Calendar

Quadrantids Meteor Shower

The Quadrantids have the potential to be the strongest shower of the year but usually fall short due to the short length of maximum activity (6 hours) and the poor weather experienced during early January. The average hourly rate is 25 meteors per hour.

Feast of the Epiphany

Epiphany also known as Theophany in the east, is a Christian feast day that celebrates the revelation (theophany) of God incarnate as Jesus Christ. Articles about the Feast of the Epiphany on the VO Faith and Science Archive.  

Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

"Martin Luther King Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. Born in Atlanta, King is best known for advancing civil rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience, tactics his Christian beliefs and the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi helped inspire." - Wikipedia

International Holocaust Remembrance Day

The United Nations General Assembly designated January 27—the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau—as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. On this annual day of commemoration, the UN urges every member state to honor the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and millions of other victims of Nazism and to develop educational programs to help prevent future genocides. […]

Bertrand Russell died, 1970 (b. 1872).

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM FRS (/ˈrʌsəl/; 18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, essayist, social critic, political activist, and Nobel laureate. At various points in his life, Russell considered himself a liberal, a socialistand a pacifist, although he also confessed that his sceptical nature had led him to feel that he had "never […]

St Valentine’s Day

Saint Valentine was a widely recognized 3rd-century Roman saint, commemorated in Christianity on February 14. From the High Middle Ages his Saints’ Day is associated with a tradition of courtly love. – Wikipedia

Anniversary of the 2013 Chelyabinsk Asteroid Impact Event

On February 15 2013 an asteroid exploded in the sky over the city of Chelyabinsk, in the the southern Ural region of Russia. The shock wave blew out windows all over the city, injuring over 1600 people, and damaged several buildings.

James Dewar, died 1923

Sir James Dewar FRS FRSE (20 September 1842 – 27 March 1923) was a British chemist and physicist. He is best known for his invention of the vacuum flask, which he used in conjunction with research into the liquefaction of gases. He also studied atomic and molecular spectroscopy, working in these fields for more than 25 years. - Wikipedia

Val Logsdon Fitch, born 1923

Val Logsdon Fitch (March 10, 1923 – February 5, 2015) was an American nuclear physicist who, with co-researcher James Cronin, was awarded the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physics for a 1964 experiment using the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron at Brookhaven National Laboratory that proved that certain subatomic reactions do not adhere to fundamental symmetry principles. Specifically, they proved, by examining the decay of K-mesons, that a reaction run in […]

Fr. Eusebio Kino SJ, died 1711

Eusebio Francisco Kino, SJ (Italian: Eusebio Francesco Chini, Spanish: Eusebio Francisco Kino; 10 August 1645 – 15 March 1711), often referred to as Father Kino, was a Tyrolean Jesuit, missionary, geographer, explorer, cartographer and astronomer born in the Territory of the Bishopric of Trent, then part of the Holy Roman Empire. For the last 24 years of his life he worked in the region then known as the Pimería Alta, modern-day Sonora in Mexico and southern Arizona in the United […]