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On This Day in History


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On February 2, 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is signed, ending the Mexican-American War in favor of the United States. The Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo added an additional 525,000 square miles to United States territory, including the area that would become the states of Texas, California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona, as well as parts of Colorado and Wyoming. Controversy during and after the war pitted President James K. Polk in a political war against two future presidents: Zachary Taylor and Abraham Lincoln.
Polk, a Democrat, ignited the Mexican-American War when he sent his Commanding General of the Army Zachary Taylor and his troops to claim territory along the Rio Grande River between the U.S. and Mexico. Polk insisted Mexico had invaded the U.S. when an earlier skirmish between American and Mexican troops erupted over the ill-defined territorial boundaries of Texas. Polk’s action was immediately denounced by Abraham Lincoln, then a leading Whig member of Congress, who described the resulting war as unconstitutional, unnecessary and expensive. While Taylor performed his military duty in Texas, Polk wrestled with Congressional opposition led by Lincoln in Washington.
Polk was a firm believer in America’s “Manifest Destiny” of increased U.S. territorial expansion in order to bring democracy and Protestant Christianity to a “backward” region. Lincoln and his cohorts protested not so much expansionism itself, but Polk’s justification of the war. Although the war ended favorably for the U.S., Lincoln continued to attack Polk after the signing of the treaty for his lack of an exit strategy that clearly defined citizenship and property rights for former Mexican citizens. Lincoln called the president “a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man.” Although Polk’s war was successful, he lost public support after two bloody years of fighting during which the U.S. lost 1,773 men and spent a whopping $100 million.
Meanwhile, Taylor earned national popularity for his heroic actions during the war and for the camaraderie he shared with even his lowliest subordinates. When the war ended, Taylor decided to run for the presidency. One of his political mentors happened to be Abraham Lincoln, who wrote a note to Taylor after the war ended advising him of what he ought to say regarding the Mexican-American War and the question of slavery in any newly won territories. Lincoln suggested that Taylor should declare “we shall probably be under a sort of necessity of taking some territory; but it is my desire that we shall not acquire any extending so far south as to enlarge and aggravate the distracting question of slavery.”
Polk chose not to run again for the presidency, and Taylor barely won the popular vote in a race that included former President Martin Van Buren and Democratic nominee Lewis Cass. Van Buren, the Free-Soil Party candidate and former Democrat, acted as a spoiler, siphoning off Democratic votes that would likely have gone to Cass. Unfortunately for Lincoln, Taylor and his immediate successors failed to address the issue of slavery during their terms, leaving the question to Lincoln to solve over a bloody civil war a decade later.

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On February 2, 1812, staking a tenuous claim to the riches of the Far West, Russians establish Fort Ross on the coast north of San Francisco.
As a growing empire with a long Pacific coastline, Russia was in many ways well positioned to play a leading role in the settlement and development of the West. The Russians had begun their expansion into the North American continent in 1741 with a massive scientific expedition to Alaska. Returning with news of abundant sea otters, the explorers inspired Russian investment in the Alaskan fur trade and some permanent settlement. By the early 19th century, the semi-governmental Russian-American Company was actively competing with British and American fur-trading interests as far south as the shores of Spanish-controlled California.
Russia’s Alaskan colonists found it difficult to produce their own food because of the short growing season of the far north. Officials of the Russian-American Company reasoned that a permanent settlement along the more temperate shores of California could serve both as a source of food and a base for exploiting the abundant sea otters in the region. To that end, a large party of Russians and Aleuts sailed for California where they established Fort Ross (short for Russia) on the coast north of San Francisco.
Fort Ross, though, proved unable to fulfill either of its expected functions for very long. By the 1820s, the once plentiful sea otters in the region had been hunted almost to extinction. Likewise, the colonists’ attempts at farming proved disappointing, because the cool foggy summers along the coast made it difficult to grow the desired fruits and grains. Potatoes thrived, but they could be grown just as easily in Alaska.
At the same time, the Russians were increasingly coming into conflict with the Mexicans and the growing numbers of Americans settling in the region. Disappointed with the commercial potential of the Fort Ross settlement and realizing they had no realistic chance of making a political claim for the region, the Russians decided to sell out. After making unsuccessful attempts to interest both the British and Mexicans in the fort, the Russians finally found a buyer in John Sutter. An American emigrant to California, Sutter bought Fort Ross in 1841 with an unsecured note for $30,000 that he never paid. He cannibalized the fort to provide supplies for his colony in the Sacramento Valley where, seven years later, a chance discovery ignited the California Gold Rush.

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On February 2, 1847, the first woman of a group of pioneers commonly known as the Donner Party dies during the group’s journey through a Sierra Nevada mountain pass. The disastrous trip west ended up killing 42 people and turned many of the survivors into cannibals.
A total of 87 people joined up in South Pass, Wyoming, in October 1846 to make a trip through the Sierra Nevada Mountains to California. Most of the pioneers were farmers who had little experience with wilderness travel. Two large families, the Donners and the Reeds, were at the heart of the traveling group, with 7 adults and 16 children. George Donner was the group’s unofficial leader.
The pioneers left Wyoming on October 27, and were soon faced with the early onset of a harsh winter. They had only a book as a guide and this led them through a mountain pass south of modern-day Salt Lake City. Without any path to follow, it took the group 16 days to go only 36 miles. Eventually, they were forced to leave their wagons, loaded with hundreds of pounds of flour and bacon, and their cattle behind. Trapped by snow, they were forced to make camp for the winter near a small lake (now known as Donner Lake) northwest of Lake Tahoe.
With starvation setting in, a group of 15 adults (known as the Forlorn Hope) attempted to get to Sutter’s Fort near San Francisco, 100 miles away, for help. About half of the group died in the harsh conditions and the others were forced to eat their fallen companions’ remains to survive. Finally, the seven remaining members of the expedition were able to reach a Native American village. News of their arrival spread quickly, and a rescue party was sent from Sutter’s Fort to reach the rest of the Donner Party, still stuck in the mountains. By the time the rescue was complete, nearly half of the Donner Party, including George Donner, was dead.

