February 14- Valentine�s Day Massacres

It's Valentine's Day today, and on this day when people express their love for each other, is it only natural that the first important historical event that comes to mind is the famous �St. Valentine's Day Massacre�, when on February 14, 1929 the notorious gangster boss Al �Scarface� Capone and his men gunned down seven members of a rival Irish/German gang in a garage in Chicago.

Valentine's Day probably has its origins in the pagan Roman fertility rites of the feast of Lupercalia, but got it's name from one the various Christian martyrs called Valentinus, one of them having allegedly been executed on this very day by Claudius II in 270 for having defied one of the Emperor's edicts denouncing Roman soldier's rights to marry.



St. Valentine ?

On February 14, 869 St. Cyril another great Christian saint died, the �Apostle of the Slavs�, less violently and peacefully in his bed, after an eventful life. Having been sent, together with his brother Methodios to the Balkans by the East-Roman Empire on a missionary quest, they succeeded to convert many of the Slavic tribes to Christianity, and invented the Cyrillic alphabet as they went along.



St.Cyril

Not a terribly pleasant day either for the famous Captain James Cook, the intrepid English explorer, who on, what turned out to be the last of his many voyages in the Pacific Ocean, was killed on February 14, 1779 by the natives of the Sandwich Islands in the Hawaiian archipelago.

However, a far more tragic event took place on February, 14, 1945 when Allied Bombers destroyed the German city of Dresden, a historic town in Eastern Germany, in one of the most controversial air raids of the World War Two.
The raid began in the night from February 13th - 14th and in the next 24 hours 800 British and 500 American planes dropped over 2500 tons of bombs over the city, reducing the city to rubble and killing over 30.000 people, the vast majority being civilians having fled the Eastern German provinces from the advancing Red Army.
As the moral implications of this air raid were once again hotly disputed during last years 60th anniversary, and by no means just along the old enemies lines, I'm not going to repeat both sides' arguments here. Just read last year�s thread on Dresden.

Complete list of events:

Wikipedia

Happy Valentine's Day to all.

One of the earliest known references to a Valentine's Day card was in a 14th century poem to Henry V of England's wife, Catherine.

Also occurring today in women�s history:

1920: League of Women Voters founded in Chicago

1936 - US female Figure Skating championship won by Maribel Vinson

1962: Jacqueline Kennedy, First Lady of the U.S., hosts television tour of the White House

1967 - Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, records "Respect� .