February 8th in History

Skylab 4

Today in History

  • The Boy Scouts of America is incorporated (1910)
  • D. W. Griffith’s film The Birth of a Nation premiers (1915)
  • The first US execution by gas chamber takes place (1924)
  • World War II: Japan invades Singapore (1942)
  • Queen Elizabeth II orders that her family would be known as the House of Windsor (1960)
  • The US bans economic transactions with Cuba (1963)
  • Black students protesting racial segregation are attacked and killed in Orangeburg, South Carolina (1968)
  • The NASDAQ opens (1971)
  • The Skylab 4 crew, last to visit the Skylab space station, return to Earth after 84 days in space (1974)

Birthdays

  • Daniel Bernoulli, mathematician and physicist (1700)
  • William Tecumseh Sherman, US general (1820)
  • Jules Verne, author (1928)
  • Martin Buber, philosopher (1878)
  • Charlie Ruggles, actor (1886)
  • King Vidor, filmmaker (1894)
  • Bill Finger, co-creator of Batman (1914)
  • Lana Turner, actress (1921)
  • Audrey Meadows, actress (1922)
  • Jack Lemmon, actor (1925)
  • Neal Cassady, author, character in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1926)
  • James Dean, actor (1931)
  • John Williams, composer (1932)
  • Ted Koppel, television journalist and anchor (1940)
  • Nick Nolte, actor (1941)
  • Tom Rush, singer-songwriter (1941)
  • Robert Klein, comedian (1942)
  • Mary Steenburgen, actress (1953)
  • John Grisham, lawyer and author (1955)
  • Gary Coleman, actor (1968)
  • Seth Green, actor (1974)

Deaths

  • Mary, Queen of Scots (1587)
  • Peter the Great, Russian tsar (1725)
  • Peter Kropotkin, anarchist (1921)
  • Connie Mack, baseball manager (1956)
  • John von Neumann, mathematician and physicist (1957)
  • Del Shannon, singer-songwriter (1990)
  • Iris Murdoch, novelist (1999)
  • Julius Schwartz, comics editor and publisher (2004)
  • Anna Nicole Smith, model and reality star (2007)

Holidays and Celebrations

  • Parinirvana Day (Mahayana Buddhism)
  • Preseren Day (Slovakia)
  • Propose Day (India)

February 8 is the 39th day of the year. There are 326 days (327 in leap years) remaining until the end of the year.