Hole Cow! A LOT of stuff happened today!! [v.2]

Prompted by Eeth's quite funny black history month joke in the jello v. mortimer thread, I looked up February [5] in wikipedia in search of a follow-up joke. Check out all the stuff that happened today!

* 62 ? Earthquake in Pompeii, Italy. holy cow! that happened today!!
* 1576 ? Henry of Navarre abjures Catholicism at Tours and rejoins the Protestant forces in the French Wars of Religion.
* 1597 ? A group of early Japanese Christians are killed by the new government of Japan for being seen as a threat to Japanese society. those darn christians always stirring up trouble!
* 1631 ? Roger Williams emigrates to Boston.
* 1778 ? South Carolina becomes the first state to ratify the Articles of Confederation.
* 1782 ? Spanish defeat British forces and capture Minorca. i don't know where that is!
* 1783 ? In Calabria a sequence of strong earthquakes begins. one that continues today...
* 1810 ? Peninsular War: Siege of Cádiz begins.
* 1818 ? Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte ascends to the thrones of Sweden and Norway.
* 1852 ? The Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, one of the largest and oldest museums in the world, opens to the public.
* 1859 ? Wallachia and Moldavia are united under Alexander John Cuza as the United Principalities, an autonomous region within the Ottoman Empire, which ushered the birth of the modern Romanian state.
* 1869 ? The largest alluvial gold nugget in history, called the "Welcome Stranger", was found in Moliagul, Victoria, Australia.
* 1885 ? King Leopold II of Belgium establishes the Congo as a personal possession.
* 1900 ? The United States and the United Kingdom sign a treaty for the Panama Canal
* 1913 ? Greek military aviators, Michael Moutoussis and Aristeidis Moraitinis performed the first naval air mission in history, with a Farman MF.7 hydroplane.
* 1917 ? The current constitution of Mexico is adopted, establishing a federal republic with powers separated into independent executive, legislative, and judicial branches. that worked out well.
* 1917 ? The Congress of the United States passes the Immigration Act of 1917 over President Woodrow Wilson's veto. Also known as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act, it forbade immigration from nearly all of south and southeast Asia. dag!
* 1918 ? Stephen W. Thompson shoots down a German airplane. It is the first aerial victory by the U.S. military.
* 1918 ? SS Tuscania (1914) is torpedoed off the coast of Ireland, it is the first ship carrying American troops to Europe to be torpedoed and sunk.
* 1919 ? Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith launch United Artists.
* 1924 ? The Royal Greenwich Observatory begins broadcasting the hourly time signals known as the Greenwich Time Signal or the "BBC pips".
* 1937 ? President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposes a plan to enlarge the Supreme Court of the United States. now with more court!
* 1939 ? Generalísimo Francisco Franco becomes the 68th "Caudillo de España", or Leader of Spain.
* 1945 ? World War II: General Douglas MacArthur returns to Manila.
* 1946 ? The Chondoist Chongu Party is founded in North Korea.
* 1958 ? Gamel Abdel Nasser is nominated to be the first president of the United Arab Republic.
* 1958 ? A hydrogen bomb known as the Tybee Bomb is lost by the US Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, never to be recovered.
* 1962 ? French President Charles De Gaulle calls for Algeria to be granted independence.
* 1963 ? The European Court of Justice's ruling in Van Gend en Loos v Nederlandse Administratie der Belastingen establishes the principle of direct effect, one of the most important, if not the most important, decisions in the development of European Union law. meh.
* 1972 ? Bob Douglas becomes the first African American elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame.
* 1976 ? T

 

And people said that my Dumb Quotes thread was annoying.

They beat Boston!: 2009-2010 L.A. Lakers: Back-to-Back World Champions