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February 2nd In Music

1985 - Foreigner begins a two-week run at No. 1 with "I Want To Know What Love Is.”

Birthdays:

1942 - Graham Nash. British-American singer-songwriter, known for his light tenor voice and for his songwriting contributions as a founding member of The Hollies and supergroup Crosby, Stills & Nash. Nash initially met both David Crosby and Stephen Stills in 1966 during a Hollies US tour. CSN's scored the hit singles 'Marrakesh Express', 'Our House', 'Teach Your Children'. Born in Blackpool, Lancashire, England.

1946 - Howard Bellamy. From the Bellamy Brothers who had the 1976 US No. 1 single 'Let Your Love Flow', and the 1979 UK No. 3 single 'If I Said You Had A Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me'.

1948 - Alan Mckay. Guitarist with Earth, Wind & Fire, who had the 1975 US No. 1 single 'Shining Star'. The band has received 20 Grammy nominations and were the first African-American act to sell out Madison Square Garden. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana.

1949 - Ross Valory. American musician, best known as the bass player for the rock band Journey. He also played with Frumious Bandersnatch followed by the Steve Miller Band appearing on Rock Love. Valory was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Journey in 2017. Born in San Francisco, CA.

1952 - Rick Dufay. American guitarist who played in Aerosmith in the period after Brad Whitford left the band in 1980 up to his return in 1984.

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On February 3, 1966, the Soviet Union accomplishes the first controlled landing on the moon, when the unmanned spacecraft Lunik 9 touches down on the Ocean of Storms. After its soft landing, the circular capsule opened like a flower, deploying its antennas, and began transmitting photographs and television images back to Earth. The 220-pound landing capsule was launched from Earth on January 31.
Lunik 9 was the third major lunar first for the Soviet space program: On September 14, 1959, Lunik 2 became the first manmade object to reach the moon when it impacted with the lunar surface, and on October 7 of the same year Lunik 3 flew around the moon and transmitted back to Earth the first images of the dark side of the moon. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the U.S. space program consistently trailed the Soviet program in space firsts, a pattern that shifted dramatically with the triumph of America’s Apollo lunar program in the late 1960s.

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On February 3, 1944, American forces invade and take control of the Marshall Islands, long occupied by the Japanese and used by them as a base for military operations.
The Marshalls, east of the Caroline Islands in the western Pacific Ocean, had been in Japanese hands since World War I. Occupied by the Japanese in 1914, they were made part of the “Japanese Mandated Islands” as determined by the League of Nations. The Treaty of Versailles, which concluded the First World War, stipulated certain islands formerly controlled by Germany, including the Marshalls, the Carolines, and the Marianas (except Guam), had to be ceded to the Japanese, though “overseen” by the League. But the Japanese withdrew from the League in 1933 and began transforming the Mandated Islands into military bases. Non-Japanese, including Christian missionaries, were kept from the islands as naval and air bases, meant to threaten shipping lanes between Australia and Hawaii, were constructed.
During the Second World War, these islands, as well as others in the vicinity, became targets of Allied attacks. The U.S. Central Pacific Campaign began with the Gilbert Islands, south of the Mandated Islands; U.S. forces conquered the Gilberts in November 1943. Next on the agenda was Operation Flintlock, a plan to capture the Marshall Islands.
Adm. Raymond Spruance led the 5th Fleet from Pearl Harbor on January 22, 1944, to the Marshalls, with the goal of getting 53,000 assault troops ashore two islets: Roi and Namur. Meanwhile, using the Gilberts as an air base, American planes bombed the Japanese administrative and communications center for the Marshalls, which was located on Kwajalein, an atoll that was part of the Marshall cluster of atolls, islets and reefs.
By January 31, Kwajalein was devastated. Repeated carrier- and land-based air raids destroyed every Japanese airplane on the Marshalls. By February 3, U.S. infantry overran Roi and Namur atolls. The Marshalls were then effectively in American hands, with the loss of only 400 American lives.

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February 3rd In Music

1959 - 22 year old Buddy Holly, J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson and Ritchie Valens, aged 17, died in a crash shortly after take-off from Clear Lake, Iowa, the pilot of the single-engined Beechcraft Bonanza plane was also killed. Don McLean would call it "The Day the Music Died" in his 1971 hit "American Pie."

1970 - Led Zeppelin II was in the Top 20 on both the US & UK album charts after peaking at No. 1. The album went on to spend 138 weeks on the UK chart. The album is now recognized by writers and music critics as one of the greatest and most influential rock albums ever recorded.

1973 - Elton John started a three-week run at No. 1 on the US singles chart with 'Crocodile Rock' giving him his first chart-topper in America.

1979 - The Blues Brothers' album Briefcase Full of Blues hits No. 1 in the US, not bad for two comedians (John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd) who formed the duo for Saturday Night Live.

