Frederick Douglass' Death Anniversary

 

Frederick Douglass, who passed away on 20 February 1895, was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, becoming famous for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave. It was in response to this disbelief that Douglass wrote his first autobiography.

Nicolaus Copernicus' Birth Anniversary

Nicolaus Copernicus, born on 19 February 1473, was a Renaissance-era mathematician and astronomer, who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than Earth at the center of the universe, in all likelihood independently of Aristarchus of Samos, who had formulated such a model some eighteen centuries earlier.

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's Birth Anniversary

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, born on 18 February 1946, was the supreme personality of Godhead and the chief proponent of the Achintya Bheda Abheda Vedanta school and the Gaudiya Vaishnavism tradition within Hinduism.

Rani Gaidinliu's Death Anniversary

Rani Gaidinliu, who passed away on 17 February 1993, was a Naga spiritual and political leader who led a revolt against British rule in India. At the age of 13, she joined the Heraka religious movement of her cousin Haipou Jadonang. The movement later turned into a political movement seeking to drive out the British from Manipur and the surrounding Naga areas. Within the Heraka faith, she came to be considered an incarnation of the Goddess Cherachamdinliu. Gaidinliu was arrested in 1932 at the age of 16, and was sentenced to life imprisonment by the British rulers. Jawaharlal Nehru met her at Shillong Jail in 1937, and promised to pursue her release. Nehru gave her the title of "Rani" ("Queen"), and she gained local popularity as Rani Gaidinliu.

Dinesh Nandini Dalmia's Birth Anniversary

 

Dinesh Nandini Dalmia, born on 16 February 1928, was an Indian poet, short story writer and novelist of Hindi literature. She was the fifth wife of Ramkrishna Dalmia, founder of the Dalmia Group, and three of his four previous wives were still alive and married to him when she became his fifth wife. Nevertheless, she positioned herself in opposition to gender discrimination and purdah system, and published poems, prose poems, short stories and novels on the theme of women's emancipation. Shabnam, Niraash Aasha, Mujhe Maaf Kama and Yeh Bhi Jhooth Hai are some of her notable works. The Government of India awarded her the third highest civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan, in 2006, for her contributions to literature.

Galileo Galilei's Birth Anniversary

 

Galileo Galilei, born on 15 February 1564, was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath, from Pisa. Galileo has been called the "father of observational astronomy", the "father of modern physics", the "father of the scientific method", and the "father of modern science".

Damodaram Sanjivayya's Birth Anniversary

 

Damodaram Sanjivayya, born on 14 February 1921, was the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, India from 11 January 1960 to 12 March 1962. Sanjivayya was the first Dalit Chief Minister of an Indian state. He wrote a book on Labour problems and industrial development in India, in 1970 published by Oxford and IBH Pub. Co., New Delhi. He introduced pension system for widows, elderly people, he established Lalitha kala academy in Andhra pradesh, he was the youngest chief minister ever in India, he introduced the office of Anticorruption Bureau {ACB}, he completed the irrigation projects like Gajuladinne in Kurnool dist., Vamsadhara, Pulichintala and varadarajula swamy project near Atmakur in Kurnool dist.

Chuck Yeager's Birth Anniversary

 

Chuck Yeager, born on 13 February 1923, was a United States Air Force officer, flying ace, and record-setting test pilot who in 1947 became the first pilot in history confirmed to have exceeded the speed of sound in level flight.

Yeager enlisted in the U.S. Army in September 1941, shortly after graduating from high school, and was assigned to the Army Air Corps. He was commissioned a reserve flight officer in 1943 and became a pilot in the fighter command of the Eighth Air Force stationed in England. He flew 64 missions over Europe during World War II, shot down 13 German aircraft, and was himself shot down over France (he escaped capture with the help of the French underground). After the war he became a flight instructor and then a test pilot, securing a regular commission as a captain in 1947.

Yeager was chosen from several volunteers to test-fly the secret experimental X-1 aircraft, built by the Bell Aircraft Company to test the capabilities of the human pilot and a fixed-wing aircraft against the severe aerodynamic stresses of sonic flight. On October 14, 1947, over Rogers Dry Lake in southern California, he rode the X-1, attached to a B-29 mother ship, to an altitude of 25,000 feet (7,600 metres). The X-1 then rocketed separately to 40,000 feet (12,000 metres), and Yeager became the first man to break the sound barrier, which was approximately 662 miles (1,066 km) per hour at that altitude. The feat was not announced publicly until June 1948. Yeager continued to make test flights, and on December 12, 1953, he established a world speed record of 1,650 miles (2,660 km) per hour in an X-1A rocket plane.

