February 8
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Events on This Day
1802 - Simon Willard patented the banjo clock. He couldn’t play it a lick, but it did keep good time...1887 - The Aurora Ski Club of Red Wing, MN sponsored the first ski tournament in the United States.
1910 - William D. Boyce of Chicago, Illinois incorporated the Boy Scouts of America. He didn’t, however, conceptualize the scouting movement -- the Boy Scouts were originated by Englishman, Sir Robert S.S. Baden-Powell. It seems that Mr. Boyce was visiting England and one foggy day in London town, he lost his way. A young boy guided him, but refused any monetary reward. A surprised Mr. Boyce queried as to why. The boy replied that he was a Scout and Scouts did not accept a reward for doing a good turn. This gesture of good will so inspired Boyce that he searched out Baden-Powell to learn more about the British Scouts. Upon his return to the United States, he formed the Boy Scouts of America.
1918 - The Stars and Stripes, the weekly newspaper of the American Expeditionary Forces, was published for the first time.
1924 - John Joseph Carty of the Bell Telephone System spoke in Chicago, IL. His speech was carried across the nation on the first coast-to-coast radio hookup. An estimated 50-million people heard the speech.
1926 - Jim and Louise Sullivan won the National Charleston Dance Contest of the World at the Trianon Ballroom in Chicago (Feb 8/9). Ginger Rogers took second place. The contest had a $10,000 first prize. Later, the Sullivans toured for two years in ballrooms and in vaudevilles throughout the U.S.
1927 - The original version of the motion picture, Getting Gertie’s Garter, opened at the Hippodrome Theatre in New York City. The comedy, starring Marie Prevost, Charles Ray and Franklin Pangborn, centers on a young lawyer who, believe it or not, didn’t know the difference between a bracelet and a garter.
1933 - The Boeing 247 took flight from Boeing Field, near Seattle, WA. The flight ushered in a new era of air travel. The twin-engine, ten-passenger monoplane blazed new trails in aviation, but was quickly overtaken by the competing Douglas DC-2.
1936 - The first National Football League draft was held. Jay Berwanger was the first to be selected. He went to the Philadelphia Eagles.
1942 - The U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) recommended removing Japanese-Americans from Pacific states and interning them 500 miles inland from coast during WWII. Within months, over 100,000 Japanese-Americans were placed in remote prison camps, and some remained behind barbed wire for three years.
1943 - British General Orde Wingate led a guerrilla force of ‘Chindits’ against the Japanese in Burma.
1943 - The Russian Army liberated the city of Kursk from the Nazis.
1952 - Elizabeth was formally proclaimed Queen of England following the Feb 6 death of her father, King George VI. Elizabeth was crowned Jun 2, 1953.
1953 - Film actress June Haver, age 26, renounced her Hollywood career to enter the Roman Catholic Sisters of Charity convent in Xavier, Kansas. (She renounced the convent after a few months.)
1955 - Georgy Malenkov was forced to resign the Soviet premiership. He was replaced by Nikolai Bulganin.
1960 - U.S. Congressional investigators began exploring the influence of payola in the radio and record industries. Alan Freed and American Bandstand host, Dick Clark, among others, were called to testify.
1963 - Lamar Hunt, owner of the American Football League franchise in Dallas, TX, moved the operation to Kansas City. He named the new team the Chiefs. Dallas got possession of an NFL franchise known as the Cowboys.
1968 - Senator Robert F. Kennedy predicted that the U.S. could not win the Vietnam War.
1969 - The last issue of the Saturday Evening Post was published, ending a magazine tradition that began in 1821.
1973 - U.S. Senate leaders named seven members of a select committee to investigate the Watergate scandal. The panel’s chairman was Democrat Sam J. Ervin Jr of North Carolina.
1974 - America’s final Skylab mission, with Gerald Carr, Edward Gibson and William Pogue, returned to earth on this day.
1981 - Scott Hamilton won the U.S. male figure skating championship.
1983 - The champion thoroughbred Shergar was kidnapped in Ireland. The horse was never found. Lloyds of London paid $10.6 million insurance.
1984 - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of the Los Angeles Lakers scored 27 points while leading his team to a 111-109 victory over the Boston Celtics. Abdul-Jabbar passed Wilt Chamberlain’s NBA career record of 12,682 field goals on this night.
