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[GermanStar]

Feb 2 1793
Czech composer Franz Kotzwara, who penned "The Battle of Prague," dies from autoerotic asphyxiation in a London brothel.

Feb 2 1852
The first public toilet is inaugurated, located at 95 Fleet Street in London, by the Society of Arts.

Feb 2 1971
Idi Amin assumes power in Uganda, taking the government from President Milton Obote. One of his favorite pastimes seems to have been eating the brains of live prisoners. Also while in office, he eats one of his own sons.

Feb 2 1979
Sid Vicious, bassist for the Sex Pistols, dies in his sleep of a heroin overdose. He was waiting to stand trial for the stabbing death of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen.

Feb 2 1982
President Hafiz al-Asad orders destruction of Syrian city of Hama after its occupation by Muslim Brotherhood forces seeking to topple the Syrian regime. Estimates of total deaths in this city of 180,000 ranged from 10,000 to 25,000 killed.

Feb 2 1997
Marv Albert, nationally known sportscaster, allegedly bites a 42 year old woman after an evening of watching pornographic movies. By September he is on trial for sodomy. Yessss!

Feb 2 1998
Actor Daniel Baldwin is discovered by police in his Plaza Hotel room totally naked and disoriented, with a porno movie playing at high volume. He was checked into a New York hospital in critical condition, apparently coming down from a cocaine binge. It is not clear why any Baldwin would be unable to handle his cocaine.

[GermanStar]

Feb 2 1793
Czech composer Franz Kotzwara, who penned "The Battle of Prague," dies from autoerotic asphyxiation in a London brothel.

Feb 2 1852
The first public toilet is inaugurated, located at 95 Fleet Street in London, by the Society of Arts.

Feb 2 1971
Idi Amin assumes power in Uganda, taking the government from President Milton Obote. One of his favorite pastimes seems to have been eating the brains of live prisoners. Also while in office, he eats one of his own sons.

Feb 2 1979
Sid Vicious, bassist for the Sex Pistols, dies in his sleep of a heroin overdose. He was waiting to stand trial for the stabbing death of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen.

Feb 2 1982
President Hafiz al-Asad orders destruction of Syrian city of Hama after its occupation by Muslim Brotherhood forces seeking to topple the Syrian regime. Estimates of total deaths in this city of 180,000 ranged from 10,000 to 25,000 killed.

Feb 2 1997
Marv Albert, nationally known sportscaster, allegedly bites a 42 year old woman after an evening of watching pornographic movies. By September he is on trial for sodomy. Yessss!

Feb 2 1998
Actor Daniel Baldwin is discovered by police in his Plaza Hotel room totally naked and disoriented, with a porno movie playing at high volume. He was checked into a New York hospital in critical condition, apparently coming down from a cocaine binge. It is not clear why any Baldwin would be unable to handle his cocaine.

[GermanStar]

Feb 3 1882
P.T. Barnum purchases the elephant Jumbo. He keeps him for three years until the animal's skull is crushed by a train. After his death, Jumbo gets extra exposure, as his stuffed skin and skeleton are shown separately.

Feb 3 1913
In one of the blackest days in U.S. history, the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. This amendment created the income tax.

Feb 3 1959
The Day the Music Died: A small plane carrying The Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson), Buddy Holly, and Richie Valens crashes near Mason City, Iowa, while en route to a show in Fargo, North Dakota.

Feb 3 1998
The tail of a U.S. marine tactical surveillance jet on a training mission severs a tram cable at a ski resort near Trento in northern Italy, sending 20 skiers nearly 300 feet to their deaths.

Feb 3 1998
Female axe murderer Karla Faye Tucker executed by lethal injection at Huntsville State Prison, Texas. Tucker had brutally murdered Jerry Dean and Deborah Thornton with a pickaxe in 1983. The last woman executed in Texas was also an axe murderer, Chipita Rodriguez, who was hanged in 1863.

[GermanStar]

Feb 4 1783
A large earthquake in Calabria Italy leaves 50,000 dead.

