers' High
School of Pennsylvania)

1879 - The first F.W. Woolworth's 5 & Dime opened in Utica, NY. It became the first chain store.

1934 - It Happened One Night premiered in theaters.

1956 - Elvis Presley debuted on the music charts with Heartbreak Hotel.

1959 - Lee Petty defeated Johnny Beauchamp in a photo finish at the brand new Daytona International
Speedway in Florida to win the first-ever Daytona 500.

1974 - Samuel Byrck unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate President Richard Nixon

1978 - Rock band The Police appeared in a television commercial for Wrigley's chewing gum

1980 - The 'Miracle on Ice' - The US Men's Hockey Team won a 4-3 victory over the Soviet Union at the
Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. Two days later, the Americans went on to beat Finland and
take home the gold medal.

1990 - Best New Artist Grammy was awarded to song and dance performers Milli Vanilli.

2006 - iTunes sold it's BILLIONTH music download. 16 year old Alex Ostrovsky of West Bloomfield,
bought "Speed of Sound" by Coldplay. He later got a phone call from Steve Jobs and won a lot of iPod
and Mac stuff.

2006 - At least six men staged Britain's biggest bank robbery ever stealing the equilvalent of 92 million
American dollars from a security depot in Tonbridge, Kent.
February 23 in Pop Culture History
1455 - Traditional date for the publication of the Gutenberg Bible, the first Western book printed with
movable type. Ironically, if there were newspapers at the time, we could be more confident about the
date.

17389 - Richard Palmer was identified by his former schoolteacher, as the outlaw Dick Turpin.

1896 - The Tootsie Roll was introduced by Leo Hirshfield, in New York.

1903 - Cuba leased Guantanamo Bay to the United States "in perpetuity".

1905 - Chicago attorney Paul Harris and three other businessmen met for lunch to form the Rotary Club,
the world's first service club.

1941 - Plutonium was first produced and isolated by Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg

1945 - During the Battle for Iwo Jima, US Marines from the 3rd Platoon, E Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th
Regiment of the 5th Division take the crest of Mount Suribachi, the island's highest peak, and raised the
US flag. The photo would later become world-famous as well as win a Pulitzer Prize.

1947 - The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) was founded.

1954 - The first mass inoculation of children against polio with Jonas Salk's vaccine began in Pittsburgh,
PA.

1955 - First meeting of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).

1964 - The Beatles appeared in the Ed Sullivan Show for the third time.

1967 - The Beatles made a taped appearance on American Bandstand, where they premiered their new
music videos for the songs "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever"

1975 - There was an energy crisis in the US in 1975, so daylight savings time started two months early -
Feb 23rd instead of April.

1978 -Both Barbra Streisand's Love Theme from A Star Is Born (Evergreen) and Debby Boone's You
Light Up My Life were awarded the Best Song Grammy - the first and only tie in that category in Grammy
history.

1987 - Supernova 1987a was seen in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

1991 - Operation Desert Storm began in Iraq.

1997 - Scientists announced the first successful cloning of an animal, a lamb named Dolly.

February 24 in Pop Culture History

1582 - The Gregorian Calendar, which most of the world uses today, was introduced.

1711 - The London premiere of Rinaldo by George Frideric Handel. It was the first Italian opera written for
the London stage.

1863 - Arizona was organized as a United States territory.

1892 (Earthquake) Imperial Valley, California

1938 - A nylon-bristled toothbrush became the first commercial product to be made with nylon yarn.

1938 - Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) had bought the rights to adapt L. Frank Baum's beloved children's
novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, as reported by Variety magazine.
1938 - DuPont began commercial production of nylon toothbrush bristles for the so-called "Miracle Tuft
Toothbrush."

1942 - In what may or may not have been a UFO attack, The Battle of Los Angeles lasted into the early
hours of February 25.

1952 - The Reputed 'Battle of LA' in Los Angeles, California

1970 - The National Public Radio was founded in the US.

1980 - The United States Olympic Hockey team completed its Miracle on Ice by defeating Finland 4-2 to
win the gold medal.

1981- The engagement of Charles, Price of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer was announced

1982 - The US Supreme Court voted 8-0 to overturn the $200,000 settlement awarded to the Reverend
Jerry Falwell for his emotional distress at being parodied in Hustler, a pornographic magazine. Basically
the Supreme Court ruled that you can mock public figures.

1993- Michael Jackson received the Grammy Legend award which was presented to him by his sister
Janet at the 35th annual Grammy Awards.

2011 - The final Launch of Space Shuttle Discovery (OV-103).

February 25 in Pop Culture History

National Chili Day

1836 - Samuel Colt was granted a United States patent (#9430X) for his Colt revolver.

1901 - J.P. Morgan incorporated the United States Steel Corporation.

1919 - Oregon became the first US state to levy a gasoline tax by placing 1 cent tax on every gallon of
gas.

1932 - Adolf Hitler obtaind German citizenship by naturalization, which allows him to run in the 1932
election for Reichspräsident.

1950 - Your Show of Shows, hosted by Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca premiered on NBC.

1964 - Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali), age 22, defeated champion Sonny Liston in a technical knockout to
win the world heavyweight boxing crown.

1967 - Gene Kelly starred in Jack and the Beanstalk on NBC(produced by Hanna-Barbera) it was the first
TV special to combine live action and animation.