1984 - The Winter Olympics opened in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia (now Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina). Some 1,579 athletes from 50 nations participated. The Olympic facilities have since been all but destroyed by the war in Bosnia.
1985 - The Dukes of Hazzard ended its 6-1/2 year run on CBS television. The series was credited with using more stunt men than any other TV series in history. The show had used as many as eight cars per episode when the crash sequences got complicated. Waylon Jennings did the theme song, The Dukes of Hazzard (Good Ol’ Boys).
1987 - The West beat the East in the NBA All-Star Game. A record was set for total points scored. The West won 154-149 in overtime.
1988 - Senator Bob Dole won a convincing victory in Iowa’s Republican presidential caucuses, while Representative Dick Gephardt came in first among Democrats.
1990 - Singer Del Shannon (Charles Westover) shot himself in the head with a .22 caliber rifle at his home in Santa Clarita, California. He was 50. Shannon’s first and biggest hit was Runaway, which hit number one in the U.S. April 24, 1961. His other top-20 singles included Hats Off to Larry, Little Town Flirt and Keep Searchin’ (We’ll Follow the Sun).
1992 - The XVIth Winter Olympic Games opened in Albertville, France. The games ran through Feb 23 and included 64 countries with 1801 athletes, 488 of whom were women.
1992 - The single by Right Said Fred, I’m Too Sexy, was #1 in the U.S. It was a smash, staying at number one for three weeks, then dropping to number two for three more. “I’m too sexy for my car; too sexy for my car; Too sexy by far; And I’m too sexy for my hat; Too sexy for my hat; what do you think about that...”
1993 - General Motors sued NBC-TV, alleging that the Dateline NBC program had rigged two car-truck crashes to show that GM pickups were prone to fires in side-impact crashes. NBC settled the lawsuit the following day.
1996 - An agreement was reached between the city of Cleveland, the NFL and Art Modell, permitting Modell to move his football franchise, the Cleveland Browns, to Baltimore. As part of the agreement, the name Browns, its team colors, and storied history would remain in the proud city of Cleveland.
1998 - Olga Danilova of Russia won the first gold medal of the Nagano Winter Games -- in 15-kilometer classical cross-country skiing.
1998 - Halldór Laxness, novelist and Nobel Prize winner, died in Iceland. He was 95 years old. His books include Independent People, The Great Weaver of Cashmere, Salka Valka, The Atom Station and Paradise Reclaimed.
1999 - Jordan’s King Hussein was laid to rest during a five-hour funeral in Amman attended by dignitaries from all over the world, including President Clinton and former U.S. presidents Bush, Carter and Ford.
2000 - Two small planes collided over Zion, IL. Three people were killed including Bob Collins, a popular Chicago radio host for WGN-AM.
2001 - U.S. President George Bush (II) sent his proposed $1.6 trillion, 10-year tax cut plan to Congress.
2001 - The $1.4-billion Disney’s California Adventure opened in Anaheim. The theme park occupies about 55 acres of the former 100-acre Disneyland parking lot, immediately south of the Magic Kingdom. Disney’s California Adventure focuses on California’s history and natural wonders.
2002 - Movies making debuts in the U.S.: Big Fat Liar, starring Frankie Muniz, Paul Giamatti, Amanda Bynes, Amanda Detmer, Donald Faison and Lee Majors; Collateral Damage, with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elias Koteas, Francesca Neri, Cliff Curtis, John Leguizamo and John Turturro; Monster’s Ball, starring Billy Bob Thornton, Halle Berry, Heath Ledger, Peter Boyle, Sean Combs, Mos Def and Coronji Calhoun; Rollerball, with Chris Klein, Jean Reno, Ll Cool J, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos and Naveen Andrews; and Scotland, PA, starring James LeGros, Maura Tierney, Christopher Walken, Kevin Corrigan, James Rebhorn, Tom Guiry, Andy Dick, Amy Smart and Timothy ‘Speed’ Levitch.
2002 - William T. Dillard Sr., founder Dillard’s Department Stores, died in Little Rock, Arkansas. He was 87 years old.
