Monday 5 February 2024 Calendar with holidays, observances and special days

Holidays and observances

• Allianz Day
• Chocolate Fondue Day in USA
• Crown Princess Mary's birthday in Denmark
• Handmade Carnival in Lincoln and Buenos Aires, Argentina (from 5 to 20 February. Colorful processions and parades attract many tourists)
• Kashmir Solidarity Day in Pakistan
• National Weatherman’s Day in US
• Runeberg's Birthday in Finland
• San Marino Liberation Day
• The Carnival Gualeguaychú in Argentina (January, February and the first week of March is the time of carnivals. The carnival in the Gualeguaychu department of the province of Entre Rios is considered one of the best in the world, along with the carnival in Rio de Janeiro, Venice, etc.)
• Western Monarch Day
• World Nutella Day

Events

• 2017 – The New England Patriots win Superbowl LI after coming back down 25 to win 34-28 in overtime. It is the first such overtime game in Superbowl history. Tom Brady wins 4th Super Bowl MVP award.
• 2008 – A major tornado outbreak across the Southern United States kills 57.
• 1958 – Gamal Abdel Nasser is nominated to be the first president of the United Arab Republic.
• 1918 – SS Tuscania is torpedoed off the coast of Ireland; it is the first ship carrying American troops to Europe to be torpedoed and sunk.
• 1918 – Stephen W. Thompson shoots down a German airplane; this is the first aerial victory by the U.S. military.
• 1917 – The Congress of the United States passes the Immigration Act of 1917 over President Woodrow Wilson's veto.
• 1913 – Greek military aviators, Michael Moutoussis and Aristeidis Moraitinis perform the first naval air mission in history, with a Farman MF.7 hydroplane.
• 1909 – Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland announces the creation of Bakelite, the world's first synthetic plastic.
• 1849 – University of Wisconsin–Madison's first class meets at Madison Female Academy.

