On This Day February 18th

 OTD

February 18th is the Forty-ninth day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; 316 days remain until the end of the year.

Events

1478 – George, Duke of Clarence, convicted of treason against his older brother Edward IV of England, is executed privately at the Tower of London.

1637 – Eighty Years' War: Off the coast of Cornwall, England, a Spanish fleet intercepts an important Anglo-Dutch merchant convoy of 44 vessels escorted by six warships, destroying or capturing 20 of them.

1735 – The ballad opera Flora, or Hob in the Well, went down in history as the first to be produced in North America (Charleston, S.C.)

1791 – Congress passes a law admitting the state of Vermont to the Union, effective 4 March, after that state had existed for 14 years as a de facto, mainly independent, unrecognized state.

1861 – With Italian unification almost complete, Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont, Savoy, and Sardinia assume the title of King of Italy.

1885 – Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is published in the United States.

1911 – The first official flight with airmail takes place from Allahabad, United Provinces, British India (now India), when Henri Pequet, a 23-year-old pilot, delivers 6,500 letters to Naini, about 10 kilometers (6.2 mi) away.

1930 – While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto.

1977 – The Xinjiang 61st Regiment Farm fire started during Chinese New Year when a firecracker ignited the wreaths of late Mao Zedong, killing 694 personnel. It remains the deadliest fireworks accident in the world.

1979 – Richard Petty wins a then-record sixth Daytona 500 after leaders Donnie Allison and Cale Yarborough crash on the final lap of the first NASCAR race televised live flag-to-flag.

2013 – Armed robbers steal a haul of diamonds worth $50 million during a raid at Brussels Airport in Belgium.

2021 – Perseverance, a Mars rover designed to explore the Jezero crater on Mars as part of NASA's Mars 2020 mission, lands successfully.

 

Birthdays

1602 – Michelangelo Cerquozzi, Italian painter (d. 1660)

1732 – Johann Christian Kittel, German organist and composer (d. 1809)

1836 – Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Indian mystic and yogi (d. 1886)

1848 – Louis Comfort Tiffany, American stained-glass artist (d. 1933) (Winter Parks own)

1862 – Charles M. Schwab, the American businessman, co-founded Bethlehem Steel (d. 1939)

1892 – Wendell Willkie, American captain, lawyer, and politician (d. 1944)

1914 – Pee Wee King, American singer-songwriter and fiddler (d. 2000)

1947 – Dennis DeYoung, American musician, singer, and songwriter

1950 – John Hughes, American director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2009)

1968 – Molly Ringwald, an American actress

1990 – Monica Aksamit, American saber fencer

 

Holiday Spotlight

Pluto Day is celebrated annually to commemorate the anniversary of the discovery of Pluto in 1930. Although Pluto was discovered in 1930, the story of its discovery started in 1840 after French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier sensed that there was a planet outside of Uranus due to irregularities in its orbit. His intuition led him to develop mathematical calculations to explain the discrepancies in Uranus’s orbit about the laws of planetary motion and gravity, which led to the eventual discovery of Neptune.

After Neptune was discovered, an event widely regarded as a validation of a subset of the astronomy practice called celestial mechanics. It was then realized that there was yet another planet disturbing Uranus’s orbit since the irregularity in its orbit continued. This led to the search for Pluto — initially called Planet X — being headed by Percival Lowell, whose death would later see the search for Pluto passed to Clyde Tombaugh, who eventually discovered it.

The planet, named after the Roman god of the Underworld, was considered one of the nine planets in the solar system until 2006. The International Astronomical Union reduced its status and tagged it a ‘dwarf’ planet due to not meeting the criteria to be considered a full-sized planet and being two-thirds of the size of the Earth. It is believed that the first two letters in ‘Pluto’ were in honor of Percival Lowell, whose belief that there were other planets beyond Neptune helped fuel the drive that led to its discovery.

 

Others Include.

Cow Milked While Flying in an Airplane Day

Crab-Stuffed Flounder Day

Daytona 500

Drink Wine Day

Eat Ice Cream for Breakfast Day

National Battery Day

National Hate Florida Day

NBA All-Star Game

Pluto Day

Thumb Appreciation Day

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