2002 - U.S. President George Bush (II) opened the 19th Winter Olympic Games as part of a three-hour ceremony at Rice-Eccles Stadium at the University of Utah campus. The ceremonies included an emotional tribute to America’s heroes, from the pioneers of the West to past Olympic champions to the thousands who perished in the World Trade Center attacks of Sep 11, 2001.
2003 - In Australia, near the town of Byron Bay, 750 nude women formed a heart around the words No War to protest possible war with Iraq. “We only needed 67 women to turn up, but we got 750,” an organizer of the event said.
2004 - The Grammy Awards: OutKast won album of the year for Speakerboxxx-The Love Below and Beyonce took home a record-tying five trophies.
2005 - Deaths on this day: Keith Knudsen (56), Doobie Brothers drummer who was part of the band during a string of hits that included Taking it to the Streets and Black Water, died of pneumonia; and Jimmy Smith, reigning ‘Emperor of the Hammond Organ’, died at 79 years of age in Scottsdale, AZ.
2006 - Chad and Sudan signed the Tripoli Agreement, ending the Chadian-Sudanese conflict.
2007 - Anna Nicole Smith died in Florida at 41 years of age. The former Playboy centerfold (Miss May 1992) and wife of former oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II (1905-1995), was killed by a drug overdose of nine prescription medications.
2008 - New films in U.S. theatres: Fool’s Gold, starring Matthew McConaughey, Kate Hudson, Donald Sutherland, Ewen Bremner, Alexis Dziena, Kevin Hart and Ray Winstone; and Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins, starring Martin Lawrence, Margaret Avery, Joy Bryant, Michael Clarke Duncan, Mike Epps, Mo’Nique, Nicole Ari Parker, Cedric the Entertainer and James Earl Jones.
2008 - Australia’s widely criticized ‘Pacific Solution’ ended. The policy involved Australia’s transporting asylum seekers to detention camps on small remote islands.
2009 - Searing temperatures and wind blasts created a firestorm that burned a swath across Australia’s Victoria state. Hundreds of homes were destroyed and 130 people were killed. The town of Marysville and several hamlets in the Kinglake district, both about 50 miles (100 kilometers) north of Melbourne, were mostly destroyed.
2009 - Coldplay’s Viva la Vida won the Grammy for song of the year. Rocker Robert Plant and bluegrass superstar Alison Krauss teamed up to record Raising Sand -- and won five Grammys for their efforts, including record and album of the year.
2010 - Australia tightened its migration rules in favor of English speakers and professionals. Immigration Minister Chris Evans said the country had been attracting too many hairdressers and cooks and too few doctors and engineers.
2010 - The U.S. Mid-Atlantic region dug out from three feet of snow. The storm had left tens of thousands without power, blocked trains, planes and cars, and virtually shut down the federal government.
2011 - China raised interest rates by .025% for the second time in six weeks, intensifying a battle in the fast-expanding economy against stubbornly high inflation.
2012 - The government agency, Statistics Canada, reported that the Canadian population grew by 5.9 percent over five years to 33.5 million people in 2011. The increase in the growth rate was attributed to slightly higher fertility and to an increase in the number of non-permanent residents and immigrants.
2013 - Movies debuting in the U.S.: A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, starring Charlie Sheen, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Katheryn Winnick, Patricia Arquette, Aubrey Plaza, Dermot Mulroney and Mary Elizabeth Winstead; Identity Thief, with Amanda Peet, Melissa McCarthy, Jason Bateman, Genesis Rodriguez, Robert Patrick, Jon Favreau, John Cho and Maggie Elizabeth Jones; Side Effects, starring Channing Tatum, Rooney Mara, Jude Law, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Mamie Gummer, Vinessa Shaw, David Costabile and Andrea Bogart; The Sorcerer and the White Snake, with Jet Li, Shengyi Huang, Raymond Lam, Charlene Choi, Zhang Wen and Vivian Hsu; and The Playroom, starring John Hawkes, Molly Parker, Cody Linley, Lydia Mackay, Olivia Harris and Jonathon McClendon.
2013 - The U.N. refugee agency reported a huge increase in the number of people fleeing Syria, with some 5,000 refugees crossing the borders daily into neighboring countries.