Births

• 1987 – Alex Kuznetsov, Ukrainian-American tennis player. He is currently the hitting partner of Maria Sharapova.
• 1987 – Curtis Jerrells, American basketball player. Curtis Louis Jerrells Jr. (born February 5, 1987) is an American professional basketball player for Dinamo Sassari of the Italian Lega Basket Serie A (LBA) and the Basketball Champions League.
• 1987 – Darren Criss, American actor, singer, and entrepreneur. He has also appeared on Broadway and in film, and has released several recordings as a soloist and in a band.
• 1986 – Reed Sorenson, American race car driver. He currently competes part-time in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, driving the No. 77 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 for Spire Motorsports and the No. 27 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 for Premium Motorsports.
• 1985 – Laurence Maroney, American football player. Laurence Maroney (born February 5, 1985) is a former American football running back who played five seasons in the National Football League.
• 1982 – Kevin Everett, American football player. Kevin Everett (born February 5, 1982) is a former American football tight end who played for the Buffalo Bills of the National Football League.
• 1980 – Brad Fitzpatrick, American programmer, created LiveJournal. He is best known as the creator of LiveJournal and is the author of a variety of free software projects such as memcached, PubSubHubbub, OpenID and Perkeep.
• 1979 – Nate Holzapfel, American entrepreneur and television personality. Nate Holzapfel (born Nathanael Reid Holzapfel, February 5, 1979) is an American entrepreneur most known for his appearance on ABC’s Shark Tank, where he pitched the Mission Belt Co.
• 1978 – Brian Russell, American football player. He played college football at The University of Pennsylvania and San Diego State University.
• 1977 – Adam Everett, American baseball player and coach. Jeffery Adam Everett (born February 5, 1977), is an American former professional baseball shortstop and third baseman.
• 1971 – Sara Evans, American country singer. Sara Lynn Evans (/ˈsɛərə/; born February 5, 1971) is an American country music singer and songwriter.
• 1969 – Bobby Brown, American singer-songwriter, dancer, and actor. Brown started his career in the R&B and pop group New Edition, from its inception in 1981 until his exit from the group in December 1985.
• 1969 – Derek Stephen Prince, American voice actor. Derek Stephen Prince is an American voice actor who has played various roles in the Digimon series, the voice of Elgar in the live-action Power Rangers Turbo, and Power Rangers in Space, and the voice of Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu and Kokichi Oma in the Danganronpa series.
• 1968 – Roberto Alomar, Puerto Rican-American baseball player and coach. Roberto "Robbie" Alomar Velázquez (/ˈæləmɑːr/; Spanish pronunciation: ; born February 5, 1968) is a Puerto Rican former Major League Baseball (MLB) player who played for the San Diego Padres, Toronto Blue Jays, Baltimore Orioles, Cleveland Indians, New York Mets, Chicago White Sox, and Arizona Diamondbacks (1988–2004).
• 1967 – Chris Parnell, American actor and comedian. Leo Spaceman on 30 Rock.
• 1965 – Keith Moseley, American bass player and songwriter. Keith Moseley (born February 5, 1965) is an American musician and songwriter, who plays bass guitar among other instruments for The String Cheese Incident, a jamband from Boulder, Colorado, of which he is a founding member.
• 1964 – Duff McKagan, American singer-songwriter, bass player, and producer. Michael Andrew "Duff" McKagan (born February 5, 1964), sometimes credited as Duff "Rose" McKagan, is an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter and author.
• 1964 – Laura Linney, American actress. She is the recipient of several awards, including two Golden Globe Awards and four Primetime Emmy Awards, and has been nominated for three Academy Awards and four Tony Awards.
• 1963 – Steven Shainberg, American film director and producer. Both are part of the Shainberg family of Memphis, Tennessee, founder of the Shainberg's chain of stores, which is now part of Dollar General.
• 1962 – Jennifer Jason Leigh, American actress, screenwriter, producer and director. Jennifer Jason Leigh (born Jennifer Leigh Morrow; February 5, 1962) is an American actress.
• 1961 – Tim Meadows, American actor and screenwriter. Timothy Meadows (born February 5, 1961) is an American actor and comedian and one of the longest-running cast members on Saturday Night Live, where he appeared for ten seasons.
• 1959 – Jennifer Granholm Canadian-American lawyer and politician, 47th Governor of Michigan. In January 2017, she was hired as a CNN political contributor.
• 1956 – David Wiesner, American author and illustrator. David Wiesner (born February 5, 1956) is an American illustrator and writer of children's books, known best for picture books including some that tell stories without words.
• 1956 – Vinnie Colaiuta, American drummer. Vincent Peter Colaiuta (born February 5, 1956) is an American drummer who has worked as a session musician in many genres.
• 1955 – Mike Heath, American baseball player and manager. Michael Thomas Heath (born February 5, 1955) is an American former professional baseball catcher.
• 1954 – Cliff Martinez, American drummer and songwriter. Since the 1990s, he has worked primarily as a film score composer, writing music for Spring Breakers, The Foreigner, and multiple films by Steven Soderbergh (Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Solaris, Contagion, and Traffic) and Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive, Only God Forgives, and The Neon Demon).
• 1953 – John Beilein, American basketball player and coach. Beilein has won 754 career games at four-year universities and 829 games altogether, including those at the junior college level.
• 1948 – Barbara Hershey, American actress. She began acting at age 17 in 1965 but did not achieve much critical acclaim until the latter half of the 1980s.
• 1948 – Christopher Guest, American actor and director. Christopher Haden-Guest, 5th Baron Haden-Guest (born February 5, 1948) is a British-American screenwriter, composer, musician, director, actor, and comedian who holds dual British and American citizenship.
• 1948 – Errol Morris, American director and producer. Errol Mark Morris (born February 5, 1948) is an American film director primarily of documentaries examining and investigating, among other things, authorities and eccentrics.
• 1947 – Darrell Waltrip, American race car driver and sportscaster. Darrell Lee Waltrip (born February 5, 1947) is an American motorsports analyst, author, former national television broadcaster, and former racing driver.
• 1947 – Mary L. Cleave, American engineer and astronaut. She also served from 2004 to 2007 as NASA Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate.
• 1944 – Al Kooper, American singer-songwriter and producer. Al Kooper (born Alan Peter Kuperschmidt, February 5, 1944) is an American songwriter, record producer and musician, known for organizing Blood, Sweat & Tears (although he did not stay with the group long enough to share its popularity), providing studio support for Bob Dylan when he went electric in 1965, and bringing together guitarists Mike Bloomfield and Stephen Stills to record the Super Session album.
• 1944 – J. R. Cobb, American guitarist and songwriter. R." Cobb Jr. (February 5, 1944 – May 4, 2019) was an American guitarist and songwriter, most notable for co-writing "Spooky" and "Stormy", among others, as a member of the Classics IV, plus "Champagne Jam" and "Do It Or Die", among others, as a member of the Atlanta Rhythm Section.
