So, what's so important about the month of February?

Other than Valentine's Day, just what in the heck is so special about the month of February? There are only 28 days and it's in the middle of winter.  Let's take a recap on American history:

Feb. 1

• 1865 – President Lincoln sings the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolishes slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime, to the United States Constitution.
• 1893 – Thomas A. Edison finishes construction of the first motion picture studio, the Black Maria in West Orange, New Jersey.
• 1960 – Four black students stage the first of the Greensboro sit-ins at a lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.
• 2003 – Space Shuttle Columbia on mission STS-107 disintegrates during reentry into the Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts aboard.

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Feb. 2

• 1653 – New Amsterdam (later renamed The City of New York) is incorporated.
• 1848 – California Gold Rush: The first ship with Chinese immigrants arrives in San Francisco.
• 1887 – In Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania the first Groundhog Day is observed.
• 1935 – Leonarde Keeler tests the first polygraph machine.

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Feb. 3

• 1870 – The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing voting rights to citizens regardless of race.
• 1913 – The Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, authorizing the Federal government to impose and collect an income tax.
• 1959 – Deaths of rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa.
• 1984 – John Buster and the research team at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center announce history's first embryo transfer, from one woman to another resulting in a live birth.

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Feb. 4

• 1789 – George Washington is unanimously elected as the first President of the United States by the U.S. Electoral College.
• 1899 – The Philippine–American War begins with the Battle of Manila.
• 1996 – Major snowstorm paralyzes Midwestern United States, Milwaukee, Wisconsin and ties all-time record low temperature at −26 °F (−32.2 °C).
• 2004 – Facebook, a mainstream online social networking site, is founded by Mark Zuckerberg.

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Feb. 5

• 1900 – The United States and the United Kingdom sign a treaty for the Panama Canal.
• 1917 – The Congress of the United States passes the Immigration Act over President Woodrow Wilson's veto. Also known as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act, it forbade immigration from nearly all of south and southeast Asia.
• 1958 – A hydrogen bomb known as the Tybee Bomb is lost by the US Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, never to be recovered.
• 2008 – A major tornado outbreak across the Southern United States kills 57.

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Feb. 6

• 1843 – The first minstrel show in the United States, The Virginia Minstrels, opens (Bowery Amphitheatre in New York City).
• 1919 – The five-day Seattle General Strike begins.
• 1951 – The Broker, a Pennsylvania Railroad passenger train derails near Woodbridge Township, New Jersey. The accident kills 85 people and injures over 500 more. The wreck is one of the worst rail disasters in American history.
•  1978 – The Blizzard of 1978, one of the worst Northeasters in New England history, hit the region, with sustained winds of 65 mph and snowfall of 4" an hour.

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Feb. 7

• 1812 – The strongest in a series of earthquakes strikes New Madrid, Missouri.
• 1907 – The Mud March is the first large procession organized by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS).
• 1935 – The classic board game Monopoly is invented.
• 1964 – The Beatles first arrive in the United States. Their performance on The Ed Sullivan Show two days later would mark the beginning of the British Invasion.

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Feb. 8

• 1865 – In the United States, Delaware voters reject the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and vote to continue the practice of slavery. (Delaware finally ratifies the amendment on February 12, 1901.)
• 1885 – The first government-approved Japanese immigrants arrived in Hawaii.
• 1915 – D.W. Griffith's controversial film The Birth of a Nation premieres in Los Angeles.
• 1968 – American civil rights movement: The Orangeburg massacre: An attack on black students from South Carolina State University who are protesting racial segregation at the town's only bowling alley, leaves three or four dead in Orangeburg, South Carolina.

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Feb. 9

• 1775 – American Revolutionary War: The British Parliament declares Massachusetts in rebellion.
• 1870 – President Ulysses S. Grant signs a joint resolution of Congress establishing the U.S. Weather Bureau.
• 1895 – William G. Morgan creates a game called Mintonette, which soon comes to be referred to as volleyball.
• 1965 – Vietnam War: The first United States troops with a combat mission, a Marine Corps Hawk air defense missile battalion, are sent to South Vietnam.

