Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Feb 14: Not just for Valentines

Couples across the globe celebrate romance on February 14, but this date hasn't always been only about love. We look at 14 other special events that took place on this day over the years.

 1483- Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire in India was born.

 1849- James Knox Polk becomes the first serving U.S. President, who has his photograph taken.

 1896- Inventor of the world's first Ferris wheel, George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. is born. The Ferris wheel was first built for the Chicago World Fair in memory of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492.

 1929- Sir Alexander Fleming discovers Penicillin by sheer accident, after leaving a plate of staphylococcus bacteria uncovered.

 1929 – The infamous St Valentine's Day massacre takes place where 7 people, 6 of them gangster rivals of Al Capone's gang, are murdered in Chicago, Illinois.

 1933 – Mumtaz Jahan Begum Dehlavi aka Madhubala, the Indian actress was born. Her personal life was just as dramatic as her professional one and she remains one of the most acclaimed Indian actresses of Bollywood.

 1944 – Carl Bernstein, the American investigative journalist was born. His outstanding reportage of the Watergate scandal along with Bob Woodward for The Washington Post indicted White House officials like H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Charles Colson, and John Mitchell, and the eventual resignation of President Richard Nixon. John Ehrlichman died in Atlanta, Georgia on the same date, in 1999

 1975 – P. G. Wodehouse, the British author died. He was best known for his deceptively simple style of witty writing.

 1989 – The author of The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie has a fatwa issued against him, by Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini.

 1989 – In a much awaited verdict, Union Carbide finally agrees to pay the Indian government $470 million for damages caused in the 1984 Bhopal Disaster.

 2003 – Dolly, the first cloned mammal dies.

 2005 – Explosives of around 1,000 kg of TNT are detonated, killing Lebanese billionaire and business tycoon Rafik Hariri and 21 others as his motorcade drove near the St. George Hotel in Beirut.

 2008 –A gunman opens fire in a lecture hall at Illinois University, resulting in four fatalities and 22 injuries, before turning the gun on himself.

1 comment:

  1. Thnks buddy & i'll try to post more posts in this blog in future...........

    ReplyDelete