* The word "February" comes from the Latin
word februare, meaning "to purify." The ancient Romans had their annual purification ceremony during this time each year.
* February is
National Weddings Month. Most engagements take place between
Christmas and Valentine's Day, and most future brides start serious planning in February for summer weddings.
* February birthstone: amethyst. February flower: violet or primrose.
* February is American Heart Month, National Black
History Month, Bake for Family Fun Month, Bird Feeding Month, Care
About Your Indoor Air Month, Children's Dental Health Month, Grapefruit Month, Humpback Whale Awareness
Month, Creative Romance Month, National Laugh Friendly Month, Library Lovers Month, Mend a Broken Heart Month, Pet Dental Health Month,
Pull Your Sofa Off the Wall Month, Spooky Old Broads Month, Youth Leadership Month, Women's Heart Month, and in Illinois, it’s Return Shopping Carts to the Supermarket Month.
• Today is Tupperware Sculpting Day, a day to heat up at
least one old Tupperware bowl or glass and sculpt it into something new and exciting.
• Today is
National Girls and
Women in Sports Day.
• Today is
Hula in the Coola Day, time for fun at a winter luau.
Shorts and flip-flops, please.
• Today is
Spunky Old Broads Day, a day for celebration for spunky ladies over 50.
• Today is
Working Naked Day,
dedicated to those who work at home.
• Today is
National Freedom Day.
• Today is Robinson Crusoe Day, a day to be adventurous and
self-reliant.
• This is
Solo Diners Eat Out Week.
On this date in . . .
1861: Texas, a U.S. state for only 16 years, voted to secede from the Union.
1887: Harvey Wilcox of Kansas started selling off 120 acres he owned in Southern California as a real
estate development. His wife, Daeida, named it Hollywood.
1920: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Mounties, were created.
1940: Frank Sinatra sang "Too Romantic" and "The Sky Fell Down" in his first recording session
with the Tommy Dorsey Band. Frank replaced Jack Leonard as the band's lead singer.
1949: RCA Victor introduced the 45, a smaller record with a larger hole than the long-play 33-and-a-third
disc introduced earlier by Columbia Records.
1954: Edwin Armstrong leaped to his death from his Manhattan apartment.
He had invented stereo FM radio, but AM broadcasters had kept his patents tied up in court.
1963: 17-year-old Neil Young performed his first paying gig at a Winnipeg country club.
1964: The governor of Indiana declared the Kingsmen's hit "Louie Louie" was pornographic. He
asked the state's radio stations not to play it.
1974: The first mass-marketed
doll for boys was introduced. Hasbro sold G.I. Joe for $2.49. The action
figure's name came from the 1945 film "The Story of G.I. Joe," which starred
Robert Mitchum and Burgess Meredith.
1977: In Roxboro, N.C., Hillside shutout Person 2-0 in history’s lowest
scoring high school basketball game. Person, with a much shorter team, stalled the entire game and missed its final shot.
1980: The daytime soap opera "Love of Life" ended a 28-year run on CBS so that "The Young & The Restless" could expand to a full hour each weekday.
1982: ''Late Night with David Letterman'' premiered on NBC-TV.
1994: Skater Tonya Harding’s ex-husband Jeff Gillooly pleaded guilty to conspiring with others to plan the
January 6th attack on skater Nancy Kerrigan.
2001: Sparks generated by bottom static may have caused two gas station fires in Hannibal,
Missouri. Experts think the energy built up when drivers slid from their seats and sparks flew from their fingers. Nobody was hurt but both
cars were burned. A fire department spokesman said static should be removed by touching the car's body before picking up the pump handle.
2003: A Taiwanese man who suffered from a severe cough for many years was cured when surgeons
removed a sewing needle from his back. The man could not recall ever feeling a needle sticking him in the back, but his wife said she had
lost a needle on their bed several years earlier. Doctors said the needle irritated the man's lungs.
2004: During the Super Bowl halftime show, in what was termed a "wardrobe malfunction," singer
Janet Jackson's breast was exposed, resulting in a $550,000 fine against CBS' parent company, Viacom.
2006: A 100-pound woman ate 26 grilled cheese sandwiches in 10 minutes at a New York restaurant to win the World Grilled
Cheese Eating Championship. Sonya Thomas won $8,000 but said she was disappointed in her performance. She wanted to eat 30 sandwiches.
Thomas held other eating records, including 46 dozen oysters in 10 minutes, 11 pounds of cheesecake in 9 minutes, 48 chicken tacos in 11
minutes, and 37 hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes.
2007: Antonio Vasconcelos, born in Cancun, Mexico, was an enormous 22 inches long and weighed
14 and-a-half pounds! "Super Tonio" had to wear diapers designed for 6-month-olds. Doctors said he was relatively healthy, but
his blood sugar was higher than the average newborn.
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