1989 - ”Wild Thing" by Tone Loc becomes the first rap single certified Platinum.

Birthdays:

1940 - Angelo D'Aleo. Vocals, Dion And The Belmonts, who 1961 US No. 1 single 'Runaround Sue'. Born in the The Bronx, New York City.

1943 - Dennis Edwards. Singer with The Temptations, who had the 1971 US No. 1 single 'Just My Imagination.’

1947 - Melanie Safka. US singer, songwriter who had the 1971 US No. 1 single 'Brand New Key'. Born in Astoria, Queens, New York.

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On February 4, 1861, in Montgomery, Alabama, delegates from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana convene to establish the Confederate States of America.
As early as 1858, the ongoing conflict between the North and the South over the issue of slavery led Southern leadership to discuss a unified separation from the United States. By 1860, the majority of the slave states were publicly threatening secession if the Republicans, the anti-slavery party, won the presidency. Following Republican Abraham Lincoln’s victory over the divided Democratic Party in November 1860, South Carolina immediately initiated secession proceedings. On December 20, its legislature passed the “Ordinance of Secession,” which declared that “the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other states, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved.” After the declaration, South Carolina set about seizing forts, arsenals, and other strategic locations within the state. Within six weeks, five more Southern states had followed South Carolina’s lead.
In February 1861, representatives from the six seceded states met in Montgomery, Alabama, to formally establish a unified government, which they named the Confederate States of America. On February 9, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was elected the Confederacy’s first president.
By the time Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated in March 1861, Texas had joined the Confederacy, and federal troops held only Fort Sumter in South Carolina, Fort Pickens off the Florida coast, and a handful of minor outposts in the South. On April 12, 1861, the American Civil War began when Confederate shore batteries under General P.G.T. Beauregard opened fire on Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay. Within two months, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee had all joined the embattled Confederacy.

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On February 4, 1789, George Washington, the commander of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, is unanimously elected the first president of the United States by all 69 presidential electors who cast their votes. John Adams of Massachusetts, who received 34 votes, was elected vice president. The electors, who represented 10 of the 11 states that had ratified the U.S. Constitution, were chosen by popular vote, legislative appointment, or a combination of both four weeks before the election.
According to Article Two of the U.S. Constitution, the states appointed a number of presidential electors equal to the “number of Senators and Representatives to which the state may be entitled in Congress.” Each elector voted for two people, at least one of whom did not live in their state. The individual receiving the greatest number of votes was elected president, and the next-in-line, vice president. (In 1804, this practice was changed by the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, which ordered separate ballots for the office of president and vice president.)
New York, though it was to be the seat of the new United States government, failed to choose its eight presidential electors in time for the vote on February 4, 1789. Two electors each from Virginia and Maryland were delayed by weather and did not vote. In addition, North Carolina and Rhode Island, which would have had seven and three electors respectively, had not ratified the Constitution and so could not vote.
That the remaining 69 unanimously chose Washington to lead the new U.S. government was a surprise to no one. As commander-in-chief during the Revolutionary War, he had led his inexperienced and poorly equipped army of civilian soldiers to victory over one of the world’s great powers. After the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781, Washington rejected with abhorrence a suggestion by one of his officers that he use his preeminence to assume a military dictatorship. He would not subvert the very principles for which so many Americans had fought and died, he replied, and soon after, he surrendered his military commission to the Continental Congress and retired to his Mount Vernon estate in Virginia.
When the Articles of Confederation proved ineffectual, and the fledging republic teetered on the verge of collapse, Washington again answered his country’s call and traveled to Philadelphia in 1787 to preside over the Constitutional Convention. Although he favored the creation of a strong central government, as president of the convention he maintained impartiality in the public debates. Outside the convention hall, however, he made his views known, and his weight of character did much to bring the proceedings to a close. The drafters created the office of president with him in mind, and on September 17, 1787, the document was signed.
The next day, Washington started for home, hoping that, his duty to his country again served, he could live out the rest of his days in privacy. However, a crisis soon arose when the Constitution fell short of its necessary ratification by nine states. Washington threw himself into the ratification debate, and a compromise agreement was made in which the remaining states would ratify the document in exchange for passage of the constitutional amendments that would become the Bill of Rights.
Government by the United States began on March 4, 1789. In April, Congress sent word to George Washington that he had unanimously won the presidency. He borrowed money to pay off his debts in Virginia and traveled to New York.
On April 30, he came across the Hudson River in a specially built and decorated barge. The inaugural ceremony was performed on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street, and a large crowed cheered after he took the oath of office. The president then retired indoors to read Congress his inaugural address, a quiet speech in which he spoke of “the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.” The evening celebration was opened and closed by 13 skyrockets and 13 cannons.
As president, Washington sought to unite the nation and protect the interests of the new republic at home and abroad. Of his presidency, he said, “I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn in precedent.” He successfully implemented executive authority, making good use of brilliant politicians such as Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson in his Cabinet, and quieted fears of presidential tyranny. In 1792, he was unanimously reelected but four years later refused a third term.
In 1797, he finally began his long-awaited retirement at Mount Vernon. He died on December 14, 1799. His friend Henry Lee provided a famous eulogy for the father of the United States: “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