1991 - The Warsaw Pact officially disbanded.

2000 - Max Steel premiered on Kid's WB

2004 - The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson's film about the last 44 hours of Jesus of Nazareth's life,
opened in theaters, eventually earning over $370,700,000.

2006 - The world's population reached an estimated 6.5 billion people

February 26 in Pop Culture History

1616 - Galileo Galilei was formally banned by the Roman Catholic Church from teaching or defending the
view that the earth orbits the sun.

1815 - Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from Elba.

1829 - Levi Strauss was born. He never married, so, ironically, he didn't get to pass his genes on to the
next generation.

1870 - New York City's first pneumatic-powered subway line, created by Alfred Beach, was opened to the
public.

1909 - Kinemacolor, the first successful color motion picture process, was first shown to the general public
at the Palace Theatre in London with 21 short films.

1919 - 800,000 acres of the Grand Canyon, already a national monument, was designated a national park
under President Woodrow Wilson

1929 - President Calvin Coolidge signed into law a bill establishing the Grand Teton National Park, in
Wyoming.

1946 - Finnish observers reported the first of thousands of sightings of ghost rockets.

1993 - The first of the World Trade Bombings occured , the bomb went off in a parked truck under the
North Tower. The bombing killed six and injured over a thousand people

1995 - Selena Quintanilla-Perez performed her last concert in Houston before being shot by her
manager.

2005 - Halle Berry accepted her Razzie Award at the 25th annual ceremony at Hollywood's historic Ivar
Theatre.

2012 - Trayvon Martin, an African-American teen walking home from a trip to a convenience store, was
fatally shot in an altercation with George Zimmerman, a hispanic neighborhood watch volunteer patrolling
the townhouse community of the Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford, Florida.

February 27 in Pop Culture History

1703 - The first Mardi Gras was celebrated in Mobile, Alabama in 1703.

1801 - District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801 - Washington, D.C. is placed under the jurisdiction of the
US Congress. 'Taxation without representation.'

1827- Masked and costumed students danced through the streets of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the first
of the city's famous Mardi Gras celebrations.

1879 - Saccharin, the artificial sweetener, was discovered by Constantin Fahlberg,

1900 - German chemist Felix Hoffmann was issued the patent (#644,077) for 'Acetyl Salicylic Acid'. We
now call it Aspirin.

1936 - Shirley Temple received a new contract from 20th Century Fox that paid the seven-year-old star
$50,000 per film.

1960 - The US Olympic hockey team defeated the Soviet Union in the semifinals at the Winter Games in
Squaw Valley, California. The next day, the US team beat Czechoslovakia to win its first-ever Olympic
gold medal in hockey.

1973 - The American Indian Movement (AIM) occupied Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

1974 - People magazine was published for the first time

1980 - There was only one Grammy for Best Disco Recording ever, and it was awarded to Gloria Gaynor
for I Will Survive.

1999 - Colin Prescot and Andy Elson set a new endurance record after being in a hot air balloon for 233
hours and 55 minutes.

2010 (Earthquake) Coastal Maule, Chile

February 28 in Pop Culture History

National Tooth Fairy Day

1784 - John Wesley chartered the first Methodist Church in the United States. An Anglican, Wesley
wanted a church structure for his followers after the Anglican Church abandoned its American believers
during the American Revolution.

1827 - The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was incorporated. It was the first railroad in America offering
commercial transportation of both people and freight.

1885 - The American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) was incorporated in New York, as the
subsidiary of American Bell Telephone.

1935 - Wallace Carothers discovered Nylon while working at DuPont.

1839 - The non-existent word "dord" was publsihed in the Webster's New International Dictionary, Second
Edition.

1940 - Basketball was televised for the first time. The game was Fordam University vs. University of
Pittsberg

1953 - Cambridge University scientists James D. Watson and Frances H.C. Crick announced that they
had found the double-helix structure of DNA, the molecule containing human genes.

1983 - CBS sitcom M*A*S*H ended after 11 seasons, airing a special two-and-a-half hour episode
watched by 77% of the television viewing audience.

1993 - Near Mount Carmel in Waco, Texas, agents of the US Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) launch a raid against the Branch Davidian compound. At least 80 people,
including 22 children, were killed.

1996 - KISS reunited at the Grammys in full makeup and costume.

2013 - Pope Benedict XVI resigned as the pope of the Catholic Church - the first pope to do so since
1415.

February 29 in Pop Culture History

Bachelors Day
Leap Year Day
Underlings Day

46 BC - Julius Caesar declared the first Leap Day.

1288 - The concept of allowing women to propose marraige to men may have begun, in Scotland.

1692 - The first witches were arrested in Salem Massachusetts.

1936 - Baby Snooks, played by Fanny Brice, debuted on the radio show The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air.

1940 - Hattie McDaniel became the first African American to win an Academy Award, for her role as
Mammy in Gone With The Wind. It won 8 Oscars overall.

1944 - Dorothy McElroy Vredenburgh of Alabama became the first woman to be appointed secretary of a
national political party. She was appointed to the Democratic National Committee.

1960 (Eathquake) Agadir , Morocca, killed over 3,000 people.

1960 - The Family Circus comic strip by Bil Keane debuted.

1960 - The first Playboy Club opened, in Chicago.