According to the Gregorian calendar, February is the second month of the year, and also the shortest month. February has 28 days until Julius Caesar gave it 29, and 30 days every four years. According to tradition, Augustus, the Roman emperor, took one day off to add one day to August, the month named after him. Those damn freakin' Romans.
We now have February with 28 days, and 29 on leap years (like this one). Sweden had a February 30 in 1712. They tried it out but didn't like it. February begins on the same day of the week as March and November in a common year, and on the same day of the week as August in a leap year.
February 1, 1861 -
Texas secedes from the Union, becoming independent once again. Since the articles of statehood passed by the U.S. Congress give Texas this right, it is perhaps the only state whose secession was legal.
February 1, 1896 -
The opera La bohème, written by Giacomo Puccini, premieres in Turin, Italy. 91 years later, Cher cuts her hair, tweezes her eyebrows and cries while she watches this opera and goes on to win the Oscar. Go know.
February 1, 1964 -
Governor Matthew Welsh of Indiana declares "Louie, Louie" by the Kingmen "pornographic". And while the FCC couldn't figure out the lyrics, the governor's move backfires by making the song one of the most covered titles in existence.
February 1, 1968 -
In Saigon, South Vietnam's national police chief Brig. Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan summarily executes an accused Viet Cong spy with a bullet to the head. Unfortunately for the general, he happens to shoot him right in front of NBC cameraman Vo Suu and Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams.
February 1, 1970 -
US Government report reveals that 31% of college students have tried pot, man.
February 1, 1974 -
A fire on the 12th floor of the 25 story Joelma Bank Building in Sao Paulo Brazil, killing 177 and seriously burning 293. A crowd of 10,000 spectators hampered firefighters near the building. The new building's cheap construction was primarily at fault.
On February 1, 1976, Werner Heisenberg died in Munich. Mr. Heisenberg was one of the last century's foremost physicists, a reputation he earned primarily by having confused everybody so completely that most of us remain baffled to this very day.
The famous "Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle" states that the act of observation changes the state of the thing being observed. This principle is most vividly illustrated by the penis. Mr. Heisenberg studied with Nils Bohr and Albert Einstein before finally branching out into his own area of highly specialized confusion, eventually dubbed "quantum physics." He was particularly confused by his efforts to identify the exact location of a given particle while simultaneously identifying another of its characteristics (such as height, weight, or telephone number).
It was confusing mainly because he couldn't do it. Not only that, but he was also able to discover that no one else could do it, either. Ever. No matter how hard they tried. This suggested a disturbing level of certainty about the Uncertainy Principle, making it paradoxical, which finally put an end to such premodern notions as fixedness, regularity, dependability, and reliability. Thanks to Mr. Heisenberg, the world is now a volatile aggregation of baffling incompatibilities.
Oops.
Perhaps anticipating Heisenberg, or a little overeager for Valentine's Day, the Soviet government declared on February 1, 1918, that it was actually February 14, 1918 (The Russian adopt the Gregorian Calendar).
February 1, 1998 -
Michael King of Clayton, Georgia is charged with the baseball-bat beating death of Kenneth Paul Smith. King urinated in Smith's front yard, and after the property owner complained, he was severely beaten with a bat kept in King's Ford Mustang. I guess he was under the delusion that it was good to be King.
February 1, 2003 -
The Space Shuttle Columbia blows up on re-entry, with its debris hitting homes and businesses in Nacogdoches Texas.
February 1, 2004 -
During the MTV-provided halftime show of the Superbowl, former boy band member Justin Timberlake conducts an obviously pre-scripted move to expose Janet Jackson's right tit, which oddly sports a ninjitsu-style throwing star as a pasty. The nation is shocked, simply shocked, that a pristine, noncommercial event such as the Superbowl could be ruined by a Jackson.
Children are still traumatize today.
And so it goes.
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