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Feb. 10

• 1861 – Jefferson Davis is notified by telegraph that he has been chosen as provisional President of the Confederate States of America.
• 1967 – The 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified. This establishes procedures for filling a vacancy in the office of the Vice President. The office of Vice President had been vacant sixteen times due to the death or resignation of either the President or Vice President. For example, there was no Vice President for nearly four years after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

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Feb. 11

• 1790 – The Religious Society of Friends, also known as Quakers, petitions U.S. Congress for abolition of slavery.
• 1916 – Emma Goldman is arrested for lecturing on birth control.
• 1937 – A sit-down strike ends when General Motors recognizes the United Auto Workers.
• 1953 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower refuses a clemency appeal for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

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Jan. 12

• 1825 – The Creek cede the last of their lands in Georgia to the United States government by the Treaty of Indian Springs, and migrate west.
• 1963 – Construction begins on the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.
• 1999 – United States President Bill Clinton is acquitted by the United States Senate in his impeachment trial.
• 2004 – The city of San Francisco, California begins issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in response to a directive from Mayor Gavin Newsom.

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Feb. 13

• 1914 – Copyright: In New York City the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers is established to protect the copyrighted musical compositions of its members.
• 1920 – The Negro National League is formed.
• 1971 – Vietnam War: Backed by American air and artillery support, South Vietnamese troops invade Laos.
• 2011 – For the first time in more than 100 years the Umatilla, an American Indian tribe, are able to hunt and harvest a bison just outside Yellowstone National Park, restoring a centuries-old tradition guaranteed by a treaty signed in 1855.

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Feb. 14

• 1849 – In New York City, James Knox Polk becomes the first serving President of the United States to have his photograph taken.

• 1899 – Voting machines are approved by the U.S. Congress for use in federal elections.

• 2005 – YouTube is launched by a group of college students, eventually becoming the largest video sharing website in the world and a main source for viral videos.

• 2008 – Northern Illinois University shooting: a gunman opened fire in a lecture hall of the DeKalb County, Illinois university resulting in 6 fatalities (including gunman) and 21 injuries.
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  Feb. 15
• 
• 1764 – The city of St. Louis, Missouri is established.

• 1879 – Women's rights: American President Rutherford B. Hayes signs a bill allowing female attorneys to argue cases before the Supreme Court of the United States.

• 2003 – Protests against the Iraq war take place in over 600 cities worldwide. It is estimated that between 8 million to 30 million people participate, making this the largest peace demonstration in history.
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  Feb. 16

• 1874 – Silver Dollar becomes legal US tender.
• 1961 – Explorer program: Explorer 9 (S-56a) is launched.
• 2006 – The last Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) is decommissioned by the United States Army.

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Feb. 17

• 1801 – An electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr is resolved when Jefferson is elected President of the United States and Burr Vice President by the United States House of Representatives.
• 1864 – American Civil War: The  H. L. Hunley becomes the first submarine to engage and sink a warship, the USS Housatonic.
• 1933 – The Blaine Act ends Prohibition in the United States.
• 1974 – Robert K. Preston, a disgruntled U.S. Army private, buzzes the White House in a stolen helicopter.

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Feb. 18

• 1885 – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is published in the United States.
• 1970 – The Chicago Seven are found not guilty of conspiring to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
• 1972 – The California Supreme Court in the case of People v. Anderson, (6 Cal.3d 628) invalidates the state's death penalty and commutes the sentences of all death row inmates to life imprisonment.

