13 février

Four ships under James Lancaster, led by the Red Dragon, sailed from Woolwich on 13 February 1600 by the English count (1601 by ours). Each early voyage was financed on its own and wound up when it came home: subscribers got their share of the pepper, not a dividend.

Galileo, 69 and ill, arrived in February and lodged at the Tuscan embassy in the Villa Medici, except for some three weeks held at the Holy Office during questioning.

Edmund Burke led the Commons’ case against the first Governor-General for corruption and cruelty in India; Londoners paid for tickets to the opening days in Westminster Hall. The trial dragged on for seven years, and the Lords acquitted him on every charge. The costs ruined him.

In the centenary year of Brazil’s independence, the Semana de Arte Moderna filled the lobby of the Theatro Municipal with about 100 works, and the stage with poetry and music on three evenings. Anita Malfatti, Di Cavalcanti, Mário and Oswald de Andrade and Heitor Villa-Lobos took part. Brazilian…

British and American bombers raised a firestorm in the old city. A commission of historians appointed by the city reported in 2010 that up to 25,000 people died, far below the hundreds of thousands claimed by Nazi propaganda and repeated since.

The first Winter Games outside Europe and North America. Japan swept the medals on the normal hill, its first Winter gold.

A village of about 2,500 people held the Winter Games for the second time. Eric Heiden won all five men’s speed skating events, from 500 to 10,000 metres.

Planned for 90 Martian days, it drove for more than fourteen years and 45 km, a record off Earth. A planet-wide dust storm cut its power in June 2018, and NASA stopped calling it the next February. Its twin, Spirit, worked until 2010.

One article, incitement of insurrection, over the breach of the Capitol on 6 January 2021 during the count of electoral votes. It passed 232–197 with ten Republican votes. The trial, the first of a former president, ended 57–43 for conviction, short of the 67 needed.