Russians establish Fort Ross in California


Year
1812
Month Day
February 02

Staking a tenuous claim to the riches of the Far West, Russians establish Fort Ross on the coast north of San Francisco.

As a growing empire with a long Pacific coastline, Russia was in many ways well positioned to play a leading role in the settlement and development of the West. The Russians had begun their expansion into the North American continent in 1741 with a massive scientific expedition to Alaska. Returning with news of abundant sea otters, the explorers inspired Russian investment in the Alaskan fur trade and some permanent settlement. By the early 19th century, the semi-governmental Russian-American Company was actively competing with British and American fur-trading interests as far south as the shores of Spanish-controlled California.

Russia’s Alaskan colonists found it difficult to produce their own food because of the short growing season of the far north. Officials of the Russian-American Company reasoned that a permanent settlement along the more temperate shores of California could serve both as a source of food and a base for exploiting the abundant sea otters in the region. To that end, a large party of Russians and Aleuts sailed for California where they established Fort Ross (short for Russia) on the coast north of San Francisco.

Fort Ross, though, proved unable to fulfill either of its expected functions for very long. By the 1820s, the once plentiful sea otters in the region had been hunted almost to extinction. Likewise, the colonists’ attempts at farming proved disappointing, because the cool foggy summers along the coast made it difficult to grow the desired fruits and grains. Potatoes thrived, but they could be grown just as easily in Alaska.

At the same time, the Russians were increasingly coming into conflict with the Mexicans and the growing numbers of Americans settling in the region. Disappointed with the commercial potential of the Fort Ross settlement and realizing they had no realistic chance of making a political claim for the region, the Russians decided to sell out. After making unsuccessful attempts to interest both the British and Mexicans in the fort, the Russians finally found a buyer in John Sutter. An American emigrant to California, Sutter bought Fort Ross in 1841 with an unsecured note for $30,000 that he never paid. He cannibalized the fort to provide supplies for his colony in the Sacramento Valley where, seven years later, a chance discovery ignited the California Gold Rush.

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James Joyce is born


Year
1882
Month Day
February 02

Novelist James Joyce is born this day in Dublin, Ireland, the eldest of 10 children. His father, a cheerful ne’er-do-well, will eventually go bankrupt.

Joyce attended Catholic school and University College in Dublin. A brilliant scholar, he learned Dano-Norwegian in order to read the plays of Henrik Ibsen in the original. In college, he began a lifetime of literary rebellion, self-publishing an essay rejected by the school’s literary magazine adviser.

After graduation, Joyce moved to Paris. He planned to become a doctor to support himself while writing, but soon gave up his medical studies. He returned to Dublin to visit his mother’s deathbed and remained to teach school and work odd jobs. On June 16, 1904, he met Nora Barnacle, a lively uneducated woman with whom he fell in love. He convinced Nora to return to Europe with him. The couple settled in Trieste, where they had two children, and then in Zurich. Joyce struggled with serious eye problems, undergoing 25 operations for various troubles between 1917 and 1930.

In 1914, he published The Dubliners. The following year, his novel Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man brought him fame and won him several wealthy patrons, including Edith Rockefeller.

In 1918, the American journal Little Review began to serialize Ulysses, Joyce’s revolutionary stream-of-consciousness novel. However, the U.S. Post Office stopped the publication’s distribution in December of that year on the grounds that the novel was obscene. Sylvia Beach, owner of the bookstore Shakespeare and Co. in Paris, published the novel herself in 1922, but it was banned in the United Kingdom and in the United States until 1933.

Joyce’s last novel, Finnegan’s Wake, was published in 1939, and Joyce died two years later.

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Sid Vicious dies of a drug overdose in New York City


Year
1979
Month Day
February 02

To the New York City Police Department and Medical Examiner’s Office, he was John Simon Ritchie, a 22-year-old Englishman under indictment for murder but now dead of a heroin overdose in a Greenwich Village apartment. To the rest of the world, he was Sid Vicious, former bassist for the notorious Sex Pistols and the living embodiment of everything punk rock stood for and against. His death, which likely came as a surprise to very few, came on February 2, 1979.

Sid Vicious was the last member to join the Sex Pistols, taking over for fired bassist Glen Matlock in early 1977. What he famously did not bring to the table was musical ability. Vicious faked his way through early gigs with the band, reportedly with his amplifier occasionally unplugged on stage by his own band mates. What he didn’t have to fake was the attitude. Sid Vicious was the perfect living embodiment of the punk esthetic, a street kid who really did walk around London with a swastika on his chest, a padlocked chain around his neck and a gigantic chip on his shoulder. As his good friend the critic and author Alan Jones put it, “Sid, on image alone, is what all punk rests on.”

Seven months into his tenure as a Sex Pistol, Sid Vicious was introduced to a troubled American girl on the London punk scene named Nancy Spungen. Almost immediately, they began a relationship that led to both of their deaths. By all reports, they were very much in love, but their shared heroin addiction led to repeated instances of violence between them. Sid’s addiction may have hastened the dissolution of the Sex Pistols midway through their first U.S. tour in January 1978, and it certainly contributed to the still mysterious events surrounding Nancy’s death by stabbing on October 12 of that same year in the Chelsea Hotel room she shared with Vicious in New York City.

