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Today is Saturday, Feb. 8, the 39th day of 2025 with 326 to follow. The moon is waxing. Morning stars are Jupiter, Mars, Mercury and Uranus. Evening stars are Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Uranus and Venus.
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Those born on this date are under the sign of Aquarius. They include Civil War-era U.S. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman in 1820; writer Jules Verne in 1828; chemist Dmitri Mendeleev in 1834; writer Kate Chopin in 1850; actor Edith Evans in 1888; inventor Chester Carlson in 1906; actor Lana Turner in 1921; actor Audrey Meadows in 1922; actor Jack Lemmon in 1925; actor James Dean in 1931; musician John Williams in 1932 (age 93); TV journalist Ted Koppel in 1940 (age 85); actor Nick Nolte in 1941 (age 84); musician Tom Rush in 1941 (age 84); comedian/musician/actor Robert Klein in 1942 (age 83); actor Creed Bratton in 1943 (age 82); musician Ron Tyson (Temptations) in 1948 (age 77); actor Brooke Adams in 1949 (age 76); actor Mary Steenburgen in 1953 (age 72); writer John Grisham in 1955 (age 70); actor Henry Czerny in 1959 (age 66); musician Vince Neil (Mötley Crüe) in 1961 (age 64); actor Gary Coleman in 1968; actor Mary McCormack in 1969 (age 56); actor Seth Green in 1974 (age 51); musician Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo (Daft Punk) in 1974 (age 51); actor Joshua Morrow in 1974 (age 51); musician Phoenix (Linkin Park) in 1977 (age 48); actor Marion "Pooch" Hall in 1977 (age 48); actor William Jackson Harper in 1980 (age 45); actor Jim Parrack in 1981 (age 44); comedian/actor Cecily Strong in 1984 (age 41); musician Anderson .Paak (Silk Sonic) in 1986 (age 39); surfer/writer Bethany Hamilton in 1990 (age 35); actor Kathryn Newton in 1997 (age 28).
On this date in history:
In 1587, Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded, charged with conspiring to kill England's Queen Elizabeth I.
In 1692, a doctor in Massachusetts Bay Colony said two village girls were possibly bewitched, a charge that set off the Salem witch trials.
In 1693, the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., was granted a charter by Britain's King William III.
In 1915, D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, a landmark in the history of cinema and the first American full-length motion picture, opened in Los Angeles and was immediately a smash hit though many found its treatment of race offensive.
In 1933, two British Royal Air Force pilots landed at Walvis Bay, 800 miles north of Cape Town, South Africa, setting a non-stop flight record after traveling 5,175 miles from England.
In 1960, groundbreaking got underway for the first plaques installed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which honored Olive Borden, Ronald Colman, Louise Fazenda, Preston Foster, Burt Lancaster, Edward Sedgwick, Ernest Torrence and Joanne Woodward.
In 1974, three U.S. Skylab astronauts ended an 84-day orbital flight.
In 1983, a group of gunmen stole one the world's most valuable racehorses, Shergar, from a stud farm in Ireland. The kidnappers demanded a $3.1 million ransom, but negotiations proved fruitless and the horse was never seen again.
In 1993, at least 132 people were killed when a Russian-made Tupolev jetliner flying for Iran Air Tours collided with a Sukhoi military aircraft near Tehran.
In 2002, the Olympic Winter Games opened in Salt Lake City.
In 2007, Anna Nicole Smith, a 39-year-old actor, model and tabloid fixture, was found dead in a Hollywood, Fla., hotel. Her death was attributed to accidental sedative overdose.
In 2014, snowboarding slopestyle made its debut at the Olympic Games with American Sage Kotsenburg claiming the first gold medal in the event in Sochi, Russia.
In 2022, Austrian Matthias Mayer made history, becoming the first man to win alpine skiing gold in three Olympics after taking first place in the men's super-G event in Beijing.
In 2024, Pakistani voters went to the polls, giving jailed Prime Minister Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Party, or PTI, an unexpected plurality of legislative seats.
A thought for the day: "Ambition, if it feeds at all, does so on the ambition of others." -- American writer/activist Susan Sontag