Feb 4 1899
On patrol in the city of Manila, Private William Grayson shoots three Filipino soldiers when they fail to halt. The next morning, U.S. forces launch an artillery assault on the Filipino army, killing 3,000. Thus begins the three-year Philippine-American War, a brutal and disastrous campaign foreshadowing the Vietnam War.

Feb 4 1932
The first Winter Olympics were held in the United States at Lake Placid, NY.

Feb 4 1974
Patty Hearst kidnapped

Feb 4 1983
Karen Carpenter dies of anorexia nervosa. She frequently took laxatives and induced vomiting to prevent weight gain. At the time of her death she was pencil thin.

Feb 4 1987
Pianist/homosexual Liberace dead from AIDS in Palm Springs, California. Nobody even suspected the man was gay.

Feb 4 1998
Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates is assaulted with a direct hit by a fluffy cream pie during a three-pronged attack in Brussels. He was in Belgium attending meetings with industry and government leaders. Rumor is that the attack was engineered by Noel Godin, infamous for his other pie throwings at government officials.

Feb 4 1999
Gary Coleman was sentenced to a $400 fine, a suspended 90-day jail sentence, and ordered to attend 52 anger-management classes. The sentence stemmed from Coleman assaulting an autograph seeker on July 30, 1998.

[GermanStar]

Feb 5 1861
The "Peep Show" machine patented by Samuel Goodale of Cincinnati.

Feb 5 1914
Beat author William S. Burroughs born in St. Louis, MO.

Feb 5 1958
The US Air Force manages to lose an H-bomb somewhere off the coast off Savannah, Georgia. Way to go!

Feb 5 1979
Woodrow Bussey files suit against the Adolf Coors Brewing Company for failing to warn him that their product, Coors Beer, is an intoxicating beverage.

Feb 5 1998
The cold war era Checkpoint Charlie sign -- "You Are Leaving The American Sector" -- is stolen in Berlin.

Feb 5 1999
Mike Tyson was sentenced to a year in jail for assaulting two people after a car accident on August 31, 1998. Tyson was also fined $5,000, had to serve 2 years of probation, and had to perform 200 hours of community service upon release.

[GermanStar]

Feb 6 1911
Ronald Reagan, who appeared in such films as Jap Zero, Girls on Probation, and Bedtime for Bonzo, born in Tampico IL.

Feb 6 1917
Zsa Zsa Gabor born in Budapest.

Feb 6 1943
Actor Errol Flynn acquitted of raping an adolescent. The woman had actually tried this shakedown with other celebrities and wasn't quite an adolescent despite her testifying with pigtails and a lollipop. Flynn had just finished a film called "Gentleman Jim" and at the end of the film when he says to Maureen O'Hara: "I never said I was a Gentleman." Peals of knowing laughter rang out from audiences.

Feb 6 1943
Having left the Tommy Dorsey Band four months prior, Frank Sinatra makes his vocalist debut on the radio show, "Your Hit Parade."

Feb 6 1951
Radio personality Paul Harvey is arrested for trying to break into Argonne Atomic Lab.

Feb 6 1983
Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyon" who had been living as a mild-mannered Bolivian businessman, charged with Nazi war crimes. He is later sentenced to life imprisonment and dies in 1991.

[GermanStar]

Feb 7 1812
New Madrid earthquake shakes Missouri with an estimated magnitude of 8.2, as strong as any in the West. The quake destroys 150,000 acres of forest, and would have caused massive damage had it occurred in modern times.

Feb 7 1845
A drunken visitor to the British Museum smashes the irreplaceable Portland Vase into over 200 pieces. The elaborate glass amphora was created when Augustus was Caesar and is about ten inches high. It takes months to repair.

Feb 7 1968
"It became necessary to destroy the town to save it." -- U.S. Army Major, regarding the village of Ben Tre, Vietnam, in an AP dispatch.

Feb 7 1969
Beatle George Harrison has his tonsils removed. He had them destroyed to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands.

