Today in History.....

[jasknight12]

American actor Cesar Romero born 15 Feb 1907

 

[jasknight12]

English film and stage director John Schlesinger, born 16 Feb 1926

 

[jasknight12]

Italian composer Arcangelo Corelli born 17 Feb 1653

 

[jasknight12]

Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet Michelangelo, dies aged 88 on 18 Feb 1564.

 

[jasknight12]

The Battle of Darwin. 19 February 1942 was the largest single attack ever mounted by a foreign power on Australia. On that day, 242 Japanese aircraft, in two separate raids, attacked the town of Darwin, ships in Darwin's harbour and the town's two airfields in an attempt to prevent the Allies from using them as bases to contest the invasion of Timor and Java during World War II.

 

[jasknight12]

On 20 Feb 1962, John Glenn flew the Friendship 7 mission, becoming the first American to orbit the Earth, and the fifth person and third American in space.

 

[jasknight12]

'Incas', the last Carolina parakeet dies in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo on 21 Feb 1918. The species isn't declared officially extinct until 1939.

 

[jasknight12]

American romantic comedy film 'It Happened Last Night' is released on 22 Feb 1934. It is the first movie to win all five major Academy Awards (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay). In 1993 it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

 

[jasknight12]

German (later British) composer Georg Friedrich Handel is born 23 February 1685. He is considered one of the greatest baroque composers with works including Water Music, Music for the Royal Fireworks and Messiah. One of his four Coronation Anthems, Zadok the Priest (1727), composed for the coronation of George II, has been performed at every subsequent British coronation. I love this clip of when it was performed at the wedding of Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark and Mary Donaldson- brings the prince to tears!

 

[haiducii]

On this day: 23rd February

In 2008, Slovenian politician Janez Drnovšek died. He helped lead Slovenia to a relatively peaceful independence from Yugoslavia and, as the new country’s prime minister (1992 - 2002) and president (2002–2007), led it to membership in NATO and the European Union.

Janez Drnovšek was born on 17 May 1950 in Celje, Slovenia. In 1986, he finished his doctoral studies in economic science at the Faculty of Economics and Business in Maribor. In 1994, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Boston, and in 1999, an honorary doctorate from the Illinois Wesleyan University.

He was fluent in six languages, Slovene, Serbo-Croatian, English, Spanish, French and German. He was divorced with one son, Jaša Drnovšek, who is a translator and journalist. In 2005, he found out about the existence of a daughter, Nana Forte, otherwise a renowned composer. His favorite hobbies included jogging, tennis and cross country-skiing.

In 1999, Drnovšek had kidney cancer resulting in the removal of a kidney. After his diagnosis, Drnovšek became a vegan, and claims that this greatly improved his health. He repeatedly claimed nature was the best cure, and spent most of his days at his home in Zaplana, where he wrote and published several books in spiritual philosophy. Because of his new lifestyle and the content of his books and blogs, he was often regarded as an adherent of the New Age movement, although he rejected such a qualification as being too narrow.

Janez Drnovšek was one of handful of individuals who have shaped Slovenian politics in the last twenty years, and would easly make the list of top 10 Slovenians of the 20th century. Be it as a no-name thrown into a cessspool of Yugoslav politics, a highly talented PM who brought Slovenia back from the brink of economic collapse and transformed it into a sucessful new enocomy, as a statesman whose connections and acquaintances rivaled those of every American president or a popular leader who is was concerned with issued of enviroment and sustained growth and who brought the Darfur crisis to world’s attention, he set the pace and the tone of Slovenian and sometimes even international politics.

Photo: Long line of people waiting to sign a book of condolence at the presidential palace in Ljubljana (February 25th 2008)

 

[jasknight12]

American artist Winslow Homer is born on 24 February 1836.

 

[topdog]

On the 24th of February, 1981 Charles, Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer announced their engagement. It was a big press hullabaloo, as you might expect when a future King of England is engaged. What no one realized at the time was that the fuse was lit on a barrage of media coverage that would not end until Diana was dead.

 

[jasknight12]

Happy birthday to American horror/suspense author John Saul, who was born on 25 February 1942.

 

[jasknight12]

On 26 February 1991, the world's first web browser is presented to the public.

The browser “WorldWideWeb” (later renamed “Nexus”) was developed by Tim Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist best known as the inventor of the internet.

info.cern.ch was the address of the world's first-ever web site and web server, running on a NeXT computer at CERN. The first web page address was:

http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

 

[topdog]

On 26 February 1991, the world's first web browser is presented to the public...

1991? Really? Wow - I had been working with computers for 10 years by then. But then I was using the internet primarily for email and with CompsServe and AOL. Different world. Once we got browsers and www, everyone could surf anywhere and anyone could have their own web page.

 

[haiducii]

On this day: 28th February

In 1999, Luka Dončić, a Slovenian professional basketball player who plays for Real Madrid, was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

He is considered to be one of the most promising young talents of European basketball, and one of the best international players of his generation. His name is also mentioned by most professional media outlets, like Yahoo, to be a likely #1 pick for the 2018 NBA draft.

 

[trencherman]

20 years ago, research fraud catalyzed the anti-vaccination movement

Exactly 20 years ago today, Feb. 28, 1998, The Lancet,*an esteemed medical journal published*a small study that has become one of the most notorious and damaging pieces of research*in medicine.

The study, led by the now discredited physician-researcher Andrew Wakefield, involved 12 children and suggested there’s a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine — which is administered to millions of children around the world each year — and autism.

The study was subsequently thoroughly debunked.*The Lancet*retracted the paper and Wakefield was stripped of his medical license. Autism researchers have shown decisively again and again that the developmental disorder is not*caused by vaccines.

Still, public health experts say the false data and erroneous conclusions in that paper, while rejected in the scientific world, helped fuel a dangerous movement of vaccine skepticism and refusal around the world.

Since its publication, measles*outbreaks*have erupted in Europe, Australia, and*the US*in communities where*people refuse*or*fear vaccines. Vaccine refusal has become such a problem that some countries in Europe*are now cracking down, making vaccines mandatory for children and fining parents who reject them.*

 

[jasknight12]

Yellowstone National Park is a national park located in the U.S. states of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. It was established by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872.

Yellowstone was the first national park in the U.S. and is also widely held to be the first national park in the world.

 

[trencherman]

The Berlin Wall is today as long away as the Wall was standing - exact 28 years, 2 months and 26 days the wall was standing (from Aug. 13, 1961 until Nov. 9, 1989.) and since then the same time now has gone since this monstrosity has been vanished.

The creation of No Man's Lands during conflicts can preserve the habitats of local wildlife, as has occurred around the Berlin Wall.

 

[Shelter]

The creation of No Man's Lands during conflicts can preserve the habitats of local wildlife, as has occurred around the Berlin Wall.

Hello Trencherman - you're dead right! Lizards, rats, mice and in some places (woodlands in the north and south of Berlin) as well deer have had their home here. Their "peaceful world" now is destroyed for the benefit of the human population of Berlin. And I hope you will not call me a "monster" when I say that these development will be the better one than to have a peaceful biotope straight through the city.