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On February 4, 1915, a full two years before Germany’s aggressive naval policy would draw the United States into the war against them, Kaiser Wilhelm announces an important step in the development of that policy, proclaiming the North Sea a war zone, in which all merchant ships, including those from neutral countries, were liable to be sunk without warning.
In widening the boundaries of naval warfare, Germany was retaliating against the Allies for the British-imposed blockade of Germany in the North Sea, an important part of Britain’s war strategy aimed at strangling its enemy economically. By war’s end, according to official British counts, the so-called hunger blockade would take some 770,000 German lives.
The German navy, despite its attempts to build itself up in the pre-war years, was far inferior in strength to the peerless British Royal Navy. After resounding defeats of its battle cruisers, such as that suffered in the Falkland Islands in December 1914, Germany began to look to its dangerous U-boat submarines as its best hope at sea. Hermann Bauer, the leader of the German submarine service, had suggested in October 1914 that the U-boats could be used to attack commerce ships and raid their cargoes, thus scaring off imports to Britain, including those from neutral countries. Early the following month, Britain declared the North Sea a military area, warning neutral countries that areas would be mined and that all ships must first put into British ports, where they would be searched for possible supplies bound for Germany, stripped of these, and escorted through the British minefields. With this intensification of the blockade, Bauer’s idea gained greater support within Germany as the only appropriate response to Britain’s actions.
Though German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg and the German Foreign Ministry worried about angering neutral countries, pressure from naval leaders and anger in the German press about the British blockade convinced them to go through with the declaration. On February 4, 1915, Kaiser Wilhelm announced Germany’s intention to sink any and all ships sailing under the flags of Britain, Russia or France found within British waters. The Kaiser warned neutral countries that neither crews nor passengers were safe while traveling within the designated war zone around the British Isles. If neutral ships chose to enter British waters after February 18, when the policy went into effect, they would be doing so at their own risk.
The U.S. government immediately and strongly protested the war-zone designation, warning Germany that it would take any steps it might be necessary to take in order to protect American lives and property. Subsequently, a rift opened between Germany’s politicians, who didn’t want to provoke America’s anger, and its navy, which was determined to use its deadly U-boats to the greatest possible advantage.
After a German U-boat sank the British passenger ship Lusitania on May 7, 1915, killing over 1,000 people, including 128 Americans, pressure from the U.S. prompted the German government to greatly constrain the operation of submarines; U-boat warfare was completely suspended that September. Unrestricted submarine warfare was resumed on February 1, 1917, prompting the U.S., two days later, to break diplomatic relations with Germany.

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On February 4, 1962, the first U.S. helicopter is shot down in Vietnam. It was one of 15 helicopters ferrying South Vietnamese Army troops into battle near the village of Hong My in the Mekong Delta.
The first U.S. helicopter unit had arrived in South Vietnam aboard the ferry carrier USNS Core on December 11, 1961. This contingent included 33 Vertol H-21C Shawnee helicopters and 400 air and ground crewmen to operate and maintain them. Their assignment was to airlift South Vietnamese Army troops into combat.

 

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On February 4, 1826, The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper is published. One of the earliest distinctive American novels, the book is the second of the five-novel series called the “Leatherstocking Tales.”
Cooper was born in 1789 in New Jersey and moved the following year to the frontier in upstate New York, where his father founded frontier-town Coopersville. Cooper attended Yale but joined the Navy after he was expelled for a prank. When Cooper was about 20, his father died, and he became financially independent. Having drifted for a decade, Cooper began writing a novel after his wife challenged him to write something better than he was reading at the moment. His first novel, Precaution, modeled on Jane Austen, was not successful, but his second, The Spy, influenced by the popular writings of Sir Walter Scott, became a bestseller, making Cooper the first major American novelist. The story was set during the American Revolution and featured George Washington as a character.
He continued to write about the American frontier in his third book, The Pioneer, which featured backcountry scout Natty Bumppo, known in this book as “Leather-stocking.” The character, representing goodness, purity, and simplicity, became tremendously popular, and reappeared, by popular demand, in five more novels, known collectively as the “Leather-stocking Tales.” The second book in the series, The Last of the Mohicans, is still widely read today. The five books span Bumppo’s life, from coming of age through approaching death.

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On February 4, 1922, the Ford Motor Company acquires the failing luxury automaker Lincoln Motor Company for $8 million.
The acquisition came at a time when Ford, founded in 1903, was losing market share to its competitor General Motors, which offered a range of automobiles while Ford continued to focus on its utilitarian Model T. Although the Model T, which first went into production in 1908, had become the world’s best-selling car and revolutionized the auto industry, it had undergone few major changes since its debut, and from 1914 to 1925 it was only available in one color: black. In May 1927, lack of demand for the Model T forced Ford to shut down the assembly lines on the iconic vehicle. Later that year, the company introduced the more comfortable and stylish Model A, a car whose sleeker look resembled that of a Lincoln automobile. In fact, the Model A was nicknamed “the baby Lincoln.”
Henry Leland, a founder of the Cadillac auto brand, established the Lincoln Motor Company in 1917; he reportedly named the new venture after his hero, President Abraham Lincoln. Facing financial difficulties, Lincoln was purchased by Ford in 1922. Henry Ford’s son, Edsel (1893-1943), was instrumental in convincing his father to buy Lincoln and played a significant role in its development as Ford’s first luxury division. Edsel Ford had succeeded his father as company president in January 1919, after the elder Ford resigned following a disagreement with a group of stockholders. However, father and son soon managed to purchase the stock of these minority investors and regain control of the company. One of Edsel Ford’s major contributions as president of Ford was the styling of cars, which he believed could be good-looking as well as functional. His push for style upgrades to the Model T eventually helped to convince his father to drop his famous rule: “You can have any color, as long as it’s black.” (The Model A, successor to the Model T, was available in a variety of colors from the start.)
In the 1930s, Ford’s Lincoln division introduced its popular Zephyr model, which was inspired by the Burlington Zephyr, a streamlined, diesel-powered express train that debuted amid great fanfare in 1934 and featured an engine built by General Motors. The Lincoln Continental, which architect Frank Lloyd Wright reportedly described as “the most beautiful car ever made,” launched in 1939 and was a flagship model for decades. President John Kennedy was riding in a 1961 Lincoln Continental when he was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, in 1963. Other leading Lincoln models over the years have included the Town Car, a full-size luxury sedan released in the 1980s (although Henry Ford had a custom-built vehicle called a Town Car in the 1920s), and the Navigator, a full-size luxury sport utility vehicle that launched in the late 1990s.