In 1954 Yeager left his post as assistant chief of test-flight operations at Edwards Air Force Base in California to join the staff of the Twelfth Air Force in West Germany.

Following other routine assignments, he returned to Edwards in 1962 as commandant of the Aerospace Research Pilot School with the rank of colonel. In 1968 he took command of the 4th Tactical Fighter Wing. He retired from the air force with the rank of brigadier general in 1975. His autobiography, Yeager, was published in 1985.

Charles Darwin's Birth Anniversary

 

Charles Darwin, born on 12 February 1809, was an English naturalist, geologist and biologist, best known for his contributions to the science of evolution. His proposition that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors is now widely accepted, and considered a foundational concept in science. In a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, and he was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey.

Deendayal Upadhyaya's Death Anniversary

 

Deendayal Upadhyaya, who passed away on 11 February 1968, was an Indian politician and thinker of RSS ideology, and former leader of the political party Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the forerunner of Bharatiya Janata Party. He became president of the Jana Sangh in December 1967. He died in mysterious circumstances; his body was found on 11 February 1968 on a railway track near Mughalsarai Junction railway station. The railway station was later renamed in his honour in 2018, 50 years after his death.

International Cribbage Day

International Cribbage Day is celebrated annually on February 10. This date was chosen to honour the birthday of Sir John Suckling (born February 10, 1609), the English poet and gambler credited with inventing the game in the early 17th century.

T. Balasaraswati's Death Anniversary

T. Balasaraswati, who passed away on 9 February 1984, was a celebrated Indian dancer, and singer in the Karnatak (South Indian) tradition, who was one of the 20th century’s foremost exponents of the bharata natyam style of classical dance. She was instrumental not only in expanding the performance of this dance form beyond the precincts of the temples where it was traditionally performed but also in cultivating international appreciation of the art form.

For her contributions to Indian arts and culture, Balasaraswati received a Sangeet Natak Akademi (India’s national academy of music, dance, and drama) award in 1955 and the Padma Vibhushan, one of the country’s top civilian honours, in 1977. Although she danced extensively throughout her life, she was seldom filmed. In 1976, however, the acclaimed Indian film director Satyajit Ray made a short documentary, Bala, as a tribute to her artistic achievement. In 2006 Aniruddha Knight, Balasaraswati’s grandson, also produced a short documentary.

Kanhaiyalal Maneklal Munshi's Death Anniversary

 

Kanhaiyalal Maneklal Munshi, who passed away on 8 February 1971, was an Indian independence movement activist, politician, writer and educationist from Gujarat state. A lawyer by profession, he later turned to author and politician. He is a well-known name in Gujarati literature. He founded Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, an educational trust, in 1938.

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.

Sayajirao Gaekwad III Death Anniversary

Sayajirao Gaekwad III, who passed away on 6 February 1939, was the Maharaja of Baroda State from 1875 to 1939, and is notably remembered for reforming much of his state during his rule. He belonged to the royal Gaekwad dynasty of the Marathas which ruled parts of present-day Gujarat.

National Girls and Women in Sports Day

 

Daulat Singh Kothari's Death Anniversary

National Wedding Ring Day (United States)

Bertrand Russell's Death Anniversary

Bertrand Russell, who passed away on 2 February 1970, was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, essayist, social critic, political activist, and Nobel laureate.

He was the figure in the analytic movement in Anglo-American philosophy, and recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. Russell’s contributions to logic, epistemology, and the philosophy of mathematics established him as one of the foremost philosophers of the 20th century. To the general public, however, he was best known as a campaigner for peace and as a popular writer on social, political, and moral subjects. During a long, productive, and often turbulent life, he published more than 70 books and about 2,000 articles, married four times, became involved in innumerable public controversies, and was honoured and reviled in almost equal measure throughout the world.

Wener Heisenberg's Death Anniversary

Werner Heisenberg, passed away on 1 February 1976, was a German theoretical physicist and one of the key pioneers of quantum mechanics. He published his work in 1925 in a breakthrough paper. In the subsequent series of papers with Max Born and Pascual Jordan, during the same year, this matrix formulation of quantum mechanics was substantially elaborated. He is known for the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which he published in 1927. Heisenberg was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the creation of quantum mechanics".