On This Day: February 13

This is the 44th day of the year.

Fact of the Day: sushi

Sushi is a dish of Japanese cuisine, consisting of cooked rice flavored with vinegar and a variety of vegetable, egg, or raw seafood garnishes and served cold. Nigiri-sushi is a hand-formed oblong of rice topped with sliced raw seafood and a dab of wasabi, which is green horseradish paste; the ingredients of oshi-sushi are pressed to shape in a mold. For maki-sushi, a sheet of nori (laver, a seaweed) is spread with rice, then with seafood or vegetables and garnishes. The whole is rolled into a cylinder and sliced. There is also hosomaki (thin sushi rolls) and futomaki (thick sushi rolls). Soy sauce is often served with sushi for dipping.

Holidays

Feast day of St. Catherine dei Ricci, St. Stephen of Rieti, St. Ermenilda or Ermengild, St. Martinian the Hermit, St. Polyeuctes of Melitene, St. Licinus or Lesin, and St. Modomnoc.

Florida: Fiesta de Menendez (founder of St. Augustine).

Events

1633 - Galileo was detained by the Italian Inquisition in Rome.

1635 - The oldest public school in the United States, the Boston Public Latin School, was founded.

1689 - Following the Glorious Revolution in Britain, Mary II, the daughter of the deposed king, James II, and William III prince of Orange, her husband, were proclaimed joint sovereigns.

1741 - "The American Magazine" was published in Philadelphia, and became the first U.S. magazine, beating Benjamin Franklin's "General Magazine" off the presses by three days.

1795 - The first U.S. state university opened, the University of North Carolina.

1914 - The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) was founded.

1920 - The League of Nations recognized the perpetual neutrality of Switzerland.

1935 - Bruno Richard Hauptmann was found guilty of first-degree murder in the kidnap-death of the infant son of Charles Lindbergh and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh; Hauptmann was later executed.

1945 - Allied planes began the controversial and devastating bombing the German city of Dresden.

1974 - Russian novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the USSR.

2000 - The last original "Peanuts" comic strip appears in newspapers one day after Charles M. Schulz dies.

2001 - A 6.6 magnitude earthquake hit El Salvador, killing at least 402 people just one month after another quake killed more than 800 people.

Births

1888 - Georgios Papandreou, three-time Greek prime minister.

1892 - Grant Wood, American painter.

1910 - William Shockley, American Nobel Prize-winning physicist whose work led to the miniaturization of radio, TV, and computer circuits.

1923 - Charles "Chuck" Yeager, American test pilot, the first man to break the sound barrier.

1950 - Peter Gabriel, English musician.

1956 - Princess Alia bint Al Hussein, Jordanian Royal Family member.

Deaths

1728 - Cotton Mather, American colonist and writer.

1883 - Richard Wagner, German composer.

2002 - Waylon Jennings, American country music singer and guitarist.