Freed on bail after his arrest for the Spungen murder, Sid landed himself back in jail in December 1978 for assaulting Patti Smith’s brother in a bar with a broken bottle. After seven weeks of detention and detox in the Rikers Island jail, Vicious made bail again on February 1, 1979. Late that same night, at a party, he would put heroin into his system that the Medical Examiner would later estimate to have been 80% pure. Sid Vicious died in the early morning hours of February 2, 1979.

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First Donner Party member dies


Year
1847
Month Day
February 02

On February 2, 1847, the first woman of a group of pioneers commonly known as the Donner Party dies during the group’s journey through a Sierra Nevada mountain pass. The disastrous trip west ended up killing 42 people and turned many of the survivors into cannibals.

A total of 87 people joined up in South Pass, Wyoming, in October 1846 to make a trip through the Sierra Nevada Mountains to California. Most of the pioneers were farmers who had little experience with wilderness travel. Two large families, the Donners and the Reeds, were at the heart of the traveling group, with 7 adults and 16 children. George Donner was the group’s unofficial leader.

The pioneers left Wyoming on October 27, and were soon faced with the early onset of a harsh winter. They had only a book as a guide and this led them through a mountain pass south of modern-day Salt Lake City. Without any path to follow, it took the group 16 days to go only 36 miles. Eventually, they were forced to leave their wagons–loaded with hundreds of pounds of flour and bacon–and their cattle behind. Trapped by snow, they were forced to make camp for the winter near a small lake (now known as Donner Lake) northwest of Lake Tahoe.

With starvation setting in, a group of 15 adults (known as the Forlorn Hope) attempted to get to Sutter’s Fort near San Francisco–100 miles away–for help. About half of the group died in the harsh conditions and the others were forced to eat their fallen companions’ remains to survive. Finally, the seven remaining members of the expedition were able to reach a Native American village. News of their arrival spread quickly, and a rescue party was sent from Sutter’s Fort to reach the rest of the Donner Party, still stuck in the mountains. By the time the rescue was complete, nearly half of the Donner Party, including George Donner, was dead.

READ MORE: 10 Things You Should Know About the Donner Party

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Director William Desmond Taylor is found murdered


Year
1922
Month Day
February 02

Police discover the body of film director William Desmond Taylor in his Los Angeles bungalow. Lieutenant Tom Ziegler responded to a call about a “natural death” at the Alvarado Street home of Taylor. When he arrived they found actors, actresses and studio executives rummaging through the director’s belongings. He also found Taylor lying on the living room floor with a bullet in his back–not exactly suggesting a “natural” death.

The murder of Taylor, 50 years old, became a nationwide scandal and proof to the nation’s moralists of Hollywood’s depravity. Two of the actresses linked to Taylor got caught up in the scandal and saw their film careers die a quick death following the murder. Comedian Mabel Normand had been linked romantically with Taylor, but was sent to a sanatarium to to recover from tuberculosis, and died. While she was away, Mary Miles Minter, a teenager, became a star in Taylor’s silent films and fell in love with him. Charlotte Shelby, Minter’s mother, disapproved of the budding relationship.

After his murder, a love note to Taylor from Minter was found in his home, along with her nightgown in the bedroom. Other damning facts came to light. Minter had once tried to shoot herself with the same type of gun used in Taylor’s murder. Furthermore, Shelby had previously threatened the life of another director who had made a pass at her daughter. And to top it off, Shelby’s alibi witness received suspiciously large sums of money after the murder. Still, no one was ever prosecuted for Taylor’s death and the case remains officially unsolved.

Many years later, in Minter’s unpublished autobiography, she admitted that she and her mother were at Taylor’s bungalow on the night of the killing. Famous director King Vidor told people that Minter had ambiguously admitted that her mother had killed Taylor after finding her daughter at Taylor’s home.

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United States rejects proposal for conference with Stalin


Year
1949
Month Day
February 02

In response to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s proposal that President Harry S. Truman travel to Russia for a conference, Secretary of State Dean Acheson brusquely rejects the idea as a “political maneuver.” This rather curious exchange was further evidence of the diplomatic sparring between the United States and the Soviet Union that was so characteristic of the early years of the Cold War.

Stalin broached the idea of Truman traveling to the Soviet Union, or perhaps to Poland or Czechoslovakia, during a statement in which he indicated that his health prohibited him from coming to the United States to meet his American counterpart. Stalin’s agenda for such a meeting was sketchy, beyond a general call for a declaration by each nation that it would not resort to war in dealing with the other. Secretary Acheson stated that he found this idea “puzzling,” arguing that treaty commitments and adherence to the United Nations Charter already excluded war between the two powers. Furthermore, without a more concrete agenda, Acheson was reluctant to commit the United States to any one-on-one negotiations with the Soviet Union. In any case, the secretary concluded, President Truman was not willing to go “halfway around the world” to meet with the Soviet leader. Acheson also indicated his disappointment that any nation would “play international politics” with an issue as important as world peace.

Stalin’s vague proposal and Acheson’s blistering response were typical of the constant war of words that took place between the Soviet Union and the United States during the late-1940s and all during the 1950s. The verbal sparring illustrated the lack of trust on both sides and the failure to locate any foundation for diplomatic negotiations. Although relations between the two nations warmed slightly during the 1960s and 1970s, the war of rhetoric continued unabated.

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