Feb 7 1989
Washed up tennis player Bjorn Borg has his stomach pumped after he overdoses on sleeping pills in Madrid, Spain.

Feb 7 1991
Mortar rounds are fired by the IRA at No. 10 Downing Street, the residence of British Prime Minister John Major. No injuries resulted but the door was severely dented.

Feb 7 1995
Rapper Tupac Shakur sentenced to 4.5 years for grabbing somebody's ass (sexual abuse, "forcibly touching the buttocks").

[GermanStar]

Feb 8 1910
Boy Scouts founded by Lord Robert Baden-Powell, a man who enjoyed seeing naked boys swimming just a little too much. It is odd that such a homophobic organization would be founded by a repressed homosexual.

Feb 8 1924
Gee Jong is the first man to die in the gas chamber, at Nevada State Prison in Carson City. A pound of sodium cyanide crystals was lowered into a vessel of diluted sulfuric acid, producing hydrogen cyanide gas which asphyxiated Jong. "At first there is evidence of extreme horror, pain, and strangling. The eyes pop. The skin turns purple and the victim begins to drool."

Feb 8 1960
Beer heir Adolph Coors III (who was ironically allergic to beer), killed after a failed kidnapping attempt in Colorado. By October, Joseph Corbett Jr. is arrested in Canada after an national manhunt.

Feb 8 1990
After "60 Minutes" commentator Andy Rooney expresses his view that "blacks have watered down genes because the less intelligent ones are the ones that have the most children", he is suspended for a month by CBS. Rooney claims the remarks are fabricated.

Feb 8 1994
During an argument Jack Nicholson destroys the windshield of a car with a golf club, screaming "You cut me off!" Charges were dismissed on May 2 after the matter was settled privately. Nicholson did this one month before he was to host the annual Los Angeles Police-Celebrity Golf Tournament. D'oh!

[GermanStar]

Feb 9 1909
The first federal law prohibiting the importation of opium is enacted, aimed not particularly at the ravages the drug was having on American society (none: white people weren't using opium), but at the hated Chinese.

Feb 9 1950
Senator Joseph McCarthy announces he has a list of 205 State Department employees who are Communist Party members. He did not mention that J. Edgar Hoover likes to wear garters and pumps.

Feb 9 1968
"Planet of the Apes" opens.

Feb 9 1979
Serial killer Ted Bundy abducts, rapes, and murders twelve year old Kimberly Leach of Lake City, Florida. He takes her from her junior high school, where she had been elected runner-up Valentine Queen the day before. Kimberly's remains aren't found for eight weeks. It is for this murder that Ted Bundy is sent to the Electric Chair ten years later.

Feb 9 1989
Officials for the World Wrestling Federation testify before the New Jersey Senate that their matches are actually rigged. Say it ain't so!

Feb 9 1990
Singer Del Shannon commits suicide with a .22 rifle. He is most remembered for his 1961 hit, Runaway.

[GermanStar]

Feb 10 1863
Midgets Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren married in a ceremony promoted and orchestrated by P.T. Barnum, reception tickets $75 (adjusted for inflation, $1250 in today's dollars). Commodore Nutt served as best man.

Feb 10 1920
Major League Baseball bans the spitball. Pitchers who had been throwing spitballs could continue, and the practice ended completely in 1934 when the last one, Burleigh Grimes, retired.

Feb 10 1981
Eight people were killed, 198 injured, when fire broke out at the Las Vegas Hilton hotel-casino. (A busboy was later found guilty of setting the fire.)

Feb 10 1993
In a TV interview, former negro Michael Jackson tells Oprah Winfrey that he suffers from a skin disorder causing it to whiten.

[GermanStar]

Feb 11 1929
The Lateran Treaty is signed -- Mussolini granted recognition to the Vatican in return for their support of his fascist dictatorship.

Feb 11 1933
Nineteen year old Japanese schoolgirl Kiyoko Matsumoto committed suicide by jumping into the thousand foot crater of a volcano on the island of Oshima. This act started a bizarre fashion in Japan and in the ensuing months three hundred children did the same thing.

