1543 February 16th. Catherine Parr

1543 February 16th, (m6) Catherine Parr, using her late mother's relationship with Henry VIII's first queen (m1) Catherine of Aragon, (m6) Catherine Parr took the opportunity to renew her friendship with Princess(2) Mary, (m6) Catherine Parr had established herself with Princess (2) Mary and was now part of her household.It was in the household of King Henry VIII and (m6)Catherine of Aragon's daughter, Princess (2)Mary, that (m6)Catherine Parr caught the attention of the King. After the death of (m6)Catherine Parr's second husband Ralph Neville (1st Earl of Westmoreland). (m6)Catherine Parr began a relationship with Sir Thomas Seymour, brother of the late queen (m3)Jane Seymour, but the King took a liking to her and she saw it as her duty to accept Henry VIII's proposal over Sir Thomas Seymour's, who was given a posting in Brussels to remove him from court. 

15th February 1940 The Altmark incident.

In February 1940, the German tanker Altmark was returning to Germany with 299 British merchant sailors on board, prisoners of war who had been picked up from ships sunk by the pocket battleshipAdmiral Graf Spee. On its way from the southern Atlantic to Germany,Altmark passed through Norwegian waters. On the insistence of British contacts who had been pursuing the vessel, it was investigated three times on 15 February by the Royal Norwegian Navy. First, the tanker was boarded by officers from the torpedo boat HNoMS Tryggoff Linesøy Island, then by officers from the torpedo boat HNoMSSnøgg in the Sognefjord, and finally personally by Admiral Carsten Tank-Nielsen and naval personnel from the destroyer HNoMS Garmin the Hjeltefjord. In each instance, the men who boarded the ship carried out cursory searches and took the Germans' word that the vessel was conducting purely commercial business. Following the third boarding, Altmark was escorted southwards by the torpedo boats HNoMS Skarv and HNoMS Kjell and the guard boat HNoMSFirern. The British prisoners held in the ship's hold reportedly made strenuous efforts to signal their presence, even though international law did not ban the transfer of prisoners of war through neutral waters. The Norwegian search parties however did not inspect the hold, and allowed the ship to continue on its way.

Altmark was then spotted off Egersund later the same day by British aircraft, which raised the alarm in the Royal Navy. The aircraft were stationed at RAF Thornaby, in the North East of England. After being intercepted by the destroyer HMS Cossack, captained by Philip Vian,Altmark sought refuge in the Jøssingfjord, but Cossack followed her in the next day. TheAltmark's Norwegian naval escorts blocked initial attempts to board the ship, and aimed their torpedo tubes at the Cossack. Captain Vian then asked the Admiralty for instructions, and received the following orders directly from the then First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill:

Unless Norwegian torpedo-boat undertakes to convoy Altmark to Bergen with a joint Anglo-Norwegian guard on board, and a joint escort, you should board Altmark, liberate the prisoners, and take possession of the ship pending further instructions. If Norwegian torpedo-boat interferes, you should warn her to stand off. If she fires upon you, you should not reply unless attack is serious, in which case you should defend yourself, using no more force than is necessary, and ceasing fire when she desists.The British government made no particular objection to the fact of a prison ship traversing neutral waters. In fact in official papers regarding the incident they noted the fact that the Royal Navy had done the same, for example in December 1939 when the cruiserHMS Despatch passed through the Panama Canal, which was neutral waters, with German prisoners aboard from the freighter Düsseldorf. But the crew of the Altmark had gone hundreds of miles out of their way to make the long run through Norwegian waters to Germany, constituting a clear abuse of Norway's neutrality, and a breach of international law. Besides, the Norwegian government had not permitted the Germans to transport prisoners through Norwegian waters, nor had the crew been truthful regarding the nature of their cargo and voyage.

The Norwegian forces refused to take part in a joint escort reiterating that their earlier searches of Altmark had found nothing. Vian then stated that he intended to board Altmarkand invited the Norwegians to take part, but this was also refused. In the ensuing action,Altmark ran aground. The British then boarded her at 22:20 on 16 February, and — after some hand-to-hand fighting with bayonets and the last recorded Royal Naval action withcutlass — overwhelmed the ship's crew and then went down to the hold. One of the released prisoners stated that the first they knew of the operation was when they heard the shout "Any Englishmen here?" from the boarding party. When the prisoners shouted back "Yes! We are all British!", the response was "Well, the Navy's here!" which brought cheers.^[6]

Six German sailors were killed and eight wounded by the British,^{[citation needed][dubious – discuss]} seven of whom were shot while trying to flee over the ice. This was used unsuccessfully as a defence by the Germans in the Nuremberg trials, as the British Commander rather than being tried himself, was decorated for the action.

HMS Cossack left the Jøssingfjord just after midnight on 17 February. The Norwegian escorts protested, but did not intervene. The official explanation later given by the Norwegian government was that, according to international treaty, a neutral country was not obliged to resist a vastly superior force.

Alice Hicks is 18

To Alice Hicks of Cold Higham. Happy 18th birthday Alice from Granddad and Nan, see you later have a lovely day.

14th February 1929 Saint Valentine day Massacre

On February 14, 1929, seven members of the North Side Gang, plus gang collaborators Reinhardt H. Schwimmer and John May, were lined up against the rear inside wall of the garage at 2122 North Clark Street, in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago's North Side, and executed. Two of the shooters were dressed as uniformed police officers, while the others wore suits, ties, overcoats and hats, according to witnesses who saw the "police" leading the other men at gunpoint out of the garage after the shooting. John May's German Shepherd, Highball, who was leashed to a truck, began howling and barking, attracting the attention of two women who operated boarding houses across the street.

