On This Day: February 5

This is the 36th day of the year.

Fact of the Day: Super Bowl

The first Super Bowl football game was played on January 15, 1967, at Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles, California, in front of 63,036 spectators. The Green Bay Packers (NFL) defeated the Kansas City Chiefs (AFL) 35-10. The winning Packers players received $15,000 each and the Chiefs, $7,500 each. Nowadays (according to 2005 statistics), players on teams that make the wild-card round as division winners get $18,000, while strictly wild-card teams get $15,000. Making the divisional playoff round earns players another $18,000. Getting to a conference championship game is worth $36,500 to every player on all four teams. That's the same amount of money players on the losing team in the Super Bowl make, while the winners get $68,000 each.

Holidays

Feast day of St. Agatha, Saints Indractus and Dominica, St. Adelaide of Bellich, St. Bertulph or Bertoul of Renty, St. Avitus of Vienne, and St. Vodalus or Voel.

China: Kitchen God Celebration.

Finland: Runeberg's Day.

Mexico: Constitution Day.

Events

1556 - Henry II of France and Philip of Spain signed the truce of Vaucelles.

1631 - The founder of Rhode Island, Roger Williams, and his wife arrived in Boston from England. Williams edited the first dictionary of Native American languages.

1916 - Enrico Caruso recorded "O Solo Mio" for the Victor Talking Machine Company.

1917 - Mexico's constitution was adopted.

1917 - Congress nullified President Woodrow Wilson's veto of the Immigration Act. The law severely curtailed the immigration of Asians and required literacy tests.

1922 - "Reader's Digest" began publication in New York.

1937 - President Franklin Roosevelt announced a controversial plan to expand the Supreme Court to as many as 15 judges, allegedly to make it more efficient. Critics immediately charged that Roosevelt was trying to "pack" the court in his favor. The Senate struck it down by a vote of 70-22. Soon after, Roosevelt had the opportunity to nominate his first Supreme Court justice, and by 1942 all but two of the justices were his appointees.

1952 - New York adopted three-colored traffic lights.

1953 - The Walt Disney film, "Peter Pan," opened in New York City.

1958 - Gamel Abdel Nasser was formally nominated to become the first president of the new United Arab Republic.

1972 - Bob Douglas became the first black man elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame. Douglas coached and owned the New York Renaissance, an all-black team which won 88 consecutive games in 1933.

1981 - Marine Private First Class Robert Garwood was convicted of collaborating with the enemy while a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

2003 - Colin Powell addresses the UN Security Council with U.S. plans to invade Iraq.

Births

1744 - John Jeffries, American, known as America's first weatherman.

1878 - Andre-Gustave Citroën, French engineer and industrialist.

1900 - Adlai Ewing Stevenson, American politician and diplomat.

1914 - William Burroughs, American novelist, essayist, social critic, painter, and spoken word performer.

1919 - Red Buttons (born Aaron Chwatt), American comedian, actor.

1934 - Henry (Hank) Aaron, Baseball Hall-of-Famer, baseball executive.

Deaths

1881 - Thomas Carlyle, English author and historian.

1967 - Leon Leonwood Bean, American sporting-goods store founder.

1997 - Pamela Harriman, English-born American diplomat.