Feb 11 1936
Burt Reynolds' birthday. He's not the one who squealed like a pig in "Deliverance". But his hairpiece is much younger than he is.

Feb 11 1986
Frank Herbert, author of Dune, dead from pancreatic cancer.

Feb 11 1992
"I'd like to thank my family for loving me and taking care of me. And the rest of the world can kiss my ass." -- Last words of Johnny Frank Garrett, executed by lethal injection.

Feb 11 1993
Clinton nominates the beautiful Janet Reno to be US Attorney General.

Feb 11 2004
Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling arrested by the FBI. He is later found guilty of no less than 19 counts of conspiracy, fraud, making false statements and insider trading.

Feb 11 2006
During a quail hunting trip, Vice-President Dick Cheney takes aim at a small bird but instead manages to shoot his friend Harry Whittington in the face. As a result of being peppered with birdshot, Whittington has a minor heart attack but lives to apologize to his friend.

[GermanStar]

Feb 12 1554
The sixteen year old Lady Jane Grey, puppet Queen of England for nine days, beheaded in the Tower of London. Questions arose as to where to bury this semi-queen, until it was decided to place her among the beheaded former wives of Henry VIII.

Feb 12 1789
Ethan Allen dies in a drunken sleigh accident while crossing the frozen Lake Champlain, reminiscing with friends and rye. Much of the circumstance remains a mystery.

Feb 12 1967
Police in London arrest Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, and Marianne Faithfull after they discover amphetamine pills, cannabis resin and Marianne scandalously naked but for a fur rug. The two Rolling Stones received jail sentences which were successfully appealed.

Feb 12 1976
Actor Sal Mineo killed in the carport of his West Hollywood home. There were rumors of a gay crime of passion but in 1979 it turned out to be a routine mugger who stabbed him for his money.

Feb 12 2002
The trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic began at the U.N. tribunal in The Hague. Milosevic was accused of war crimes during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

[GermanStar]

Feb 13 1917
Mata Hari is arrested for spying.

Feb 13 1945
An estimated 135,000 people, mostly women and children, die in the firebombing of the 13th-century city of Dresden, a revenge bombing that had no real military justification.

Feb 13 1953
Transsexual Christine (formerly George) Jorgenson arrives in New York with much fanfare. She had had sex change operations performed in Denmark by Dr. Christian Hamburger, becoming the first successful surgical transgender. Upon return, she becomes a cabaret actress.

Feb 13 1959
The first Barbie Doll is introduced by Mattel in California.

Feb 13 1985
Japan's New Amusement Business Control and Improvement Act comes into effect. The law brings an end to Japan's innovative sex businesses (i.e., glory holes, strip bars, and public bondage), while protecting the traditional brothel industry. That's an improvement?

Feb 13 1990
Male prostitute Kevin Lee Kite accuses Rev. Bruce Ritter, founder of Covenant House (a place for wayward boys) and a respected member of the Meese commission on Pornography, of paying for homosexual sex. An internal investigation by Covenant House reveals a pattern of sexual misconduct with underage boys going back 20 years, and revealed a relationship with a 15 year old boy going back 14 months. Superiors at the Franciscan Order had been aware of Ritter's behavior patterns for some years, but did nothing.

[GermanStar]

Feb 14
The eve of the Roman feast of Lupercalia. Naked youths would run through Rome, anointed with the blood of sacrificed dogs and goats, waving thongs cut from the goats. If a young woman was struck by the thong, fertility was assured. Pope Gelasius I decided this was a bit too much, and co-opted the Roman holiday to be the Feast of St. Valentine in 484 A.D.

Feb 14 1779
English explorer Captain James Cook and some of his crew are slaughtered by angry Hawaiian islanders, after he tried to take a Hawaiian chief hostage over a dispute regarding a stolen boat.

