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Today (January 31)
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January 31  Leah LaBelle (September 8, 1986 – January 31, 2018) was an American singer. Born in Toronto, Ontario, and raised in Seattle, Washington, she began pursuing music as a career in her teens, which included performing in the Total Experience Gospel Choir. LaBelle rose to prominence in 2004 as a contestant on the third season of American Idol, placing twelfth in the season finals. Attending the Berklee College of Music for a year, she dropped out to move to Los Angeles. Starting in 2007, LaBelle recorded covers of R&B and soul music for her YouTube channel. These videos led to work as a backing vocalist starting in 2008 and a record deal in 2011 with Epic in partnership with I Am Other and So So Def Recordings. LaBelle released a sampler, three singles, and a posthumous extended play (EP), and received the Soul Train Centric Award at the 2012 Soul Train Music Awards. In 2018, LaBelle and her boyfriend Rasual Butler died in a car crash in Los Angeles. (Full article...)
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January 31: Independence Day in Nauru (1968) .jpg?lang=en) Doug Williams
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Tomorrow (February 1)
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February 1  Crew of STS-107 The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster was a fatal accident in the NASA Space Shuttle program on February 1, 2003. During the launch of the STS-107 mission, foam insulation from the Space Shuttle external tank fell and damaged the thermal protection system of the orbiter. During atmospheric reentry at the end of the mission, the damage allowed hot gases to penetrate the heat shield and destroy the internal wing structure. The orbiter broke apart inflight, killing all seven astronauts on board (crew pictured). Debris was scattered over eastern Texas and Louisiana, and a massive recovery effort was launched to recover debris and crew remains. The accident resulted in a two-year hiatus for the Space Shuttle program, and an investigation into its cause discovered that NASA had become accustomed to insulation foam hitting the orbiter on previous missions. The accident contributed to the eventual cancellation and retirement of the Space Shuttle, which last flew in 2011. (Full article...)
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February 1: Saint Brigid's Day/Imbolc in Ireland; the Fajr decade begins in Iran; Black History Month begins in North America  Skyline of Kuala Lumpur
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In two days (February 2)
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February 2  A bathymetric relief of Resolution Guyot Resolution Guyot, formerly known as Huevo, is a guyot (tablemount) in the underwater Mid-Pacific Mountains. It is a circular flat mountain, rising 500 metres (1,600 ft) above the seafloor to a depth of about 1,320 metres (4,330 ft), with a summit platform 35 kilometres (22 mi) wide. The Mid-Pacific Mountains lie west of Hawaii and northeast of the Marshall Islands, but at the time of its formation the guyot was located in the Southern Hemisphere, by a hotspot in today's French Polynesia. Plate tectonics shifted it to its present-day location, and the Easter, Marquesas, Pitcairn and Society hotspots may have been involved in the formation of Resolution Guyot. Volcanic activity has been dated to have occurred 107–129 million years ago and formed a volcanic island that was subsequently flattened by erosion. The platform emerged above sea level at one point before eventually drowning for reasons still unknown, with thermal subsidence lowering it further to its present depth. (Full article...)
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February 2: Candlemas (Western Christianity); Groundhog Day in Canada and the United States  Vineyard in Stellenbosch, South Africa
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In three days (February 3)
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February 3 _crop.jpg?lang=en) HMS Argus was a British aircraft carrier that served in the Royal Navy from 1918 to 1944. Converted from an ocean liner, she became the first example of the standard pattern of aircraft carriers, with a full-length flight deck allowing aircraft to take off and land. The ship was involved for several years in the development of the optimum design for other aircraft carriers. She spent one brief deployment on the China Station in the late 1920s before being placed in reserve. Argus was recommissioned and partially modernised shortly before the Second World War. In July 1940 she made the first of her many ferry trips to fly off fighters to Malta. In 1942 she was pressed into front-line service despite her lack of speed and armament. She provided air cover during the invasion of French North Africa and was slightly damaged by a bomb. Argus was used again for deck-landing practice until September 1944. She became an accommodation ship in December, was sold in late 1946 and was scrapped in 1947. (Full article...)
