Guan Yu was born in the Three Kingdom period, (211-263 AD), after late Han Dynasty and is considered the greatest general in Chinese history. He represents loyalty, strength, truth, and justice. According to history, he was tricked by the enemy and was beheaded on this date. Some people will visit the temple of General Guan to pray for safety and money luck. Some treat General Guan as a God of Wealth. This is because General Guan won hundreds of battles and business people want to win the battle on the business deals.
It case you haven't done so yet, I can think of no better way for you to have luck today than sending me a hongbao brimming with cash.
Today is National Bubble Gum Day, celebrated on the first Friday in February. I wasn't really sure why but a little investigating led me to find out that children’s book author, Ruth Spiro, started the day to raise funds for school activities without the children having to sell something to family members, friends or neighbors. -
If chewing bubble gum is not your thing, I guess you could celebrate National Wear Red Day, also celebrated on the first Friday in February, but probably not for the reason Cher suggests.
It's' Elmo's Birthday!
It's worth noting, Elmo (himself) didn't do a damn thing to those young men; he's just a puppet.
Today is also National Working Naked Day (also celebrated on the first Friday in February). National Working Naked Day was founded by Lisa Kanarek in 2010. Lisa decided to create this day along with her own company, a brand called Working Naked, after she left a corporate job of over 20 years to start the new adventure of working from home. At the time, working from home was not the commonplace choice that it is today. In fact, Lisa has stated that she didn’t even let on that she was working from home for the first five years–for fear of not being taken seriously in her industry. It’s hard to fathom how much things have changed in the past decade or so.
February 3, 1932 -
Paramount Pictures released Josef von Sternberg's Shanghai Express, starring Marlene Dietrich, Clive Brook and Anna Mae Wong in Los Angeles on this date.
It was Josef von Sternberg's intention to have the style of the film should reflect the rhythm of a train journey. This explains the film's tight pace and the rather staccato quality of the dialogue. This film is included among the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, edited by Steven Schneider.
February 3, 1944 -
Robert Stevenson's classic presentation of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, starring Orson Wells, and Joan Fontaine, premiered in NYC on this date. (Look for Elizabeth Taylor in an uncredited role in the film.)
Orson Welles did enough work behind the scenes that the production company offered him a producer credit, which he turned down. Welles' official reason for this is a belief that a person who is not directing the film shouldn't be "just" a producer.
February 3, 1945 -
Walt Disney's The Three Caballeros, premiered in the US, on the date.
The premise of the film is that it is Donald Duck's birthday and his friends give him a tour of Latin America as a gift. The date of the birthday is given as "Friday 13th" with no month specified. The later animated short Donald's Happy Birthday is also set on Donald's birthday and gives the date as "March 13th".
February 3, 1951 -
Another great Sylvester cartoon, Canned Feud, premiered on this date.
This cartoon is particularly violent for the series and for a Sylvester cartoon in particular.
February 3, 1960 -
Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita, starring Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg premiered in Rome on this date.
The film and especially the final beach scene were inspired by the infamous 1953 Wilma Montesi murder case. Montesi was an Italian woman from a proper family. Her dead body was found on a beach near Rome. The investigation exposed the drugs and sex orgies of Roman high society at the time. The murder remains unsolved as of today.
February 3, 1964 -
Just prior to the Beatles invasion of the US, Meet the Beatles went 'gold' on this date.
Meet the Beatles! was The Beatles first "official" album in America, released on January 20, 1964 by Capitol Records, the sister company within EMI to their British label, Parlophone.
February 3, 1973 –
Elton John' song Crocodile Rock became his first US Billboard Hot 100 hit on this date.
Elton's lyricist Bernie Taupin told Esquire in 2011 that this song is "a strange dichotomy because I don't mind having created it, but it's not something I would listen to.".
February 3, 1978 -
The TV-movie Dead Man's Curve, the first to deal with the tragic Jan & Dean story, premieres on ABC-TV on this date.
Wolfmand Jack, Dick Clark, and Beach Boys Mike Love and Bruce Johnston, appear in the movie. In the film, Wolfman Jack introduces himself to Jan and Dean in a small town as "Bob Smith", manager and The Jackal at the local radio station. Wolfman Jack's real name is Robert Weston Smith.
Another unimportant moment in history
Today in History:
February 3, 1468 -
About 600 years ago a child was born in the city of Mainz, in what is today Germany. His name was Johannes Gutenberg. He worked as a goldsmith and gem cutter until finally converting a wine press into a printing press.
He printed 200 copies of the Bible and gradually went broke. He died on this date.
February 3, 1637 -
Considered the first major speculative bubble, the sale and collection of tulips in the Netherlands reached extraordinary heights before collapsing spectacularly on this date.