Feb 14 1929
The Capone gang kills six members of the "Bugs" Moran gang and one other person at the S.M.C. Cartage company in Chicago, in an event known as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Bogus police officers were used so that it appeared to be a routine police bust. Except for all the bodies.

Feb 14 1979
Walter Carlos, the musician who created "Switched on Bach" and the score of "A Clockwork Orange", reveals to the world that he has had a sex change operation and is henceforth to be referred to as Wendy.

Feb 14 1989
Ayatollah Khomeini issues a takfir against Salman Rushdie, for his writings in the Satanic Verses. The act propels the otherwise uninteresting book into a bestseller.

[GermanStar]

Feb 15 1898
The battleship U.S.S. Maine blows up in Havana Harbor, commencing a splendid little war against Spain that ends with the United States owning a colonial empire and Cuba under martial law.

Feb 15 1933
An unsuccessful attempt on FDR's life by Joseph Zangara in Miami leaves Chicago mayor Anton Czermak dead. Zangara is electrocuted the following month.

Feb 15 1936
At a speech in Berlin, Hitler confronts German industry with the challenge of creating the Volkswagen. Thus Ferdinand Porsche designs the Beetle which is now widely seen as the final solution to fahrvergnugen. But neither Hitler nor Porsche would have the foresight to realize how groovy the Beetle would be, man.

Feb 15 1954
Ronald Reagan opens his stand-up act at the Las Vegas Ramona Room with the "Honey Brothers", a wacky slapstick troupe. His show was a smashing success.

Feb 15 1961
The U.S. figure skating team is obliterated when their Sabena Airlines 707 crashes in Belgium.

Feb 15 1988
Surely you're dead, Mr. Feynman.

Feb 15 1992
Jeffrey Dahmer sentenced to fifteen consecutive life terms for the murder of fifteen young and mostly ethnic boys. He completed his sentence when he was beaten to death in the shower by other inmates.

Feb 15 1995
The most wanted computer hacker in history, Kevin Mitnick, is arrested in Raleigh North Carolina for various offenses, one of which was breaking into security specialist Tsutomu Shimomura's computer.

[GermanStar]

Feb 16 1923
Lord Carnarvon opens King Tut's tomb, revealing one of the most well-preserved treasures from the ancient world. While it has been frequently reported that a curse killed 13 of the 20 people present at the opening of the tomb, there was no curse and no unusual death patterns occurred.

Feb 16 1959
Failed baseball player Fidel Castro is sworn in as President For Life of Cuba. During his first year of rule 500 are put to the firing squad, an RBI record any dictator would be proud of.

Feb 16 1978
The first computer bulletin board system goes live on an S-100 motherboard and CP/M, and a Hayes 300 baud modem. Ward Christensen and Randy Seuss's Computerized Bulletin Board System still kinda runs to this day, but the Internet has taken the place that BBS's used to have. And this is why you have no social life, loser.

Feb 16 1988
Richard Farley, a man obsessed with the lovely and petite Laura Black, entered his former workplace in Sunnyvale, California, and killed 7 employees as he made his way towards Laura's office. A hearing was scheduled regarding her restraining order against him for the following day. Farley fails in his attempt to kill her, leaving Laura critically wounded.

[GermanStar]

Feb 17 1600
Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno burned at the stake at Campo di Fiore in Rome, likely because ecclesiastical authorities were alarmed at his rambling and somewhat insane ideas, coupled with rejection of accepted authority. Exactly what the charges against him were are lost to history, but likely involve theological heresies rather than astronomical.

Feb 17 1974
Forty-nine people trampled to death at a soccer stampede in Cairo, after crowds tear down entry barriers to the Zamalek vs Dukla game.

Feb 17 1989
The cinematic masterpiece "Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure" starring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter opened in theaters.

Feb 17 1993
An overcrowded ferry carrying up to 1,500 people sank off Haiti. Only 285 people were known to have survived.

