There’s nothing good about February. The weather is lousy, the populace is either in heat over the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated or making idiots out of themselves in celebration of the year’s most inane holiday, and college students are smack dab in the middle of two solid months with no holidays or breaks. But don’t just take my word for it. Just peruse this partial list of reasons to hate February:
Most recently, on February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated on re-entry, killing seven.
In February of 1953, the collapse of a protective dike flooded the Netherlands in what was termed the worst disaster to strike the region in 300 years.
On February 3, 1959, Buddy Holly, Richy Valens and the Big Bopper all died tragically in a plane crash, and the rest of us had to suffer through all eight and a half minutes of “American Pie” by Don McLean because of it.
In February of 1998, an earthquake in Afghanistan killed nearly 4,000 people, and left hundreds of thousands more homeless. February 29, 1960, another earthquake in Morocco killed thousands more, proving that Mother Earth hates February just as much as I do.
On February 9, 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy began his infamous witch hunt, naming nearly 200 members of the state department as communists. Maybe the weather got to him.
In 1945, the United States and Great Britain commenced the bombing of the German city of Dresden, now thought to be one of the most devastating uses of military force in human history. And you guessed it; the bombing started on February 14. Happy Valentines day, Germany.
February was the month when the Gulf war began in 1991. In February of 1969, Fidel Castro was sworn in as the new Cuban Prime Minister, and a decade later, China invaded Vietnam. The weather probably doesn’t suck as much in the jungle.
The first bombing of the World Trade Center in New York city took place on February 26, 1993, and one of the earliest terrorist attacks to hit London took place on February 18, three years later, when a bus explosion killed three people.
And lest we forget, in honor of Black History month, that on February 21, 1965, influential civil rights leader Malcolm X was assassinated.
Still not convinced? Malcolm X wasn’t the only person to get it in the merry month of February; all of the following people also died during this month from hell: russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevski; Mary Stuart (queen of scots); Peter ‘the Great’ (first czar of Russia); french philosopher Rene Descartes; author of ‘Frankenstein’ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley; actor Buster Keaton; both James G. Macdonald, the voice of Mickey Mouse, and Clarence Nash, the voice of Donald Duck; actor Boris Karloff; british philosopher Bertrand Russell; Leo I, the first byzantine emperor; President Woodrow Wilson; director John Cassavetes; artist Gustav Klimt; Saint Benedict; poet Sylvia Plath; author Frank Herbert; german philosopher Immanuel Kant; composer Richard Wagner; crooner Nat King Cole; author Moliare; pianist Theolonius Monk; church reformist Martin Luther; renaissance painter Michealangelo; philosopher Baruch Spinoza; premier German poet and author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure; artist Andy Warhol; John Gutenburg, inventor of the printing press; poet John Keats; President John Quincy Adams; Lou Costello, of Abbot and Costello; philosopher/psychologist Carl Jaspers; poet Phillis Wheatly; and author Henry James.
Even Mr. Ed, television’s most famous talking horse, died in February. Need I say more?
