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.