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February 4th In Music

1965 - Phil Spector was at No. 1 on the US singles chart with 'You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'.

1977 - Fleetwood Mac released Rumours. The songs 'Go Your Own Way', 'Don't Stop', 'Dreams', and 'You Make Loving Fun' were released as singles. Rumours is Fleetwood Mac's most successful release; along with winning the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1978, the record has sold over 45 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time.

Birthdays:

1941 - John Steel. Drummer with The Animals who had the 1964 US No. 1 single 'House Of The Rising Sun'. Born in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, England.

1944 - Florence Larue. From The 5th Dimension who had the 1969 US No. 1 single 'Aquarius'. Born in Plainfield, New Jersey.
 
1947 - Margie and Mary Ann Ganser. Vocalists for The Shangri-Las, who had a 1964 US No. 1 single with ‘Leader Of The Pack’.

1948 - Alice Cooper (Vincent Furnier). American singer, songwriter, who formed the Earwigs, and then the Alice Cooper Band, who had the 1972 US No. 7 single 'School's Out', the 1972 hit 'Elected' and the 1973 US No. 1 album Billion Dollar Babies. Born in Detroit, MI.

1951 - Phil Ehart. From American rock band Kansas, who scored the 1978 US No. 3 single 'Dust In The Wind', and the 1978 hit single 'Carry On Wayward Son'. which was the second-most-played track on US classic rock radio in 1995 and No. 1 in 1997. Born in Coffeyville, Kansas.

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On February 5, 1917, with more than a two-thirds majority, Congress overrides President Woodrow Wilson’s veto of the previous week and passes the Immigration Act. The law required a literacy test for immigrants and barred Asiatic laborers, except for those from countries with special treaties or agreements with the United States, such as the Philippines.
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the United States received a majority of the world’s immigrants, with 1.3 million immigrants passing through New York’s Ellis Island in 1907 alone. Various restrictions had been applied against immigrants since the 1890s, but most of those seeking entrance into the United States were accepted.
However, in 1894, the Immigration Restriction League was founded in Boston and subsequently petitioned the U.S. government to legislate that immigrants be required to demonstrate literacy in some language before being accepted. The organization hoped to quell the recent surge of lower-class immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Congress passed a literacy bill in 1897, but President Grover Cleveland vetoed it. In early 1917, with America’s entrance into World War I three months away, a bill restricting immigration was passed over President Wilson’s veto.
Subsequent immigration to the United States sharply declined, and, in 1924 a law was passed requiring immigrant inspection in countries of origin, leading to the closure of Ellis Island and other major immigrant processing centers. Between 1892 and 1924, some 16 million people successfully immigrated to the United States to seek a better life.

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February 5th In Music

1977 - Mary MacGregor's "Torn Between Two Lovers" hits No. 1 for the first of two weeks.

1983 - ”Africa" by Toto hits No. 1 in the US.

2008 - Lenny Kravitz releases his eighth studio album, It Is Time For A Love Revolution, which peaks at No. 4 in the US.

Birthdays:

1941 - Barrett Strong. Teams up with producer Norman Whitfield to write a number of Motown hits, including “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” and "I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” Born in West Point, Mississippi.

1942 - Corey Wells. Vocals, with American group Three Dog Night who had the 1970 US No. 1 single 'Mama Told Me Not To Come'. Born in Buffalo, New York.

1943 - Chuck Winfield. Trumpet, from jazz-rock American music group Blood Sweat & Tears. They scored the 1969 US No. 2 single 'Spinning Wheel', and the 1969 US No. 12 single 'You've Made Me So Very Happy'. They had a US No. 1 with their second album Blood, Sweat & Tears in 1968.

1944 - Al Kooper. American songwriter, record producer and musician known for organizing Blood, Sweat & Tears (although he did not stay with the group long enough to share its popularity). His first professional work was as a 14-year-old guitarist in the The Royal Teens, who in 1958 had the US No. 3 single 'Shorts Shorts'. As a member of Blood Sweat & Tears, he had the 1969 US No. 12 single 'You've Made Me So Very Happy'. Kooper played organ on Bob Dylan's 'Like A Rolling Stone' as well as playing on hundreds of records, including ones by the Rolling Stones, B. B. King, The Who, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Alice Cooper, and Cream. Born in Brooklyn, New York.

1944 - J.R. Cobb. From American southern rock band Atlanta Rhythm Section who had the 1977 US No. 7 single 'So in to You’. Born in Birmingham, Alabama.

1948 - David Denny. Guitarist with the Steve Miller Band who had the 1974 US No. 1 single 'The Joker'.

