5 février

When Vesuvius erupted, Pompeii was still a building site: the Central Baths were unfinished and several temples still under repair. The Temple of Isis had been rebuilt “from its foundations” in the name of Numerius Popidius Celsinus, aged six, which bought the boy a seat on the town council. Some…

Seneca dates it to the Nones of February, 5 February, in the consulship of Regulus and Verginius, which was 63; Tacitus puts it under 62. It brought down much of Pompeii and damaged Herculaneum, and Seneca tells of a flock of 600 sheep killed. A marble relief from the house of the banker Caecilius…

Brunelleschi’s loggia for the silk guild’s hospital, begun in 1419, is often called the first Renaissance building. The first foundling, a girl the hospital named Agata, arrived on 5 February 1444 in Florentine style: 1445 to us.

The bulbs of the late Wouter Winckel, a tavern keeper and grower, were auctioned for his seven orphaned children and raised about 90,000 guilders. Many of the famous prices quoted for tulip mania ever since come from this one sale.

If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants. — Newton to Hooke A peacemaking letter in a quarrel over optics, using an image already five centuries old. Dated 5 February 1675 by the English year, it was 1676 everywhere else.

Held as an “International Winter Sports Week” under the patronage of the IOC, and named the first Winter Olympics afterwards. Charles Jewtraw of the United States won the first event, the 500 metres speed skating.

At the close of the first Winter Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin awarded a prize for alpinism to the 1922 expedition: medals for the thirteen European members, for Tejbir Bura, and for the seven porters who died. It is not clear that their families ever received them.

He spun, read and wrote much of Satyagraha in South Africa in jail. In January 1924 a British surgeon removed his appendix in Poona, finishing by lantern when the power failed, and the government released him early rather than risk his death in its custody.

Two articles over his dealings with Ukraine: abuse of power (230–197) and obstruction of Congress (229–198). The Senate acquitted on 5 February 2020, 48–52 and 47–53; Mitt Romney was the first senator to vote to convict a president of his own party.

The Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust sent the South African icebreaker S.A. Agulhas II from Cape Town with underwater drones to search the box around Worsley’s position. Mensun Bound was director of exploration; the sea ice gave them only a few weeks before the season closed.