FEBRUARY 02 -This Day In History

February 02: 

1653: New Amsterdam (now NYC) was incorporated.

1836: Jim Bowie writes a letter to Governor Smith asking for help in defending the Alamo:
"The salvation of Texas depends in great measure on keeping Bexar out of the hands of the enemy. It serves as the frontier picquet guard, and if it were in the possession of Santa Anna, there is no stronghold from which to repel him in his march toward the Sabine. Colonel Neill and myself have come to the solemn resolution that we will rather die in these ditches than give it up to the enemy."

1848: Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo, ending the Mexican War, was signed.

1882: James Joyce born near Dublin.

1893: The first motion-picture close-up was filmed at the Edison Studio in West Orange, New Jersey, as camerman William Dickson photographed comedian Fred Ott sneezing.

1905: Ayn Rand born.

1971: Idi Amin assumed power in Uganda.

FEBRUARY 01 - This Day In History

1790: U.S. Supreme Court convened for the first time. However, as only three of the six judges were present, the Court recessed until the next day.

1861: Texas voted to secede from the Union.

1862: Battle Hymn of the Republic, a poem by Julia Ward Howe, was published in the Atlantic Monthly.

1896: The opera, La Boheme by Giacomo Puccini, premiered in Turin, Italy.

1904: S.J. Perelman born.

1920: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police began its existence when the Royal Northwest Mounted Police merged with the Dominion Police.

1960: Four black college students began a sit-in protest at a lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.

1968: Siagon's police chief, Nguyen Ngoc Loan executed a Viet Cong soldier with a pistol shot to the head, in a famous scene caught on film.

2003: Space shuttle Columbia disintegrates during reentry, killing all seven aboard.