V. Subbiah Birth Anniversary

V. Subbiah, born on 7 February 1911, in Puducherry, V. Subbiah was a distinguished politician and leader of the trade union movement in the area. At the beginning of his political career, he was greatly impressed by Mahatma Gandhi and joined the Indian National Congress. Subbiah became actively engaged in public life when he founded the French India Youth League in 1931.

 

On February 17 1934, a branch of the All-India Harijan Seva Sangh was organised in Puducherry and V. Subbiah became its secretary. He was a follower of Gandhian principles in his everyday life. As the secretary of the sangh, he came in contact with textile workers most of whom were from the oppressed classes. He also met leaders like Amir Hyder Khan and F. Sundarayya who were organizing workers movements against the British in Madras. He played a significant role in leading the revolutionary trade union movement in Puducherry. In August 1937, he became the secretary of the Madras Mahajan Sabha.

 

Subbiah’s contribution in rousing the working class and integrating them into the freedom struggle remains central to the freedom struggle in India, playing a key role in the independence of Puducherry from the yoke of French colonialism as well.

Adolphe Sax Death Anniversary

 

Adolphe Sax, who passed away on 7 February 1894, was a Belgian-French maker of musical instruments and inventor of the saxophone.

Sax was the son of Charles Joseph Sax (1791–1865), a maker of wind and brass instruments, as well as of pianos, harps, and guitars. Adolphe studied the flute and clarinet at the Brussels Conservatory and in 1842 went to Paris. There he exhibited the saxophone, a single-reed instrument made of metal, with a conical bore, overblowing at the octave, which had resulted from his efforts to improve the tone of the bass clarinet. It was patented in 1846. With his father he evolved the saxhorn (patented 1845), a development on the bugle horn; the saxo-tromba, producing a tone between that of the bugle and the trumpet; and the saxtuba. Sax discovered that it is the proportions given to a column of air vibrating in a sonorous tube, and these alone, that determine the timbre produced.

In 1857 Sax was appointed instructor of the saxophone at the Paris Conservatory. Later he improved several instruments and invented others without, however, establishing a basis for their commercial exploitation. Many of his instruments were accepted for the French army bands, and for 10 years Sax was involved in lawsuits with competing instrument makers seeking to have his patents revoked. In his 80th year he was living in abject poverty; Emmanuel Chabrier, Jules Massenet, and Camille Saint- Saens were obliged to petition the minister of fine arts to come to his aid.

Charles Dickens Birth Anniversary

 

Charles Dickens, born on 7 February 1812, was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian era. His many volumes include such works as A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, and Our Mutual Friend.  

Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity during his lifetime than had any previous author. Much in his work could appeal to the simple and the sophisticated, to the poor and to the queen, and technological developments as well as the qualities of his work enabled his fame to spread worldwide very quickly. His long career saw fluctuations in the reception and sales of individual novels, but none of them was negligible or uncharacteristic or disregarded, and, though he is now admired for aspects and phases of his work that were given less weight by his contemporaries, his popularity has never ceased. The most abundantly comic of English authors, he was much more than a great entertainer. The range, compassion, and intelligence of his apprehension of his society and its shortcomings enriched his novels and made him both one of the great forces in 19th-century literature and an influential spokesman of the conscience of his age.

Rose Day

People celebrate Valentine's Day on February 14, however, the celebrations begin a week before with Rose Day, on February 7. Rose is one of the most special tokens of love and therefore it marks the beginning of Valentine's Week.

On this day of Rose, lovers across the world take the opportunity to make the day special for their partners by surprising them with beautiful roses.

The main reason for celebrating Rose Day is to express love in a very simple and special way by presenting red roses because the red coloured rose represents love.

However, on Rose Day, you can also present different coloured roses which represent different meanings like the yellow rose represents friendship and white rose means a new start. There are over a hundred varieties of roses on the earth, each with its own enigma.