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On February 6, 1911, in Tampico, a small town in northwestern Illinois, Ronald Reagan was born.
As the 40th president of the United States, the former movie star was called the “Great Communicator” for his ability to get through to ordinary Americans and give them hope and optimism for their own future and that of their country. Despite his lifelong opposition to “big” government, he was credited with restoring faith in the U.S. government and the presidency after a long era of disillusionment in the wake of Nixon, Vietnam and economic hardship under Carter.  
Though his family was poor, Reagan later remembered his as an idyllic childhood. After playing football in high school and college (at Eureka College), he graduated during the Great Depression with few job prospects. He soon began working in radio in Iowa, broadcasting for football and other sports. While on a spring training trip with the Chicago Cubs in Los Angeles, Reagan got in touch with a former colleague at WHO in Des Moines, who connected him with a Hollywood agent, and in 1937 Warner Brothers offered Reagan a seven-year contract starting at $200 per week. His first role was far from a stretch: He played a radio reporter in the 1937 B-movie Love Is on the Air, and the Hollywood Reporter called him “a natural.”
After a few years as what he later called “the Errol Flynn of the B pictures,” Reagan won the role he would become known for, the football player George Gipp of Notre Dame University in Knute Rockne, All-American. The film told the story of the legendary Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne (played by Pat O’Brien), who died in a plane crash in 1931. Gipp was the walk-on who became Rockne’s star player and died of a throat infection two weeks after his final game.
In addition to making more than 50 films, Reagan became heavily involved in the Screen Actors Guild during his years in Hollywood, serving six terms as its president and leading the union through some of the most volatile years in the movie industry. In 1947, when accusations of Communism were running rampant in Hollywood, Reagan testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee and refused to name names of suspected Communist sympathizers. Around this same time, Reagan’s personal life was in turmoil: His wife, the actress Jane Wyman, divorced him in 1948; his increasing involvement in the Screen Actors Guild was reportedly mentioned as a factor in the divorce. Reagan married Nancy Davis, also an actress, in 1952; they had two children, Patricia and Ronald. (Reagan and Wyman also had a daughter, Maureen, and adopted a son, Michael.) Nancy Reagan would become her husband’s closest confidante and adviser during his future political career.
In the early 1950s, Reagan became familiar to a much wider audience when he began hosting the television program General Electric Theater; he also traveled the country giving speeches as the GE company spokesman. Though he was a registered Democrat during his years in Hollywood, he changed his political affiliation to Republican in 1962. Two years later, Reagan made his grand entrance on the political stage with a much-publicized speech at a fundraiser for Barry Goldwater, that year’s Republican presidential candidate. In Kings Row (1941), Reagan had played a small-town hero whose legs are amputated. He considered it his finest film and took a line from it, ”Where’s the rest of me?”, for the title of his first autobiography, published in 1965, before his run for governor of California. The following year, Reagan defeated the incumbent governor of California, Pat Brown, by close to a million votes, taking the next step on the road to the White House.
After two terms as governor of California, he made a bid for the Republican presidential ticket in 1976, losing to President Gerald Ford. In 1980, he gained the nomination and beat out embattled Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter to become president, ushering in a new era of conservatism in American politics.
At 69, Reagan was at the time the oldest man in history to take office as U.S. president. His career in Hollywood, thought to be a weakness at the beginning of his life in politics, turned out to be arguably one of his biggest assets. As president, he projected optimism and weathered setbacks with such success that he became known as the “Teflon president.” His foreign policy legacy, tarnished after the Iran-Contra affair, was redeemed in the eyes of many by the end of the Cold War and the opening of relations with the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. The long-term success of his sweeping tax cuts and “Reaganomics” managed to maintain his popularity throughout, leaving the White House in the hands of his loyal vice president, George H.W. Bush, in 1988 and maintaining a high approval rating. Six years later, Reagan made the sobering announcement that he had Alzheimer’s disease, which would end his public career. He died on June 5, 2004, at the age of 93.

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On February 6, 1917, just three days after U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s speech of February 3, 1917, in which he broke diplomatic relations with Germany and warned that war would follow if American interests at sea were again assaulted, a German submarine torpedoes and sinks the Anchor Line passenger steamer California off the Irish coast.
The SS California departed New York on January 29 bound for Glasgow, Scotland, with 205 passengers and crewmembers on board. Eight days later, some 38 miles off the coast of Fastnet, Ireland, the ship’s captain, John Henderson, spotted a submarine off his ship’s port side at a little after 9 a.m. and ordered the gunner at the stern of the ship to fire in defense if necessary. Moments later and without warning, the submarine fired two torpedoes at the ship. One of the torpedoes missed, but the second torpedo exploded into the port side of the steamer, killing five people instantly. The explosion of the torpedo was so violent and devastating that the 470-foot, 9,000-ton steamer sank just nine minutes after the attack. Despite desperate S.O.S. calls sent by the crew to ensure the arrival of rescue ships, 38 people drowned after the initial explosion, for a total of 43 dead.
This type of blatant German defiance of Wilson’s warning about the consequences of unrestricted submarine warfare, combined with the subsequent discovery and release of the Zimmermann telegram, an overture made by Germany’s foreign minister to the Mexican government involving a possible Mexican-German alliance in the event of a war between Germany and the U.S., drove Wilson and the United States to take the final steps towards war. On April 2, Wilson went before Congress to deliver his war message; the formal declaration of U.S. entrance into the First World War came four days later.

