14th February

[wendy]

14th February

The Feast Day of St. Valentine, patron saint of lovers. In fact there were fourteen Saint Valentines of ancient Rome. Of the Saint Valentine whose feast is on 14th February nothing is known, except his name and that he was buried at the Via Flaminia north of Rome 'on this day'. The day first became associated with romantic love in the circle of Geoffrey Chaucer in the High Middle Ages, when the tradition of courtly love flourished.

1477 Margery Brews sent a letter to John Paston in Norfolk, addressed - Be my olde Valentine. It is the oldest known Valentine's Day message in the English language and was uncovered by the British Library. Read more on the BBC's website.

1556 Former Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, was declared a heretic. He was tried for treason and heresy after Mary I, a Roman Catholic, came to the throne. Although he apparently reconciled himself with the Roman Catholic Church, on the day of his execution, on 21st March 1556, he dramatically withdrew earlier statements and was thus a heretic to Roman Catholics and a martyr to others.

1779 Captain Cook was stabbed to death on the beach at Kealakekua (Hawaii) by the Polynesian natives.

1797 The Spanish fleet was defeated off Cape St. Vincent by Admiral John Jervis and Captain Horatio Nelson. Nelson was born at Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk and subsequently became a British national hero.

1852 London’s famous children’s hospital in Great Ormond Street accepted its first patient, three year-old Eliza Armstrong. It was the first hospital in the English speaking world providing in-patient beds specifically for children.

1922 Marconi began regular broadcasting transmissions from Essex.

1945 World War II: Prague was bombed, probably due to a mistake in the orientation of the pilots bombing Dresden.

1946 The Bank of England was nationalized by the Atlee government.

1963 British politician Harold Wilson was elected leader of the Labour Party following the death of former leader Hugh Gaitskell.

1975 The death of the writer, Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, generally known as P.G. Wodehouse. His career lasted more than 70 years and included novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and numerous pieces of journalism. He wrote 15 plays and 250 lyrics for some 30 musical comedies, but is perhaps best remembered for his stories of the butler Jeeves and his master Bertie Wooster.

1984 British ice skaters Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean won the ice dance gold medal at the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, gaining maximum points for artistic expression.

1989 The spiritual leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, condemned Salman Rushdie’s award-winning novel, The Satanic Verses, as an insult to Islam and issued a fatwa (edict) calling on Muslims to kill the author for committing blasphemy. Rushdie and his family went into hiding.

2003 Dolly the sheep, the first cloned mammal, was put down after being diagnosed with a severe lung infection.

2006 Chip and PIN was introduced. UK cardholders had to use their PIN (Personal Identification Number) to be sure that they could pay for goods. bdbab

[Rosalind]

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