^B{^#!16!7 February^N! Feast day of St Luke the Younger, St Theodore of Heraclea, St Adaucus, St Moses, St Richard, 'King of the English', and St Silvin.
^B{1301^B} Edward Caernarvon (later King Edward II) became the first Prince of Wales. ^B{1792^B} Austria and Prussia formed an alliance against France. ^B{1845^B} The Portland Vase, a Roman cameo glass vase dating to the 1st century BC, was smashed by a drunken visitor to the British Museum. ^B{1863^B} HMS Orpheus was wrecked off the New Zealand coast, with the loss of 185 lives. ^B{1947^B} The main group of the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating to about 150 BC-AD 68, was found in caves on the W side of the Jordan River. ^B{1974^B} Grenada became a fully independent state within the Commonwealth. ^B{1990^B} A Soviet Communist Party Plenum voted to abolish monopoly rule. ^B{1991^B} British prime minister Major and his senior cabinet ministers escaped an apparent assassination attempt when the IRA fired three mortar shells at 10 Downing Street from a parked van.
^B{^I{^#!14!Born ^N}Thomas More, English politician, ^B{1478^B}; Philippe Buache, French cartographer, ^B{1700^B}; Charles Dickens, English novelist, ^B{1812^B}; Alfred Adler, Austrian psychoanalyst, ^B{1870^B}; Sinclair Lewis, US novelist, ^B{1885^B}; Peter Jay, British writer and broadcaster, ^B{1937^B}.
^B{^I{^#!14!Died ^N}William Boyce, English organist and composer, ^B{1779^B}; Sheridan Le Fanu, Irish writer, ^B{1873^B}; Adolphe Sax, Belgian inventor of the saxophone, ^B{1894^B}; Daniel Malan, South African statesman, ^B{1959^B}; Igor Vasilevich Kuchatov, Russian nuclear physicist, ^B{1960^B}; Jimmy Van Heusen, US composer, ^B{1990^B}.