At the height of the tulip mania, one bulb could sell for more than ten times the annual income of a skilled craftsman. And you could not smoke that crap.
February 3, 1882 -
After his death, Jumbo's skeleton was donated to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The elephant's heart was sold to Cornell University. Jumbo's hide was stuffed by William J. Critchley and Carl Akeley, both of Ward's Natural Science, and the mounted specimen traveled with Barnum's circus for a number of years.
In 1889, Barnum donated the stuffed Jumbo to Tufts University, where it was displayed until destroyed by a fire in 1975, coincidentally a fate that befell many of Barnum's exhibits during his own lifetime. The great elephant's ashes are kept in a 14-ounce Peter Pan Crunchy Peanut Butter jar in the office of the Tufts athletic director.
February 3, 1913 -
In one of the darkest days in U.S. history, the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified on this date. This amendment created the income tax.
Please check on your Qanon supporting neighbor; they might do themselves harm on this day. You know what, upon further thought, leave them be.
The United States broke diplomatic relations with Germany on February 3, 1917. The Germans were very upset by this and tried to make America jealous by flirting with Mexico. Britain overheard Germany's sweet talk and told America everything she'd heard. Unfortunately for Germany, however, it didn't make America jealous. It made America angry. A few months later the United States declared war on Germany.
(Less than two years later, World War I ended with Germany's defeat. This made Germany upset again, and they spent the next two decades planning how they'd get even. Eventually this led to World War II, which also ended, once again, with Germany's defeat. Germany remains upset to this day, but, having been deprived of an army, poses no serious threat to anyone but France.)
February 3, 1927 -
Some very famous directors have started in the mail room, which is just getting inside the studio, getting to know people, getting to know the routine.
Kenneth Anger, American underground avant-garde film-maker, author of the notorious book Hollywood Babylon and professional Dan Rather impersonator, was spawned on this date.
February 3, 1943 -
The US transport ship Dorchester, which was carrying troops to Greenland, sank after being hit by a torpedo. Four Army chaplains (Rev. Lt. George L. Fox, a Methodist minister; Rabbi Lt. Alexander D. Goode; Father Lt. John P. Washington, a Roman Catholic priest; and Rev. Lt. Clark V. Poling, a Protestant minister from the Dutch Reformed Church) gave their life jackets to four other men, and went down with the ship.
Of the 902 men aboard the U.S.A.T. Dorchester, only 230 survived. Before boarding the Dorchester back in January, Chaplain Poling had asked his father to pray for him, "Not for my safe return, that wouldn't be fair. Just pray that I shall do my duty...never be a coward...and have the strength, courage and understanding of men. Just pray that I shall be adequate."
February 3, 1956 -
It's Nathan Lane's birthday today.
Pound for pound, one of the funniest guest on a talk show.
February 3, 1959 -
The Day the Music Died:
A small plane carrying The Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson), Buddy Holly and Richie Valens crashed near Mason City, Iowa, while en route to a show in Fargo, North Dakota. Richardson had developed a case of the flu during the tour (erroneously thought to have been caused by riding on the unheated bus) and asked one of Holly's bandmates, Waylon Jennings, for his seat on the plane; Jennings agreed to give up the seat. Dion DiMucci of Dion and The Belmonts, who was the fourth headliner on the tour, was approached to join the flight as well; however, the price of $36 was too much. Dion had heard his parents argue for years over the $36 rent for their apartment and could not bring himself to pay an entire month's rent for a short plane ride.
The plane crashed during a blizzard, smashing into a cornfield at over 220 mph, flipping over on itself and tossing the passengers into the air. The victims were jettisoned from the plane, landing yards from the wreckage, and lay there for ten hours as snowdrifts formed around them. Because of the weather, no one reached the crash site until later in the morning.
The Surf Theatre's Winter Dance Party in Clear lake, Iowa, is on again this year. If you're in the area, catch it (if tickets are still available!)
February 3, 1971 -
New York Police Officer Frank Serpico was shot during a drug bust in Brooklyn on this date and survived to later testify against police corruption.
Many believe the incident proves that NYPD officers tried to kill him.
February 3, 1995 –
Astronaut Eileen Collins became the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle as mission STS-63 is launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. STS-63 was the second mission of the US/Russian Shuttle-Mir Program, which carried out the first rendezvous of the American Space Shuttle with Russia's space station Mir.
In July 1999, Collins became the first (and currently only) female Shuttle commander with the launch of STS-93. On her last mission in 2005, she would command the historic STS-114 "Return to Flight" mission, the first after the Columbia tragedy.
And so it goes
Believe it or not, there's a pretty good New York style pizza join in Clear Lake, Iowa. It's on the second story, which means while you dine you can see for many miles over the snow-covered lakes and fields. This is true, of course, for any two-story building in Iowa.
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