TODAY IN HISTORY ― FEBRUARY 2

February 2 is the 33rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 332 days remaining until the end of the year (333 in leap years). This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday (58 in 400 years each) than on Sunday or Monday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Wednesday or Friday (56).

NATIONAL GROUND HOG DAY  

1653 – New Amsterdam becomes a city (later renamed New York). 

1812 – Staking a tenuous claim to the riches of the Far West, Russians establish Fort Ross on the coast north of San Francisco.

1848 – The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends the Mexican War and the U.S. acquires Texas California, New Mexico and Arizona for $15 million.

1876 – Baseball's National League forms with teams in Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Hartford, Louisville, New York, Philadelphia, St Louis.

1887 – On this day in 1887, Groundhog Day, featuring a rodent meteorologist, is celebrated for the first time at Gobbler's Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. According to tradition, if a groundhog comes out of its hole on this day and sees its shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter weather; no shadow means an early spring.

1922 – Police discover the body of film director William Desmond Taylor in his Los Angeles bungalow. Lieutenant Tom Ziegler responded to a call about a "natural death" at the Alvarado Street home of Taylor. When he arrived they found actors, actresses, and studio executives rummaging through the director's belongings. He also found Taylor lying on the living room floor with a bullet in his back--not exactly suggesting a "natural" death.

1942 – United States auto factories switch from commercial to war production.

1942 – On this day, Vidkun Quisling, a collaborator with the German occupiers of Norway, is established as prime minister of a puppet government.

1943 – The last German troops in the Soviet city of Stalingrad surrender to the Red Army, ending one of the pivotal battles of World War II.

1949 – In response to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's proposal that President Harry S. Truman travel to Russia for a conference, Secretary of State Dean Acheson brusquely rejects the idea as a "political maneuver."

1951 – Low temperature of -35°F (-37°C) is reached at Greensburg, IN (state record until 1994).

1970 – Peter Press "Pistol Pete" Maravich becomes the first player to score 3,000 career points in NCAA basketball history.

2012 – Cold snap across Europe kills more than 100 people (over 400 people by February 8).

2014 – On this day in 2014, Philip Seymour Hoffman, considered one of the most talented and versatile actors of his generation, dies of an accidental drug overdose at age 46 in New York City.


TODAY'S BIRTHS

1786 – Jacques Philippe Marie Binet, French mathematician, physicist, and astronomer (d. 1856)

1803 – Albert Sidney Johnston, American Civil War general (d. 1862)

1861 – Solomon R. Guggenheim, American businessman and philanthropist, founded the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (d. 1949)

1882 – James Joyce, Irish novelist, short story writer, and poet (d. 1941)

1905 – Ayn Rand, Russian-born American novelist and philosopher (d. 1982

1923 – James Dickey, American poet and author (d. 1997)

From Wikipedia and Google (images), ex as noted.