On February 2, 1876, the National League of Professional
Baseball Clubs, which came to be more commonly known
as the National League (NL), was formed. The American
League (AL) was established in 1901 and in 1903, the first
World Series was held.
The first official game of baseball in the United States took
place in June 1846 in Hoboken, New Jersey.
On February 2, 1887, Groundhog Day, featuring a rodent meteorologist,was celebrated for the first time at Gobbler’s
Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. According to tradition,
if a groundhog comes out of its hole on this day and sees its
shadow, it gets scared and runs back into its burrow, predicting
six more weeks of winter weather; no shadow means an early
spring.
Groundhog Day has its roots in the ancient Christian tradition
of Candlemas, when clergy would bless and distribute candles
needed for winter.
Debris from the space shuttle Columbia streaks across the
sky over Tyler, Texas.
On February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia brook up while
entering the atmosphere over Texas, killing all seven crew
members on board.
The Columbia‘s 28th space mission, designated STS-107, was
originally scheduled to launch on January 11, 2001, but was
delayed numerous times for a variety of reasons over nearly
two years. Columbia finally launched on January 16, 2003, with
a crew of seven. Eighty seconds into the launch, a piece of foam insulation broke off from the shuttle’s propellant tank and hit the
edge of the shuttle’s left wing.
The Space Shuttle Columbia crew, left to right. Front row:
Rick Husband, Kalpana Chawla, William McCool. Back row: David Brown, Laurel Clark, Michael Anderson and Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon. (AP file)
The crew of the space shuttle Columbia on the day of launch.
Accident investigators reconstructed space shuttle Columbia from recovered debris.
February 1, 1978: Antislavery crusader and Civil War veteran
Harriet Tubman became the first African American woman to
appear on a U.S. postage stamp, the first in the Post Office’s
Black Heritage Series. Tubman’s appearance on stamps was
emblematic both of the progress made in recognizing African
Americans’ contributions to American history and the ongoing
effort to put abolitionists on equal footing with slaveowners in
the nation’s historical canon.
Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross)
(c. March 1822– March 10, 1913)