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On February 6, 1778, during the Revolutionary War, representatives from the United States and France sign the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the Treaty of Alliance in Paris.
The Treaty of Amity and Commerce recognized the United States as an independent nation and encouraged trade between France and the America, while the Treaty of Alliance provided for a military alliance against Great Britain, stipulating that the absolute independence of the United States be recognized as a condition for peace and that France would be permitted to conquer the British West Indies.
With the treaties, the first entered into by the U.S. government, the Bourbon monarchy of France formalized its commitment to assist the American colonies in their struggle against France’s old rival, Great Britain. The eagerness of the French to help the United States was motivated both by an appreciation of the American revolutionaries’ democratic ideals and by bitterness at having lost most of their American empire to the British at the conclusion of the French and Indian Wars in 1763.
In 1776, the Continental Congress appointed Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and Arthur Lee to a diplomatic commission to secure a formal alliance with France. Covert French aid began filtering into the colonies soon after the outbreak of hostilities in 1775, but it was not until the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga in October 1777 that the French became convinced that the Americans were worth backing in a formal treaty.
On February 6, 1778, the treaties of Amity and Commerce and Alliance were signed, and in May 1778 the Continental Congress ratified them. One month later, war between Britain and France formally began when a British squadron fired on two French ships. During the American Revolution, French naval fleets proved critical in the defeat of the British, which culminated in the Battle of Yorktown in October 1781.

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February 6th In Music

1965 - The Righteous Brothers started a two week run at No. 1 on the US singles chart with the Phil Spector produced 'You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'.

1982 - J Geils Band started a six week run at No. 1 on the US singles chart with 'Centrefold', the bands only US No. 1. The bands album 'Freeze-Frame' started a four-week run at No. 1 on the US album chart on the same day.

Birthdays:

1945 - Bob Marley. Singer, songwriter and guitarist who had the 1981 UK No. 8 single with ‘No Woman No Cry’, plus over ten other UK Top 40 singles. The 1984 ‘Best Of’ album spent 330 weeks on the UK chart. In 1990, February 6th was proclaimed a national holiday in Jamaica to commemorate his birth. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. His mother is a native of Jamaica and his father an officer in the British military. Born in Jamaica. He died on 5.11.1981.

1957 - Simon Phillips. English drummer who has worked with Jeff Beck, Gary Moore, Mike Oldfield, Judas Priest, Mike Rutherford, Tears for Fears, 10cc and The Who. He became the drummer for the band Toto in 1992 after the death of Jeff Porcaro. Born in London, England.

1981 - Hugo Montenegro. Composer, died in California. Had the 1968 UK No. 1 & US No. 2 single 'The Good The Bad And The Ugly' from the soundtrack to the Clint Eastwood spaghetti western film. Worked for RCA records, producing a series of albums and soundtracks and television themes, including two volumes of Music From The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

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On February 7, 1962, President John F. Kennedy issues an executive order broadening the United States' restrictions on trade with Cuba. The ensuing embargo, which effectively restricts all trade between Cuba and the United States, has had profoundly negative effects on the island nation's economy and shaped the recent history of the Western Hemisphere.
The embargo was the result of a rapid decline in U.S.-Cuban relations. Though Fidel Castro's revolutionaries had deposed a government backed by the U.S. in 1959, the new Cuban regime initially sought a friendly relationship with its most powerful neighbor. Castro undertook a goodwill tour of the States and spoke excitedly of greater regional cooperation, but the Americans remained skeptical, fearing that he was a communist. The following year, President Dwight D. Eisenhower barred American companies from selling oil to Cuba, prompting Castro to nationalize all three American oil refineries on the island. After the Bay of Pigs Invasion, a botched attempt at counter-revolution staged by the CIA in 1961, Castro abandoned all hope of a friendly relationship with the U.S., declaring Cuba to be Marxist. The diplomatic situation grew icier and icier, leading Kennedy to broaden the embargo.
The embargo has lapsed several times, notably under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama. As a result, it has become easier for Americans to legally enter Cuba, although travel is still restricted, and some American agribusinesses are allowed to sell to Cuba. Nonetheless, the embargo has had a devastating effect. Though the U.S. economy is actually estimated to lose substantially more per year, nearly $5 billion, due to the embargo, the much smaller economy of Cuba is estimated to lose roughly $685 million per year. Losses from potential American tourists, who flock to virtually every other island in the Caribbean, account for much of that.
The embargo has never achieved the main objective of most embargoes, isolating the target nation and forcing it to acquiesce to its opponent's demands, but did force Cuba to become highly dependent on the Soviet Union. When the USSR dissolved in 1991, the Cuban economy was devastated. Cuba continues to trade with the rest of the world, but the embargo on the movement of people and goods between the island and the region's wealthiest, most powerful nation has dealt its economy a blow that has hampered the its development for nearly all of its history as an independent nation.