2014 - Morocco’s Interior Ministry banned a sit-in by hundreds of judges who demanded greater independence from the monarchy. “We want organic laws that guarantee the independence of the judiciary from executive and legislative powers and from social and political lobbies,” said Yassine Mkhelli, president of the Judges’ Club.
2015 - 22 soccer fans died in a stampede outside a Cairo, Egypt stadium in a melee with security forces. Authorities said the riot was sparked when hard-core Zamalek fans known as Ultras White Knights tried to force their way into the stadium without tickets. The violence prompted the Cabinet to suspend the national football league indefinitely.
2016 - France’s former budget minister Jerome Cahuzac, who stashed millions abroad while cracking down on tax cheats at home, went on trial for tax fraud and money laundering. (In Dec 2016 Cahuzac was sentenced to three years in prison.)
2017 - 15,000 people were left homeless in the Philippines after a huge fire engulfed an overcrowded slum in Manila. The blaze destroyed thousands of homes and sent residents fleeing.
2017 - Republican Senator Jeff Sessions was confirmed as U.S. attorney general. The final 52-47 vote for Sessions (one of Trump’s closest advisers and his earliest supporter in the Senate) came after 30 hours of debate from Democrats and a stunning fight between liberal Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senate Republicans which ended in her being forced to sit down after she was accused of impugning Sessions.
2018 - Pakistan’s media regulatory authority, acting on a court order, instructed all news channels, radio stations and print media to refrain from promoting Valentine’s Day. Pakistani Islamist and right-wing political parties view Valentine’s Day as un-Islamic and a vulgar Western import.
2018 - The U.S.-led coalition and its local allies struck pro-government forces in Syria with deadly air and artillery fire to repel “an unprovoked attack” near the Euphrates. The coalition repoprted that it killed at least 100 pro-regime fighters to fend off an attack on its allies. It was later reported that at least four Russian private military contractors were killed in the strike.
2019 -Movies debuting in the U.S. included: Cold Pursuit, starring Emmy Rossum, Liam Neeson and Laura Dern; the animated The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part, featuring characters voiced by Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Tiffany Haddish, Stephanie Beatriz, Alison Brie, Nick Offerman, Charlie Day, Maya Rudolph and Will Ferrell; The Prodigy, with Taylor Schilling, Peter Mooney and Brittany Allen; What Men Want, starring Taraji P. Henson, Wendi McLendon-Covey and Max Greenfield; Beneath the Leaves, with Doug Jones, Mira Sorvino and Melora Walters; Chokehold, with Casper Van Dien, Melissa Croden and Lochlyn Munro; Everybody Knows, starring Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem and Ricardo Darín; The Isle, with Conleth Hill, Alex Hassell and Tori Butler-Hart; The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Big Foot, starring Sam Elliott, Aidan Turner and Ron Livingston; To Dust, with Géza Röhrig, Sammy Voit and Sarah Jes Austell; Under the Eiffel Tower, with Matt Walsh, Judith Godrèche and Reid Scott; and Untogether, starring Alice Eve, Jamie Dornan and Jennifer Grey.
2019 - New Hampshire’s Supreme Court upheld the conviction of three women who were arrested for going topless on a beach. The court found Laconia’s ordinance does not discriminate on the basis of gender or violate the women’s right to free speech. Heidi Lilley, Kia Sinclair and Ginger Pierro were part of the Free the Nipple campaign — a global movement advocating for the rights of women to go topless. The women were arrested in 2016 after removing their tops at a beach in Laconia, New Hampshire and refusing to put them on when beachgoers complained. Pierro was doing yoga, while the two others were sunbathing.
2019 - Virginia’s Governor Ralph Northam said that he was not going to resign over a racist photo that had appeared in his medical school yearbook in 1984. The photo depicted a man in blackface next to a man in a Ku Klux Klan outfit. Northam wavered on whether he was in fact one of the men pictured — in his original statement, he apologized and said that he was indeed in the photo, though he didn’t specify which person. But the next morning, he claimed that actually, it wasn’t him: In a press conference, he said there was “no way that I have ever been in a KKK uniform,” but that he did have a recollection of once using shoe polish for blackface as part of a Michael Jackson costume during a dance contest.