Feb 17 1994
The decomposing corpse of Zviad Gamsakhurdia, first president of the Republic of Georgia, is exhumed from a temporary grave in Djikhaskari. His wife refuses an autopsy, but western journalists note a bullet wound in the side of Zviad's head. Officially listed as suicide, the wife also claims he was murdered. Another government minister oddly states the death was by cancer with the head shot administered post-mortem.

[GermanStar]

Feb 18 1930
Claude W. Tombaugh discovers the planet Pluto at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Feb 18 1933
Yoko Ono born.

Feb 18 1965
Dre Day: Rapper and hip hop producer Dr. Dre (AKA André Romel Young) born in Los Angeles, California.

Feb 18 1967
J. Robert Oppenheimer dies.

Feb 18 1991
Killer/Cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer strangles a 19-year-old man, marking his tenth (of 17) victims. Jeffrey dismembers the body and keeps the skull in his Milwaukee, Wisconsin apartment.

Feb 18 1999
George Clooney hangs up his scrubs for the last time on "ER".

Feb 18 2001
During the Daytona 500, NASCAR phenom Dale Earnhardt crashes into the wall and dies instantly. His widow later files a lawsuit to keep his autopsy photos sealed, and Florida subsequently passes a law to prevent them from ever being released.

[GermanStar]

Feb 19 1942
Roosevelt signs E.O. 9066, the internment order permitting Japanese Americans to be held in concentration camps for the duration of the war.

Feb 19 1969
Marianne Faithfull was found in a coma after a suicide attempt in Australia.

Feb 19 1983
Benjamin Ng and Willie Mak kill 13 in a Seattle robbery attempt.

Feb 19 1995
Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee married. Video hijinks ensue.

Feb 19 1998
Lt. Col. Larry Wayne Harris (Aryan Nations) and William Leavitt are arrested in Henderson, NV for possession of the biological toxin anthrax, military grade, enough to kill an entire city. Their Mercedes is hermetically sealed by authorities and brought to Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada for hazmat.

[GermanStar]

Feb 20 1947
A chemical mistake at the O'Connor Electro-Plating Co. in Los Angeles causes a huge explosion, killing 17 and leaving a 22 foot crater. Four city blocks suffer severe devastation, with over 100 buildings damaged.

Feb 20 1971
An erroneous warning is emitted on the Emergency Broadcast System causing a number of stations to go off the air, and others to completely ignore the alert (thus pointing out that many key stations would not react to any emergency broadcast over the system.)

Feb 20 1980
After some heavy drinking, Bon Scott, vocalist for heavy metal band AC/DC, is found in a friend's automobile choked on his own vomit.

Feb 20 1984
Ballerina Julia Pak marries the ghost of Sun Myung Moon's dead son, Heung Jin Moon, in a tasteful necro-ceremony. The couple were engaged to be married, but a car accident in December intervened. Unfortunately in the Moonie religion, only married couples may enter Heaven, hence the need for this awkward rite.

Feb 20 1987
A paper bag at a Salt Lake City computer store explodes, injuring store owner Gary Wright. It is the second time the Unabomber has used the old "paper bag in the parking lot" trick.

Feb 20 1997
Victor Willis, the "cop" in the Village People is charged in Nevada on drug possession (45 grams of cocaine), possession of drug paraphernalia, and strong armed robbery. The events occurred February 15. Willis, 45, listed his occupation as "unemployed" and generously gave approval for his hotel room to be searched.

Feb 20 2003
A fire at a West Warwick, R.I. performance of eighties hairspray legends Great White caused by the band's indoor pyrotechnics leaves 100 dead. The pyrotechnics were illegal in that nightclub venue, and use of them by the band had been forbidden by other local venues. Guitarist Ty Longley is among the dead, his last journal entry containing the words: "I say we send a bunch of bands, food, artists, strippers, bartenders, proctologists, psychologists and lots of love over to Iraq and North Korea for a big party!"

Feb 20 2005
Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson blows his brains out with a shotgun in his Woody Creek, Colorado home. Family members are in the house when the gun goes off but mistake the sound for a falling book. Rolling Stone releases his final written words: "No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun—for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax—This won't hurt."