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On February 7, 1979, Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi doctor who performed medical experiments at the Auschwitz death camps, dies of a stroke while swimming in Brazil, although his death was not verified until 1985.
When war erupted, Mengele was a medical officer with the SS, the elite squad of Hitler’s bodyguards who later emerged as a secret police force that waged campaigns of terror in the name of Nazism. In 1943, Mengele was called to a position that would earn him his well-deserved infamy. SS head Heinrich Himmler appointed Mengele the chief doctor of the Auschwitz death camps in Poland.
Mengele, in distinctive white gloves, supervised the selection of Auschwitz’ incoming prisoners for either torturous labor or immediate extermination, shouting either “Right!” or “Left!” to direct them to their fate. Eager to advance his medical career by publishing “groundbreaking” work, he then began experimenting on live Jewish prisoners. In the guise of medical “treatment,” Mengele injected, or ordered others to inject, thousands of inmates with everything from petrol to chloroform to study the chemicals’ effects. Among other atrocities, he plucked out the eyes of corpses to study eye pigmentation, and conducted numerous gruesome studies of twins.
Mengele managed to escape imprisonment after the war, first by working as a farm stableman in Bavaria, then by moving to South America. He became a citizen of Paraguay in 1959. He later moved to Brazil, where he met up with another former Nazi party member, Wolfgang Gerhard. In 1985, a multinational team of forensic experts traveled to Brazil in search of Mengele. They determined that a man named Gerhard had died of a stroke while swimming in 1979. Dental records later revealed that Mengele had, at some point, assumed Gerhard’s identity and was the stroke victim.

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February 7th In Music

1970 - Led Zeppelin scored their first UK No. 1 album with Led Zeppelin II. Released in November 1969, and featuring the US No. 4 single 'Whole Lotta Love', it went on to stay on the UK chart for 136 weeks. Also reaching No. 1 in the US, the RIAA in the US has now certified it as having sold over 12 million copies in the US alone.

1976 - Paul Simon started a three week run at No. 1 on the US singles chart with '50 Ways To Leave Your Lover', the singers first solo US No. 1.

1981 - Kool & The Gang started a two week run at No. 1 on the US singles chart with 'Celebration' the group's first No. 1 hit in the US.

Birthdays:

1934 - Earl King. New Orleans Blues guitarist. He wrote 'Come On, (Let The Good Times Roll'), covered by Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana. King died on 4.17.2003 aged 69.

1946 - Sammy Johns. Has a hit in 1975 with "Chevy Van.” Born in Charlotte, North Carolina.

1948 - Jimmy Greenspoon. Organist with Three Dog Night, who had the 1970 US No. 1 single with a cover of the Randy Newman song 'Mama Told Me Not To Come'. The band scored 21 Billboard Top 40 hits (with three hitting No. 1) between 1969 and 1975. Born in Los Angeles, California. He died on 3.11.2015.

1959 - Brian Travers. Saxophonist with UB40, who had the 1988 US No. 1 single 'Red Red Wine' and over 30 other top 40 hits. Born in Birmingham, England.

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On February 8, 1943, Japanese troops evacuate Guadalcanal, leaving the island in Allied possession after a prolonged campaign. The American victory paved the way for other Allied wins in the Solomon Islands.
Guadalcanal is the largest of the Solomons, a group of 992 islands and atolls, 347 of which are inhabited, in the South Pacific Ocean. The Solomons, which are located northeast of Australia and have 87 Indigenous languages, were introduced to Europe in 1568 by the Spanish navigator Alvaro de Mendana de Neyra (1541-95). In 1893, the British annexed Guadalcanal, along with the other central and southern Solomons. The Germans took control of the northern Solomons in 1885, but transferred these islands, except for Bougainville and Buka (which eventually went to the Australians) to the British in 1900.
The Japanese invaded the Solomons in 1942 during World War II and began building a strategic airfield on Guadalcanal. On August 7 of that year, U.S. Marines landed on the island, signaling the Allies’ first major offensive against Japanese-held positions in the Pacific. The Japanese responded quickly with sea and air attacks. A series of bloody battles ensued in the debilitating tropical heat as Marines sparred with Japanese troops on land, while in the waters surrounding Guadalcanal, the U.S. Navy fought six major engagements with the Japanese between August 24 and November 30. In mid-November 1942, the five Sullivan brothers from Waterloo, Iowa, died together when the Japanese sank their ship, the USS Juneau.
Both sides suffered heavy losses of men, warships and planes in the battle for Guadalcanal. An estimated 1,600 U.S. troops were killed, over 4,000 were wounded and several thousand more died from disease. The Japanese lost 24,000 soldiers. On December 31, 1942, Emperor Hirohito told Japanese troops they could withdraw from the area; the Americans secured Guadalcanal about five weeks later.
The Solomons gained their independence from Britain in 1978. In the late 1990s, fighting broke out between rival ethnic groups on Guadalcanal and continued until an Australian-led international peacekeeping mission restored order in 2003. Today, with a population of over half a million people, the Solomons are known as a scuba diver and fisherman’s paradise.

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On February 8, 1904, following the Russian rejection of a Japanese plan to divide Manchuria and Korea into spheres of influence, Japan launches a surprise naval attack against Port Arthur, a Russian naval base in China. The Russian fleet was decimated.
During the subsequent Russo-Japanese War, Japan won a series of decisive victories over the Russians, who underestimated the military potential of its non-Western opponent. In January 1905, the strategic naval base of Port Arthur fell to Japanese naval forces under Admiral Heihachiro Togo; in March, Russian troops were defeated at Shenyang, China, by Japanese Field Marshal Iwao Oyama; and in May, the Russian Baltic fleet under Admiral Zinovi Rozhdestvenski was destroyed by Togo near the Tsushima Islands.
These three major defeats convinced Russia that further resistance against Japan’s imperial designs for East Asia was hopeless, and in August 1905 U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt mediated a peace treaty at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. (He was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for this achievement.) Japan emerged from the conflict as the first modern non-Western world power and set its sights on greater imperial expansion. However, for Russia, its military’s disastrous performance in the war was one of the immediate causes of the Russian Revolution of 1905.

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