2020 - Robert Conrad, American film and TV star, died in Malibu, CA at 84 years of age. Conrad was best known for his role in the 1965–1969 television series The Wild Wild West, playing the sophisticated Secret Service agent James T. West. And he portrayed World War II ace Pappy Boyington in the television series Baa Baa Black Sheep/The Black Sheep Squadron.
2020 - Australia declared the Currowan Fire south of Sydney to finally be out -- after 74 days -- and after destroying more than 300 homes and razing 500,000 hectares (1.2 million acres). A deluge in eastern parts of the country had drenched the deadly fires and helped ease a crippling drought.
2020 - France reported that it had closed two schools and tried to reassure vacationers in the Alps after five British citizens, including a 9-year-old child, contracted the COVID-19 virus at a French ski resort (later linked to a British person who stayed there in late January, and was confirmed to have the virus after returning to Britain).
2021 - Mary Wilson, founding member of the Supremes, died at her home in Henderson, Nevada. She was 76 years old. Wilson, along with Florence Ballard, Diana Ross (and Betty McGlown), made up the trailblazing group, the Supremes -- well known for hits like Where Did Our Love Go? Baby Love, Come See About Me and Love Child. Wilson later became a New York Times best-selling author with the release of her first autobiography, Dreamgirl: My Life as a Supreme, which set records for sales in its genre, and later for the autobiography Supreme Faith: Someday We’ll Be Together.
2021 - Billionaire Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company, Tesla Inc, purchased $1.5 billion of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin and announced that Tesla would be accepting it as a form of payment. (Bitcoin was later withdrawn as mining it had a negative impact on the environment. It seems the energy to run power-intensive servers to solve mathematical puzzles to earn Bitcoin was driven by coal-based electricity generators.)
2021 - Facebook announced that it would remove posts and block groups that claim vaccines make people ill or cause autism. Previously the company had only ‘demoted’ such claims.
2022 - Republican Senator Mitch McConnell pushed back against the Republican Party’s characterization of the Jan 6 riot as “legitimate political discourse,” saying the attack on the Capital was, “a violent insurrection with the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election from one administration to the next. That’s what it was,” McConnell said.
2022 - Plastic pollution at sea reached worrying levels and scientist said it will continue to grow even if significant action is taken now to stop such waste from reaching the world’s oceans.
2023 - Rescue workers were racing against time to pull survivors from the rubble of collapsed buildings after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake of Feb 6. Some heart-warming successes were seen in Turkey, but an aid group said hope was fading in quake-hit northwest Syria. Survivors, many of whom were homeless, were facing “a secondary disaster” as cold and snow lead to “worsening and horrific conditions,” the World Health Organization said.
2023 - A couple in North Carolina woke up and realized that their car had been stolen while they were asleep. Lucky for them, their Apple AirTag notified them of their car’s location, and they were able to locate it within minutes. (The couple said they placed Apple AirTags in both of their cars as well as their phones, wallets, and luggage.) Responding officers located the the stolen vehicle and arrested three underage suspects.
and more...
