Under Tuesday, February 8, the book of history records, among other things:
1587: At Fotheringhay Castle, Scotland’s Catholic Queen Mary Stuart, former Queen of France (through her marriage to Francis II), is executed on the orders of Queen Elizabeth I of England. She had been in English captivity since 1568 without formal trial.
1807: After a two-day battle near Preussisch-Eylau (today Bagrationowsk), the allied Russians and Prussians were able to stop the French advance. (In June Napoleon defeats the Russians at Friedland).
1887: The “General Allotment Act”, also known as the Dawes Act, is passed. This federal law of the United States subdivides the reservation lands of the Indians. The land will be privatized, divided into 160 acres and given to each Indian head of family for sole use. The act leads to a total impoverishment of the Indians.
1907: Peasant unrest broke out in the Principality of Moldova, which soon spread to all of Romania. The small farmers turn against the big landowners and the Jewish upper class. In many places there are pogroms against the Jews. About 11,000 peasants are killed in the bloody suppression of the uprising.
1937: During the Spanish Civil War, the insurgent Franco troops conquered Malaga.
1942: Hitler appoints Albert Speer as German Reich Minister for Armaments and Munitions, succeeding Fritz Todt, who died in a plane crash.
1947: Foreign Minister Karl Gruber presented the London conference with a memorandum on Austrian resistance to the seven-year Nazi German occupation.
1947: A fire disaster at a costume party in Berlin-Spandau claims more than a hundred lives.
1952: The German Bundestag approves the planned defense contribution against the votes of the social democratic opposition.
1957: Interior Minister Oskar Helmer names the eldest son of the last Emperor Charles I, who was expelled from the country, as “Dr. Otto Habsburg-Lorraine”. The use of the dynastic name “Otto von Österreich” is officially forbidden.
1972: Vienna prepares a triumphant welcome for Karl Schranz, who is returning home from Japan after being excluded from the Olympics. Federal Chancellor Bruno Kreisky appears with the ski racer on the balcony of the Ballhausplatz.
1982: Signatures are collected in churches in the GDR for the “Berlin Appeal – ‘Create peace without weapons'”, which also calls for the abolition of military studies.
1992: The European-American space probe “Ulysses” opens a new chapter in space travel: 16 months after the start of the journey to explore the sun’s poles, the unmanned missile passed Jupiter.
2002: In the Alentejo region, after a construction period of almost four years, the flooding of the Alqueva dam, the largest European dam at the time, begins.
birthdays: Theodor Lessing, German cultural philosopher (1872-1933); Lucie English, Austria Actress (1902-1965); Erika Burkart, black writer (1922-2010); John Towner Williams, US composer (1932); Manfred Krug, German actor (1937-2016).
days of death: Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland and France (1542-1587); Salomon Hirzel, German publisher (1804-1877); Victor Gollancz, British publisher (1893-1967); Sir Peter Mansfield, British physicist; Nobel Prize 2003 (1933-2017); Anna Nicole Smith, US model (1967-2007).
name days: Hieronymus, Johannes, Hermanfried, Salomon, Milada, Ämiliani, Philipp, Elfriede, Jacqueline.