• 1943 – Craig Morton, American football player and sportscaster. Larry Craig Morton (born February 5, 1943) is a former American football quarterback in the National Football League (NFL) for the Dallas Cowboys, New York Giants, and Denver Broncos.
• 1943 – Michael Mann, American director, producer, and screenwriter. Michael Kenneth Mann (born February 5, 1943) is an American director, screenwriter, and producer of film and television who is best known for his distinctive brand of stylized crime drama.
• 1943 – Nolan Bushnell, American engineer and businessman, founded Atari, Inc. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre chain.
• 1942 – Roger Staubach, American football player, sportscaster, and businessman, was a quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys in the National Football League (NFL).
• 1941 – Barrett Strong, American soul singer-songwriter and pianist. Among his most famous work at Motown, Strong wrote the lyrics for many of the songs recorded by the Temptations.
• 1941 – Cory Wells, American pop-rock singer (Three Dog Night) (d. 2015), was an American singer, best known as one of the three lead vocalists in the band Three Dog Night.
• 1941 – David Selby, American actor and playwright. David Lynn Selby (born February 5, 1941) is an American film, television and stage actor.
• 1941 – Henson Cargill, American country music singer (d. 2007), was an American country music singer best known for the socially controversial 1968 Country No. 1 hit "Skip a Rope". His music career began in Oklahoma in clubs around Oklahoma City and Tulsa.
• 1941 – Stephen J. Cannell, American actor, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2010), was an American television producer, writer, novelist, and occasional actor, and the founder of Cannell Entertainment (formerly Stephen J. Cannell Productions) and the Cannell Studios.
• 1937 – Alar Toomre, Estonian-American astronomer and mathematician. Toomre's research is focused on the dynamics of galaxies.
• 1937 – Stuart Damon, American actor and singer. Alan Quartermaine, on the American soap opera General Hospital, for which he won an Emmy Award in 1999.
• 1934 – Hank Aaron, American baseball player. Henry Louis Aaron (born February 5, 1934), nicknamed "Hammer" or "Hammerin' Hank," is a retired American Major League Baseball (MLB) right fielder who serves as the senior vice president of the Atlanta Braves.
• 1929 – Hal Blaine, American session drummer, was an American drummer and session musician, estimated to be among the most recorded studio drummers in the history of the music industry, claiming over 35,000 sessions and 6,000 singles. His drumming is featured on 150 US top 10 hits, 40 of which went to number one, as well as many film and television soundtracks.
• 1928 – Andrew Greeley, American priest, sociologist, and author (d. 2013). Greeley (February 5, 1928 – May 29, 2013) was an American Roman Catholic priest, sociologist, journalist and popular novelist.
• 1928 – P. J. Vatikiotis, Israeli-American historian and political scientist (d. 1997), was a Greek-American political scientist and historian of the Middle East. He was Professor of Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
• 1923 – Claude King, American country music singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2013), was an American country music singer and songwriter, best known for his million selling 1962 hit, "Wolverton Mountain".
• 1923 – James E. Bowman, American physician and academic (d. 2011), was an American physician and specialist in pathology, hematology, and genetics. He was a professor of pathology and genetics at the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago.
• 1919 – Red Buttons, American actor (d. 2006), was an American actor and comedian. He won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for his supporting role in the 1957 film Sayonara.
• 1919 – Tim Holt, American actor (d. 1973), was an American actor best known for his youthful leading roles in dozens of Western films and his co-starring roles in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).
• 1915 – Robert Hofstadter, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1990). He was the joint winner of the 1961 Nobel Prize in Physics (together with Rudolf Mössbauer) "for his pioneering studies of electron scattering in atomic nuclei and for his consequent discoveries concerning the structure of nucleons".
• 1914 – William S. Burroughs, American novelist, short story writer, and essayist (d. 1997), was an American writer and visual artist. Burroughs was a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author whose influence is considered to have affected a range of popular culture as well as literature.
• 1908 – Peg Entwistle, Welsh-American actress (d. 1932), was a British stage and screen actress. She began her stage career in 1925, appearing in several Broadway productions.
• 1906 – John Carradine, American actor (d. 1988), was an American actor, best known for his roles in horror films, Westerns, and Shakespearean theatre. A member of Cecil B.
• 1903 – Joan Whitney Payson, American businesswoman and philanthropist (d. 1975), was an American heiress, businesswoman, philanthropist, patron of the arts and art collector, and a member of the prominent Whitney family. She was also co-founder and majority owner of Major League Baseball's New York Mets baseball franchise, and was the first woman to own a major-league team in North America without inheriting it.
• 1900 – Adlai Stevenson II, American soldier, politician, and diplomat, 5th United States Ambassador to the United Nations (d. 1965), was an American lawyer, politician, and diplomat.
• 1892 – Elizabeth Ryan, American tennis player (d. 1979), was an American tennis player who was born in Anaheim, California but lived most of her life in the United Kingdom. Ryan won 26 Grand Slam titles, 19 in women's doubles and mixed doubles at Wimbledon, an all-time record for those two events.
• 1878 – André Citroën, French engineer and businessman, founded Citroën (d. 1935), was a French industrialist and freemason of Dutch and Polish Jewish origin. He is remembered chiefly for the make of car named after him, but also for his application of double helical gears.
• 1840 – Hiram Maxim, American engineer, invented the Maxim gun (d. 1916), was an American-born British inventor best known as the creator of the first portable fully automatic machine gun, the Maxim gun. Maxim held patents on numerous mechanical devices such as hair-curling irons, a mousetrap, and steam pumps.
• 1840 – John Boyd Dunlop, Scottish businessman, co-founded Dunlop Rubber (d. 1921), was a Scottish inventor and veterinary surgeon who spent most of his career in Ireland. Familiar with making rubber devices, he re-invented pneumatic tyres for his child's tricycle and developed them for use in cycle racing.
• 1837 – Dwight L. Moody, American evangelist and publisher, founded Moody Church, Moody Bible Institute, and Moody Publishers (d. 1899). Dwight Lyman Moody (February 5, 1837 – December 22, 1899), also known as D.
• 1723 – John Witherspoon, Scottish-American minister and academic (d. 1794), was a Scottish-American Presbyterian minister and a Founding Father of the United States. Witherspoon embraced the concepts of Scottish common sense realism, and while president of the College of New Jersey (1768–1794; now Princeton University), became an influential figure in the development of the United States' national character.
• 1703 – Gilbert Tennent, Irish-American minister (d. 1764), was a pietistic Protestant evangelist in colonial America. Born in a Presbyterian Scots-Irish family in County Armagh, Ireland, he migrated to America as a teenager, trained for pastoral ministry, and became one of the leaders of the Great Awakening of religious feeling in Colonial America, along with Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield.

