Under Thursday, February 23, the book of history records, among other things:
1848: In France, the “February Revolution” broke out against the “Citizen King” Louis-Philippe of Orléans, who had ruled since 1830. He had to abdicate a day later. (Proclamation of the Second Republic, which had to give way to the Second Empire under Napoleon III in 1852).
1893: The German engineer Rudolf Diesel receives a patent for the engine named after him.
1918: Leon Trotsky founds the “Red Army” in Russia.
1918: The Petrograd government agrees to sign the separate peace on terms dictated by the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk.
1933: Japan begins occupying Chinese territory north of the Great Wall of China.
1938: One of Donald Duck’s nephews appears in a daily strip for the first time. Starting April 26th, all three of Walt Disney’s comic book characters will be present in the stories. The original names of Tick, Trick and Track are Hewey, Dewey and Louie.
1948: Government crisis in Czechoslovakia: The communist interior ministry announces the uncovering of a “conspiracy” by the left-liberal People’s Socialists (Beneš party).
1948: In a circular from the Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Ildefonso Schuster, the exclusion of communists from church life and from receiving the sacraments is announced. The KPI speaks of a “club attack from an ambush” and criticizes the fact that millions of Italians are denied a religious burial as a result.
1993: Signing of the contracts for the plating of the Donauuferautobahn (A 22) in Vienna. With the construction of the “Donau-City”, a new second city center is being created near the UNO-City.
1998: UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz sign an agreement in Baghdad on UN arms controls to resolve a new Iraq crisis.
birthdays: John Augustus Sutter, Switzerland. colonizer (1803-1880); Antonio Fontanesi, Italian painter (1818-1882); Franz von Stuck, German painter and sculptor (1863-1928); Karl Jaspers, German philosopher/existentialist (1883-1969); Jiří Menzel, Czech film director (1938-2020); Andrea Sawatzki, German film actress (1963); Emily Blunt, British actress (1983).
days of death: Svatopluk Čech, Czech poet (1846-1908); Fannie Hurst, US writer (1889-1968); Sir Adrian Boult, British conductor (1889-1983); Dickinson W. Richards, US physiologist; Nobel Prize 1956 (1895-1973); Marcel Prawy (actually M. Horace Frydmann Ritter von Prawy), Austria. Music writer, dramaturge and music teacher (1911-2003); Maria von Schmedes, east Chansonettes (1917-2003); Lewis Gilbert, British film director (1920-2018); Janez Drnovšek, Slovenia. Politician; 2002-2007 President (1950-2008).
name days: Otto, Polykarp, Willigis, Romana, Severinus, Reinhard, Rupert, Martha, Lazarus, Nikolaus.