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Feb. 19

• 1807 – Former Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr is arrested for treason in Wakefield, Alabama and confined to Fort Stoddert. Burr had tried to secure money and to conceal his true designs, which was to help Mexico overthrow Spanish power in the Southwest. He intended to found a dynasty in what would have become former Mexican territory. This was a misdemeanor, based on the Neutrality Act of 1794. Although the subsequent trial resulted in acquittal, Burr's western schemes left him with large debts and few influential friends.
• 1847 – The first group of rescuers reaches the Donner Party.
• 1953 – Georgia approves the first literature censorship board in the United States.
• 2001 – The Oklahoma City bombing museum is dedicated at the Oklahoma City National Memorial.

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Feb. 20

• 1792 – The Postal Service Act, establishing the United States Post Office Department, is signed by United States President George Washington.
• 1872 – In New York City the Metropolitan Museum of Art opens.
• 1943 – American movie studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor movies.
• 1987 – Unabomber: In Salt Lake City, a bomb explodes in a computer store.

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Feb. 21

• 1828 – Initial issue of the Cherokee Phoenix is the first periodical to use the Cherokee syllabary invented by Sequoyah.
• 1878 – The first telephone book is issued in New Haven, Connecticut.
• 1925 – The New Yorker publishes its first issue.
• 1986 – The Legend of Zelda, the first game of The Legend of Zelda series, was released in Japan on the Famicom Disk System.

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Feb. 22

• 1847 – Mexican–American War: The Battle of Buena Vista – 5,000 American troops defeat 15,000 Mexicans.
• 1856 – The Republican Party opens its first national meeting in Pittsburgh.
• 1974 – Samuel Byck tries and fails to assassinate U.S. President Richard Nixon.
• 1980 – Miracle on Ice: In Lake Placid, New York, the United States hockey team defeats the Soviet Union hockey team 4–3.

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Feb. 23

• 1861 – President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrives secretly in Washington, D.C., after the thwarting of an alleged assassination plot in Baltimore, Maryland.
• 1883 – Alabama becomes the first U.S. state to enact an anti-trust law; a law that promotes or seeks to maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies. Competition law is implemented through public and private enforcement.
• 1991 – Gulf War: Ground troops cross the Saudi Arabian border and enter Iraq, thus beginning the ground phase of the war.

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Feb. 24

• 1831 – The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, the first removal treaty in accordance with the Indian Removal Act, is proclaimed. The Choctaws in Mississippi cede land east of the river in exchange for payment and land in the West.
• 1868 – Andrew Johnson becomes the first President of the United States to be impeached by the United States House of Representatives. He is later acquitted in the Senate.
• 1983 – A special commission of the U.S. Congress releases a report that condemns the practice of Japanese internment during World War II.
• 1984 – Tyrone Mitchell perpetrates the 49th Street Elementary School shooting in Los Angeles, killing two children and injuring 12 more.

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Feb. 25

• 1928 – Charles Jenkins Laboratories of Washington, D.C. becomes the first holder of a television license from the Federal Radio Commission.
• 1933 – The USS Ranger is launched. It is the first US Navy ship to be built solely as an aircraft carrier.
• 1968 – Vietnam War: 135 unarmed citizens of Hà My village in South Vietnam's Quảng Nam Province are killed and buried en masse by South Korean troops in what would come to be known as the Hà My massacre.

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Feb. 26

• 1919 – President Woodrow Wilson signs an act of the U.S. Congress establishing most of the Grand Canyon as a United States National Park - the Grand Canyon National Park.
• 1929 – President Calvin Coolidge signs an Executive Order establishing the 96,000 acre Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.
• 1972 – The Buffalo Creek Flood caused by a burst dam kills 125 in West Virginia.

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Feb. 27

• 1782 – American Revolutionary War: The House of Commons of Great Britain votes against further war in America.
• 1860 – Abraham Lincoln makes a speech at Cooper Union in the city of New York that is largely responsible for his election to the Presidency.
• 1973 – The American Indian Movement (AIM) occupies Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
• 1991 – Gulf War: U.S. President George H. W. Bush announces that "Kuwait is liberated".