Deaths

• 2015 – Herman Rosenblat, Polish-American author (b. 1929)
• 2015 – Val Logsdon Fitch, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1923)
• 2014 – Robert A. Dahl, American political scientist and academic (b. 1915)
• 2012 – Al De Lory, American keyboard player, conductor, and producer (b. 1930)
• 2012 – John Turner Sargent, Sr., American publisher (b. 1924)
• 2012 – Sam Coppola, American actor (b. 1932)
• 2011 – Peggy Rea, American actress and casting director (b. 1921)
• 2010 – Harry Schwarz, South African lawyer, politician, and diplomat, 13th South Africa Ambassador to United States (b. 1924)
• 2008 – Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Indian guru, founded Transcendental Meditation (b. 1918)
• 2007 – Leo T. McCarthy, New Zealand-American soldier, lawyer, and politician, 43rd Lieutenant Governor of California (b. 1930)
• 2006 – Norma Candal, Puerto Rican-American actress (b. 1927)
• 2004 – John Hench, American animator (b. 1908)
• 1999 – Wassily Leontief, Russian-American economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1906)
• 1998 – Tim Kelly, American guitarist (b. 1963)
• 1997 – Pamela Harriman, English-American diplomat, 58th United States Ambassador to France (b. 1920)
• 1995 – Doug McClure, American actor (b. 1935)
• 1993 – Joseph L. Mankiewicz, American director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1909)
• 1993 – William Pène du Bois, American author and illustrator (b. 1916)
• 1991 – Dean Jagger, American actor (b. 1903)
• 1989 – Joe Raposo, American pianist and composer (b. 1937)
• 1983 – Margaret Oakley Dayhoff, American chemist and academic (b. 1925)
• 1981 – Ella T. Grasso, American politician, 83rd Governor of Connecticut (b. 1919)
• 1976 – Rudy Pompilli, American saxophonist (Bill Haley & His Comets) (b. 1926)
• 1972 – Marianne Moore, American poet, author, critic, and translator (b. 1887)
• 1970 – Rudy York, American baseball player, coach, and manager (b. 1913)
• 1969 – Thelma Ritter, American actress (b. 1902)
• 1967 – Leon Leonwood Bean, American businessman, founded L.L.Bean (b. 1872)
• 1922 – Slavoljub Eduard Penkala, Croatian engineer, invented the mechanical pencil (b. 1871)
• 1915 – Ross Barnes, American baseball player and manager (b. 1850)