Today in History, 2/1

1327: Teenaged Edward III is crowned King of England, but the country is really ruled by his mother Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer.
1790: The Supreme Court of the United States convenes for the first time.
1861: Texas secedes from the Union.
1862: Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic" is published for the first time in the Atlantic Monthly.
1884: The first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary is published.
1893: Thomas Edison completes the first motion picture studio in West Orange, NJ.
1894: John Ford is born. He directed some of the greatest movies ever made, including The Searchers, The Long Gray Line, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence. This is the love scene from The Long Gray Line:

1901: Clark Gable is born. He singlehandedly destroyed the American undershirt industry by not wearing one in It Happened One Night.1902: Langston Hughes is born. He was a prolific author and was one of the first black people to be openly unashamed of being black. His most famous poem is Harlem:

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

1908: George Pal is born. He directed the Puppetoons series of short films and The Great Rupert, which is all about a little squirrel who helps Jimmy Durante and a poverty-stricken couple overcome their obstacles. I got this at the dollar store last year and it's about as odd as it sounds.1913: Grand Central Station opens in NYC.1918: Russia adopts the Gregorian Calendar.
1920: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police begin operations.

1928: Stuart Whitman is born. What the Hell did I just see him in? Oh yeah, he was in the giant killer mutant bunny epic, Night of the Lepus.
1937: Garret Morris is born.1938: Sherman Hemsley is born.
1937: Ray Sawyer, of Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show is born.1940: Bibi Besch is born. She played Kirk's gal pal in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.1943: Vidkun Quisling is appointed Premier of Norway by the Nazi occupiers. His name would go on to become a synonym for traitor.1948: Rick James is born.
1948: Elisabeth Sladen is born. She played the cute-n-perky companion on the 70's-era Doctor Who.

"Is there a bug on me?"

1954: Bill Mumy is born. He played the kid on Lost In Space.
1960: Four black students stage the first of the Greensboro sit-ins at a lunch counter in Greensboro, NC.
1965: Sherilyn Fenn is born. Watching her tie a cherry stem in knot with her tongue on Twin Peaks was an educational moment for me as a teen, to say the least.1966: Buster Keaton dies.
1968: The execution of Viet Cong officer Nguyen Van Lem by South Vietnamese Police Chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan is photographed by Eddie Adams. Here's the link, but it's pretty graphic.
1968: A date which will live in infamy: Pauly Shore is born.
1969: Saturday mail delivery in Canada is eliminated. Savages!
1978: Director Roman Polanski skips bail and flees to France after pleading guilty to charges of having sex with a13-year old girl.
1979: Convicted bank robber Patty Hearst is released from prison after Jimmy Carter commutes her sentence.1979: The Ayatollah Khomeini is welcomed back to Tehran, Iran after 15 years of exile.
1982: Late Night With David Letterman premieres on NBC.
2003: The Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates during reentry into the Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts aboard.
2004: Janet Jackson's infamous "wardrobe malfunction" during Super Bowl XXXVIII.
2005: John Vernon dies. He was in a ton of movies, but most people of my generation remember him as Dean Wormer in Animal House.

Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up