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Feb. 28

• 1844 – A gun on USS Princeton explodes while the boat is on a Potomac River cruise, killing eight people, including two United States Cabinet members.
• 1954 – The first color television sets using the NTSC standard are offered for sale to the general public.
• 1959 – Discoverer 1, an American spy satellite that is the first object intended to achieve a polar orbit, is launched. It failed to achieve orbit.
• 1972 – Sino-American relations: The United States and People's Republic of China sign the Shanghai Communiqué

3 Odd Ball Things About Christmas

The New York Knickerbockers helped create the modern Santa   The biggest influence on Santa's modern look and demeanor came more from a popular group of writers who drew inspiration from an Episcopalian saint. The Knickerbockers of New York wanted to reintroduce Saint Nicholas to society to provide a "cultural counterweight for the commercial bustle and democratic misrule of early nineteenth century New York." Contributors to the Saint Nicholas project included 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' author Washington Irving, who wrote a Christmas story about giving and generosity for his fictional 'Bracebridge Hall' series in which he described Santa as a large man in a red suit smoking his favorite pipe. Clement Clarke Moore, a contemporary of Irving's, was inspired by this depiction of Santa for his 'A Visit from St. Nicholas' poem, in which he also described the traditional Santa we know today. How's Christmas celebrated in the Netherlands & the United Kingdom? Black Pete Zwarte Piet, or Black Pete, is the side-kick of Sinterklaas, the Dutch St Nicholas, who comes on 5 December, traveling from his home in Spain, on a steamboat called Madrid. Until the 19th Century, Sinterklaas did his own dirty work, bringing good children presents, but taking bad ones away in his sack for re-education and a beating. But in 1850, children's author Jan Schenkman drew him with a black servant, who later became known as Zwarte Piet. It is now Zwarte Piet's job to go down the chimney to deliver presents and catch the less fortunate children. Zwarte Piet has become increasingly controversial in the Netherlands due to a tradition of painting on a clownish black face, which many people find offensive, rightly so! Christmas is only a recent Family Holiday Christmas was originally celebrated as an adult form of "trick or treat," but with the "treat" consisting of booze and the threatened "trick" consisting of bodily harm or destruction of property. "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" was originally a threat. The ever-popular song was originally sung, loudly and repeatedly, by crowds of rowdy, lower-class servants demanding booze from their masters... or else. "We won't go until we get some!" Up to the 1950s, in the UK, many Christmas customs were restricted to the upper classes and better-off families. The mass of the population had not adopted many of the Christmas rituals that later became general. The Christmas tree was rare. Christmas dinner might be beef — certainly not turkey. In their stockings children might get an apple, orange and sweets. Full celebration of a family Christmas with all the trimmings only became widespread with increased prosperity from the 1950s.

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10 Things You May Not Know About George Armstrong Custer

DECEMBER 5, 2014 By Christopher Klein

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Born on December 5, 1839, in New Rumley, Ohio, George Armstrong Custer first achieved renown as a young Civil War hero before gaining everlasting fame a decade later from his spectacular defeat at the Battle of Little Bighorn. On the 175th anniversary of Custer’s birth, explore 10 surprising facts about the general who remains one of the most controversial figures in American history.

1. Four other members of the Custer family died at the Battle of Little Bighorn.

Among the force of more than 200 men wiped out by the Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne warriors on June 25, 1876, were Custer’s 18-year-old nephew, Henry Reed, brother-in-law James Calhoun and two younger brothers, Boston and Thomas (a Civil War veteran and two-time Medal of Honor recipient).

2. His nickname was “Autie.”

Custer’s mispronunciation of his middle name when he first began to speak was adopted by his family as his nickname. The moniker stuck with him for his entire life and was used by his wife, Libbie, as a term of endearment.

Custer as a West Point cadet

3. Custer graduated last in his class at West Point. 

Custer was known by his fellow cadets at the U.S. Military Academy as the “dare-devil of the class” who devoted more energy to pranks than to his academic studies. Custer’s voluminous record of demerits earned him extra guard duty on most Saturdays, but he did manage to graduate from West Point in 1861, albeit as the lowest-ranking cadet, now known as “the goat.”