Birthdays on This Day February 8
1820 - William Tecumseh Sherman
Union Army General in the U.S. Civil War famous for his march through Georgia: “War is hell.”; died Feb 14, 18911828 - Jules Verne
‘the father of science fiction’: writer: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Around the World in Eighty Days; died Mar 24, 19051888 - Dame Edith Evans
actress: Scrooge, Look Back in Anger, David Copperfield, The Madwoman of Chaillot; died Oct 14, 19761902 - Lyle Talbot
character actor: Sunrise at Campobello, Plan 9 From Outer Space, City of Fear, The Notorious Mr. Monks, Guns Don’t Argue, Dangerous Assignment, Space Patrol, Mr. & Mrs. North, The Lone Ranger, The Bob Cummings Show, Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, M Squad, Leave It to Beaver, Perry Mason, December Bride, Maverick, Rawhide, Hawaiian Eye, Dennis the Menace, 77 Sunset Strip, Petticoat Junction, The Beverly Hillbillies, Dragnet 1967, Newhart; died Mar 2, 19961905 - Truman Bradley
actor: I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now, Treat ’Em Rough, Charlie Chan in Rio, On Borrowed Time, Vacation from Love; host of TV’s Science Fiction Theater; died July 28, 19741919 - Buddy Morrow (Moe Zudekoff)
bandleader: Night Train, Hey Mrs. Jones, theme from Man with the Golden Arm; died Sep 27, 20101921 - Lana (Julia Jean) Turner
actress: Ziegfeld Girl, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Madame X, Love Finds Andy Hardy; died June 29, 19951922 - Audrey Meadows
Emmy Award-winning actress: The Jackie Gleason Show [1955]; The Honeymooners, That Touch of Mink; sister of actress, Jayne Meadows; died Feb 3, 19961925 - Jack Lemmon (John Uhler Lemmon III)
Academy Award-winning actor: Mr. Roberts [1955], Save the Tiger [1973]; The Apartment, The Odd Couple, Grumpy Old Men series, Some Like It Hot, The China Syndrome, Airport ’77, The Fortune Cookie, Irma La Douce, Days of Wine and Roses, Bell, Book and Candle, My Fellow Americans, Out to Sea; died June 27, 20011930 - Jim Dooley
football: Chicago Bears; head coach: Chicago Bears [1968-1971: 20-36-0]; died Jan 8, 20081930 - Alejandro Rey
actor: The Grace Kelly Story, Fun in Acapulco; died May 21, 19871931 - James Dean
actor: Giant, East of Eden, Rebel Without A Cause; killed in car crash Sep 30, 19551932 - John Williams
Academy Award-winning composer: film scores: Schindler’s List [1993], E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial [1982], Star Wars [1977], Fiddler on the Roof [1971]; Jurassic Park, Home Alone series, JFK, Indiana Jones series, Born on the Fourth of July, The Accidental Tourist, Superman series, Jaws series, The Deer Hunter, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Black Sunday, Midway, The Towering Inferno, Earthquake, The Paper Chase, The Poseidon Adventure; conductor: Boston Pops1936 - Larry Verne
singer: Please Mr. Custer; died Oct 8, 20131938 - Ray Sharpe
singer: Linda Lu1940 - Ted Koppel
journalist; anchor: Nightline1941 - Nick Nolte
actor: Down and Out in Beverly Hills, The Deep, Blue Chips, 48 Hours, The Prince of Tides, Extreme Prejudice1942 - Robert Klein
comedian: TV’s Bloopers & Practical Jokes1943 - Creed Bratton
musician: guitar, banjo, sitar: group: The Grass Roots: Sooner or Later, Let’s Live for Today1943 - Bob (Robert Lee) Oliver
baseball: Pittsburgh Pirates, KC Royals, California Angels, Baltimore Orioles, NY Yankees1944 - Bunky Henry
golf: PGA Tour, SPGA Tour; football: 21st Gator Bowl [1965], Georgia Tech Hall of Fame1946 - Fito de la Parra
musician: drums, singer: group: Canned Heat: On the Road Again, Going Up the Country
1947 - Larry Walton
football: Detroit Lions1948 - ‘England’ Dan Seals
singer: group: England Dan and John Ford Coley: Nights are Forever Without You, Love is the Answer, It’s Sad to Belong, I’d Really Love to See You Tonight, Part of Me, Part of You, You’ll Never Have to Say Goodbye Again; solo: Everything that Glitters, You Still Move Me, Bop, Let the Good Times Roll; died Mar 25, 20091949 - Brooke Adams
actress: Days of Heaven, Gas Food Lodging, O.K. Crackerby1949 - Julia Barr
actress: All My Children, Ryan’s Hope, 3 Day Test, I, the Jury1953 - Mary Steenburgen
actress: Nixon, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Back to the Future, Part 3, Parenthood, Melvin and Howard; wife of actor Ted Danson1954 - Joe Maddon
