Thursday, March 8, 2007

 

Spotlight: How come it's called the February Revolution if it happened in March? In an effort to fine-tune the Julian calendar, the Gregorian calendar was adopted in 1582, dropping ten days in October of that year and making new rules about what would be considered a leap year. The new system was not adopted in Russia until 1918 — a year after the workers' strikes that actually began 90 years ago today, on February 23, 1917 OS!

Quote: "Calendars and clocks exist to measure time, but that signifies little because we all know that an hour can seem as eternity or pass in a flash, according to how we spend it." — Michael Ende

Holiday: International Women's Day

Today's News:

• YouTube: blocked in Turkey due to defamatory videos about Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (story)
• Vermont: towns vote on Bush impeachment, Iraq withdrawal (story)
• Atkins: is for bigger losers than the Zone and Ornish diets, study says (story)
• Captain America: shocking development in saga of comic book superhero (story)
• presidential dollar: US Mint issues George Washington coin without "In God We Trust," "E Pluribus Unum," and year and mint info (story)

Today's History:

• Gnadenhütten massacre: nearly 100 Native Americans were massacred by Pennsylvania militiamen during the American Revolution (1782)
• FBI: 9 men from the US Secret Service were moved to the Justice Department, forming the Bureau of Investigation — later to become the FBI (1909)
• Nelson Pillar: granite column topped by a statue of British hero Lord Nelson was destroyed by an IRA bomb in Dublin (1966)

Today's Birthdays:

• Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935): Supreme Court justice known as "the Great Dissenter"
• Carole Bayer Sager (60): singer/songwriter/lyricist
• Freddie Prinze, Jr. (31): actor, She's All That