4. Custer was the youngest Civil War general in the Union Army. 

Although Custer struggled in the classroom, he excelled on the battlefield. After joining the Army of the Potomac’s cavalry following his graduation, he gained notice for his daring cavalry charges, bold leadership style and tactical brilliance. In June 1863, Custer was promoted to the rank of brigadier general at the age of 23, and he cemented his reputation as the “Boy General” days later at the Battle of Gettysburg when he repelled a pivotal Confederate assault led by J.E.B. Stuart. By the end of the Civil War, Custer had risen to the rank of major general.

5. His wife received the table on which the Civil War surrender terms were drafted.

Custer served the Army of the Potomac with distinction from the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861 to Appomattox Court House four years later. Custer’s forces blocked Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s final retreat, and he received the white truce flag signifying Lee’s wish to meet with Union General Ulysses S. Grant. Custer was present in the front parlor of Wilmer McLean’s home on April 9, 1865, when Lee surrendered to Grant. General Philip Sheridan purchased the small spool-turned table used by Grant to draft and sign the terms of surrender and gave it to Libbie Custer in gratitude for her husband’s service. “Permit me to say, Madam,” Sheridan wrote to Libbie, “that there is scarcely an individual in our service who has contributed more to bring about this desirable result than your gallant husband.” After Libbie’s death in 1933, her will specified that the table be given to the Smithsonian Institution.

George and Libbie Custer

6. Custer scented his hair with cinnamon oil.

The flamboyant Custer paid great attention to his appearance. He wore a black velvet uniform with coils of gold lace, spurs on his boots, a red scarf around his neck and a large, broad-brimmed sombrero. Custer took particular pride in his cascading golden locks, which he perfumed with cinnamon oil.

7. Custer was twice court-martialed.

Prior to graduating from West Point, Custer was court-martialed for neglect of duty in failing to stop a fight between two cadets when he was officer of the guard and received a light punishment. Much more serious was his 1867 court-martial in which he was convicted on eight counts that included conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline, and absence without leave from his command after he left part of his regiment on the Kansas frontier while he returned without orders to Fort Riley in order to see Libbie. Custer was suspended from rank and command without pay for a year, but Sheridan reinstated him after 10 months to lead a bloody campaign against the Cheyenne.

8. Buffalo Bill helped to mythologize Custer’s Last Stand. 

After Custer’s death, his widow devoted the remaining 57 years of her life writing books and delivering lectures that cast her husband as a martyr who gallantly staged his “Last Stand.” William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, who had briefly scouted for Custer, also contributed to the mythmaking. Weeks after the Battle of Little Bighorn, he killed and scalped a Cheyenne warrior named Yellow Hair and declared it “the first scalp for Custer.” Buffalo Bill replayed the scene repeatedly throughout his theatrical career and incorporated a re-enactment of “Custer’s Last Rally,” complete with several Native Americans who had actually been present at the Battle of Little Bighorn, into his famed Wild West show.

Battle of the Little Bighorn

9. Custer was thought to have lived a charmed life.

During the Civil War, the “Boy General” seemed to have such a streak of good fortune, which included his avoidance of serious injury in spite of his daring command and having 11 horses shot out from under him, that is was referred to as “Custer’s luck.” The revival of his military career after his 1867 court-martial furthered the perception that Custer lived a charmed life, but Custer’s luck ran out at Little Bighorn.

10. Ronald Reagan played Custer on the big screen.

The future president played the role of a young Custer in the 1940 western “Santa Fe Trail,” a box-office success that abounded in historical inaccuracies. Reagan starred opposite Errol Flynn, who played J.E.B. Stuart, on the hunt for abolitionist John Brown in pre-Civil War Kansas. A year later, Flynn starred as Custer in the highly mythologized biopic “They Died With Their Boots On.”

Resource: http://www.history.com