baseball [manager]: California/Anaheim Angels [1993, 2005]; 2002 World Series champs; Tampa Bay Devil Rays/Rays [2006–2014]; Chicago Cubs [2015–2019]: 2016 World Series champs; Los Angeles Angels [2020-2022])1955 - John Grisham
author: The Confession, The Associate, A Time to Kill, The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Rainmaker; attorney; legislator1955 - Ethan Phillips
actor: Star Trek: Voyager, Benson, For Richer or Poorer, Jeffrey, The Shadow, Wagons East!, The Man Without a Face, Green Card, Lean on Me, Critters, Bloodhounds of Broadway, Glory, The Island, Bad Santa, The Babysitters, Shadow Witness, Audrey, Inside Llewyn Davis1959 - Henry Czerny
actor: Revenge, Choices of the Heart: The Margaret Sanger Story, For Hope, The Boys of St. Vincent, Mission: Impossible, Clear and Present Danger, The Ice Storm, The Michelle Apartments, The Pink Panther [2006], Jackpot, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, The Tudors1961 - Vince Neil (Wharton)
singer: group: Motley Crue: LP: Theatre of Pain1968 - Gary Coleman
actor: Diff’rent Strokes, Webster, The Kid from Left Field, The Fantastic World of D.C. Collins; died May 28, 20101969 - Mary McCormack
actress: In Plain Sight, Murder One, The West Wing, Private Parts, Deep Impact, True Crime, High Heels and Low Lifes, K-PAX, Right at Your Door1970 - Stephanie Courtney
actress: plays Flo in Progressive Insurance commercials; Mad Men, Cavemen, Men of a Certain Age, The Groundlings; Fred: The Show, Fred: The Movie, Fred 2: Night of the Living Fred1970 - Jamie Martin
football [quarterback]: Weber State Univ; NFL: L.A./St. Louis Rams, Jacksonville Jaguars, NY Jets1970 - Alonzo Mourning
basketball: Georgetown Univ; NBA: Charlotte Hornets, Miami Heat; earnings: $110 million over 7 years1972 - Marcus Pollard
football [wide receiver]: Bradley Univ; NFL: Indianapolis Colts, Detroit Lions1974 - Seth Green
actor: Rat Race, Josie and the Pussycats, Austin Powers series, To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday, Pump Up the Volume1977 - Dave ‘Phoenix’ Farrell
musician: bass guitar, singer: group: Linkin Park: Numb, Encore, One Step Closer, Crawling, Faint, Lying From You, Breaking the Habit, In the End, From the Inside, Somewhere I Belong
1977 - Pooch Hall
actor: Ray Donovan, Jumping the Broom, A Dog’s Purpose, The Game1977 - Bridgette Kerkove
actress [1998-2011]: X-rated films: It’s the Money Talkin’, Porn-o-matic 2000, Backseat Confidential, Sex in the Valley, Farmer’s Daughters Do Vegas, More Than a Handful 15, Everybody’s Doing It!1977 - Cara Wakelin
model: Playboy Playmate of the Month Nov 1999; actress: Death to Smoochy, Relic Hunter, Entourage1984 - Cecily Strong
actress, comedian: Saturday Night Live, How to Sponsor a Uterus, The Bronze, Ghostbusters [2016]; Verizon Einstein Commercials1986 - Anna Hutchison
actress: The Cabin in the Woods, Spartacus: War of the Damned, Shortland Street, Power Rangers Jungle Fury, Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities, Go Girls, Wild Boys, Blinder1989 - Dani Harmer
actress: Tracy Beaker film series, Dani's House, Dani’s Castle, After You’ve Gone1989 - Julio Jones
football [wide receiver]: NFL: Atlanta Falcons [2011-2020]: 2017 Super Bowl LI; Tennessee Titans [2021– ]1990 - Bethany Hamilton
pro surfer: at 13 survived a 2003 shark attack, but lost her left arm; author: Soul Surfer: A True Story of Faith, Family, and Fighting to Get Back on the Board; more1990 - Klay Thompson
basketball [guard/forward]: NBA: Golden State Warriors [2011– ]: 2015 NBA champs1997 - Kathryn Newton
actress: Gary Unmarried, Big Little Lies, The Society, Supernatural, Halt and Catch Fire, Bad Teacher, Paranormal Activity 4, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Blockers, Ben Is Back, Pokémon Detective Pikachu, Freaky, The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
and still more...
Hit Music on This Day February 8
1951My Heart Cries for You (facts) - Guy Mitchell
Tennessee Waltz (facts) - Patti Page
1960
1969
1978
1987
1996
2005
2014
2023
and even more...
Those were the days, my friend. We thought they’d never end...
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