HISTORY
On this day February 11-17, 2024 (week 07)
February 11, 2024 - February 17, 2024 - Graphics show birthdays and anniversaries on each day for the week. This week features the freeing of Nelson Mandela, George Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue, the first use of penicillin on a human patient, French national anthem La Marseillaise, actress Raquel Welch, American tennis star John McEnroe, and Giacomo Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly.
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February 11, 1990: Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s black nationalist leader, was freed after 27 years in jail for charges related to the ANC’s armed campaign against apartheid
February 12, 1924: George Gershwin played his haunting composition Rhapsody In Blue in public for the first time. It established his reputation as a serious composer
February 13, 1941: Penicillin, discovered in 1928 by Alexander Fleming, was first used on a human patient, an Oxford policeman whose scratches from a rose bush had turned septic
February 14, 1879: La Marseillaise was restored as France’s national anthem. It was written in 1792 by Claude Joseph Rouget De Lisle to rally soldiers to defend their homeland
February 15, 2023: Actress Raquel Welch died at age 82. She shot to international fame after playing a deer-skin bikini-clad cavewoman in the 1966 film One Million Years B.C.
February 16, 1959: Volatile American tennis star John McEnroe was born. Now a respected commentator, he won the U.S. Open four times and Wimbledon three times
February 17, 1904: Giacomo Puccini’s Madame Butterfly was first performed at La Scala in Milan. The opera was initially unsuccessful but a revised version is now a firm favourite