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February 3: Feast day of Saint Laurence of Canterbury (Western Christianity); Four Chaplains' Day in the United States (1943)  James I of Aragon entering Murcia
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February 3  Jim Lovell Over 50 United States astronauts have graduated from the United States Naval Academy (USNA). The Naval Academy is an undergraduate college in Annapolis, Maryland, with the mission of educating and commissioning officers for the United States Navy and Marine Corps. USNA graduates who enter aviation and space-related fields have the opportunity to be selected for astronaut training by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The first alumnus to fly as an astronaut was Alan Shepard, class of 1945. As of May 2022, the most recent alumnus to complete astronaut training was Kayla Barron, class of 2010. Two alumni were part of Project Mercury, three part of Project Gemini, seven part of the Apollo program (Jim Lovell pictured), three have walked on the Moon, one was part of the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project, and forty-two were part of the Space Shuttle program. (Full list...) | |||
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In four days (February 4)
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February 4 _-_cropped.jpg?lang=en) Hot Chip performing in 2016 Made in the Dark is the third studio album by English indietronica band Hot Chip (pictured), released on 4 February 2008 through EMI Records internationally and Astralwerks and DFA Records in the United States. A defining feature of the 13-track album is the strong presence of romantic ballads. Alexis Taylor, the main contributor to the lyrics, felt that feelings of love and happiness, partly the result of his recent marriage, had contributed to the album's romantic tone. The title track was described as "sublime" by one critic. Songs such as "Ready for the Floor" and "Bendable Poseable" were noted by critics to be reminiscent of the band's previous release, The Warning. Some critics felt that Made in the Dark lacked focus and contained too many varied elements. The album peaked at number four on the UK Albums Chart, and entered at number 109 on the U.S. Billboard 200. Several singles were released from the album, including "Shake a Fist", "Ready for the Floor", and "One Pure Thought". (Full article...)
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 Emperor Taizu of Song
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February 4
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In five days (February 5)
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February 5  The first page of Beowulf Colin Robert Chase (February 5, 1935 – October 13, 1984) was an American academic. An associate professor of English at the University of Toronto, he was known for his contributions to the studies of Old English and Anglo-Latin literature. His father was a newspaper executive and his mother, Mary Chase, was a playwright who won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His best-known work, The Dating of Beowulf, challenged the accepted consensus as to when the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf (first page pictured) was created; it left behind what was described in A Beowulf Handbook as "a cautious and necessary incertitude". Chase was also known for writing Two Alcuin Letter-Books, a scholarly collection of 24 letters by the 8th-century scholar Alcuin. He also contributed to the Dictionary of the Middle Ages and wrote the Beowulf section of "This Year's Work in Old English Studies" for the Old English Newsletter for nearly a decade. (Full article...)
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February 5: Lantern Festival in China (2023); Tu BiShvat (Judaism, 2023)  Charles XIV John
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In six days (February 6)
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February 6  Depicted on a Ukrainian commemorative stamp Artemy Vedel (né Vedelsky; 1767–1808) was a Ukrainian-born Russian composer of military and liturgical music. He made major contributions to the music of Ukraine, producing works based on folk melodies, and is one of the greatest composers of Ukrainian and Russian classical music of his era. Born in Kyiv, he studied at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, after which he was appointed its conductor. The army general Andrei Levanidov acquired his services to lead Kyiv's regimental chapel and choir, where he reached the peak of his creativity as a composer. He was then based in Kharkiv but returned to Kyiv when cultural life was affected by Tsar Paul I's decrees. He became a novice monk of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, but was accused of threatening the royal family and incarcerated as a mental patient. His work was censored while Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. More than 80 of his works are known, including 31 choral concertos, but many of his compositions are lost. (Full article...)
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February 6: Sámi National Day (1917); Waitangi Day in New Zealand (1840)  Queen Elizabeth II
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February 6  Beyoncé The Grammy Award for Best Contemporary R&B Album was an honor presented at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards, to recording artists for quality works on albums in the contemporary R&B music genre. The award for Best Contemporary R&B Album, which recognizes R&B albums with more contemporary musical stylings, was first presented to Ashanti at the 45th Grammy Awards in 2003 for her self-titled debut album. According to the category description guide for the 52nd Grammy Awards, the award was reserved for albums "containing at least 51% playing time of newly recorded contemporary R&B vocal tracks" which may also "incorporate production elements found in rap music". Beyoncé (pictured) holds the record for the most wins, with three (all of her first three solo albums earned her the award). Usher is the only other artist to receive the award more than once. From 2012, this category was discontinued as part of a major overhaul of the Grammy Award categories. Recordings in this category were shifted to the Best R&B Album category. (Full list...) | |||
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In seven days (February 7)
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February 7  First page of the manuscript Jesus nahm zu sich die Zwölfe ('Jesus gathered the Twelve to Himself'), BWV 22, is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach, written for the last Sunday before Lent. He composed it as an audition piece for the position of director of church music in Leipzig, and he first performed it there in a church service at the Thomaskirche on 7 February 1723. The work begins with a scene from the Gospel in which Jesus predicts his suffering in Jerusalem, and is not understood by his disciples. Bach showed, setting the prescribed text of an unknown poet, that he mastered the composition of a dramatic scene, an expressive aria with obbligato oboe, a recitative with strings, an exuberant dance, and a chorale in the style of Johann Kuhnau, his predecessor in Leipzig. According to the Bach scholar Richard D. P. Jones, several elements of the work such as a "frame of biblical text and chorale around the operatic forms of aria and recitative" became standards for Bach's Leipzig cantatas and even his Passions. (Full article...)
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February 7: Constitution Day in Mexico (2022) .jpg?lang=en) Bust of Leo I
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