One of the women, Mrs. Landesman, sensed something was wrong and sent one of her roomers to the garage to see what was upsetting the dog. The woman ran out, sickened at the sight. Frank Gusenberg was still alive after the killers left the scene and was rushed to the hospital shortly after real police officers arrived at the scene. When the doctors had Gusenberg stabilized, police tried to question him but when asked who shot him, he replied, "I'm not talking," despite having sustained fourteen bullet wounds.

George "Bugs" Moran was the boss of the long-established North Side Gang, formerly headed by Dion O'Banion who was murdered by four gunmen five years earlier in his flower shop on North State Street. Everyone who had taken command of the North Siders since O'Banion's rule had been murdered, supposedly by various members or associates of the Capone organization. This massacre was allegedly planned by the Capone mob in retaliation for an unsuccessful attempt by Frank Gusenberg and his brother Peter to murderJack McGurn earlier in the year and for the North Side Gang's complicity in the murders of Pasqualino "Patsy" Lolordo and Antonio "The Scourge" Lombardo – both had been presidents of the Unione Siciliana, the local Mafia, and close associates of Capone. Bugs Moran's muscling in on a Capone-run dog track in the Chicago suburbs, his takeover of several Capone-owned saloons that he insisted were in his territory, and the general rivalry between Moran and Capone for complete control of the lucrative Chicago bootlegging business were probable contributing factors to this incident.

The plan was to lure Bugs Moran to the SMC Cartage warehouse on North Clark Street. Contrary to common belief, this plan did not intend to eliminate the entire North Side gang – just Moran, and perhaps two or three of his lieutenants. It is usually assumed that they were lured to the garage with the promise of a stolen, cut-rate shipment of whiskey, supplied by Detroit's Purple Gang, also associates of Capone. However, some recent studies dispute this, although there seems to have been hardly any other good reason for so many of the North Siders to be there. One of these theories states that all of the victims (with the exception of John May) were dressed in their best clothes, which would not have been suitable for unloading a large shipment of whiskey crates and driving it away – even though this is how they, and other gangsters, were usually dressed at the time. The Gusenberg brothers were also supposed to drive two empty trucks to Detroit that day to pick up two loads of stolen Canadian whiskey.

12 February. 2001.Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous.

The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous - Shoemaker (NEAR Shoemaker), renamed after its 1996 launch in honor of planetary scientist Eugene Shoemaker, was a robotic space probe designed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory for NASA to study the near-Earth asteroid Eros from close orbit over a period of a year. The mission succeeded in closing in with the asteroid and orbited it several times, finally terminating by touching down on the asteroid on 12 February 2001.

1554 February 12th. Execution of Lady Jane Gray.

1554 February 12th. Execution of Lady Jane Grey: On the morning the authorities took Lord Guilford Dudley from his rooms at the Tower of London to the public execution place at Tower Hill and there had him beheaded. A horse and cart brought his remains back to the Tower of London, past the rooms where Lady Jane Gray remained as a prisoner.
Lady Jane Gray was then taken to Tower green, inside the Tower of London, and beheaded in private. With fewer, exceptions, only royalty were offered the privilege of a private execution; Lady Jane Gray's execution was conducted in private on the orders of Queen Mary I, as a gesture of respect for her cousin. According to the account of her execution given in the anonymous Chronicle of Queen Jane and of Two Years of Queen Mary I which formed the basis for Raphael Holinshed's depiction, Lady Jane Gray gave a speech upon ascending the scaffold: "Good people, I am come hither to die, and by a law I am condemned to the same. The fact, indeed, against the Queen's highness was unlawful, and the consenting thereunto by me: but touching the procurement and desire thereof by me or on my be- half, I do wash my hands thereof in innocency, before God, and the face of you, good Christian people, this day". She then recited Psalm 51(Have mercy upon me,O God) in English, and handed her gloves and handkerchief to her maid. John Feckenham, a Catholic chaplain sent by Queen Mary 1 who had failed to convert her, stayed with her during the execution.
The executioner asked her forgiveness, and she gave it. She pleaded the axeman,"I pray you dispatch me quickly." Referring to her head, she asked, "Will you take it off before I lay me down?" and the axe- man answered, "No, madam." She then blindfolded herself. Lady Jane Gray had resolved to go to her death with dignity, but once blindfolded, failing to find the block with her hands, began to panic and cried, "What shall I do? Where is it?" An unknown hand, possibly Sir Thomas Brydges', then helped her find her way and retain her dignity at the end. With her head on the block, Lady Jane Gray spoke the last words of Jesus as recounted by Luke: "Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit!" She was then beheaded(aged 16/17years. Lady Jane Gray and Lord Guilford Dudley are buried in the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula on the north side of Tower Green. 

1567 February. Lord Darnley's murder.

1566. 1567  February One night after Mary Queen of Scots had left to go to the wedding of one of her maids of honour, an explosion occurred in the house, and Henry Stuart ( Lord Darnley), was found dead in the garden, apparently of strangulation; historian Alison Weir, however, concludes he died of post-explosion suffocation. It turned out that James Hepburn (4th.Earl of Bothwell), had supplied the gunpowder for the explosion, and he was generally believed to be guilty of Henry Stuart (Lord Darnley)'s murder.
      

1567 February 10th. James's father, Henry Stuart (Lord Darnley), was murdered during an unexplained explosion at Kirk o' Field, Edinburgh, perhaps in revenge for David Rizzio's death. Upon his father's death, James became Duke of Albany and Earl of Ross.