February 4

1945 – World War II: The British Indian Army and Imperial Japanese Army begin a series of battles known as the Battle of Pokoku and Irrawaddy River operations.

The Battle of Pakokku and Irrawaddy River operations were a series of battles fought between the British Indian Armyand the Imperial Japanese Army and allied forces over the successful allied Burma Campaign on the China Burma India Theater during World War II. The battles and operations were instrumental in facilitating the eventual capture of Rangoon in summer 1945.

February 3

Saint Margaret of England

Saint Margaret of England, O.Cist., (died 1192) was born in Hungary to an Englishwoman who was related to St. Thomas Beckett, the murdered Archbishop of Canterbury.

When she was grown, Margaret took her mother with her on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and they then settled in Bethlehem, where they lived austere lives of penance. Her mother died there in the Holy Land. After that Margaret made pilgrimages to the Virgin of Montserrat in Spain, and then to Our Lady of Le Puy in Le Puy-en-Velay, in the Auvergne region of France.

She then became a Cistercian nun at the Abbey of Sauvebénite near Le Puy, where she died. Miracles were reported at her tomb and it became a pilgrimage site. Margaret's feast day is observed on 3 February.

Gillian Ayres

Gillian Ayres, CBE (born 3 February 1930) is an English painter.

Early life and career. Ayres was born on 3 February 1930 in Barnes, London, the youngest of three sisters.

Her first solo exhibition was held at Gallery One, London in 1956. Ayres' early works are typically made with thin vinyl paint in a limited number of colours arranged in relatively simple forms, but later works in oil paint are more exuberant and very colourful, with a thick impasto being used. The titles of her paintings, such as Anthony and Cleopatra (1982) and A Midsummer Night (1990), are usually given after the painting is completed and do not directly describe the content of the painting, but rather are intended to resonate with the general mood of the work.

Ayres was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1989. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1986, and in 1991 became a Royal Academician. She later temporarily resigned from the Academy, following the broadcast of a BBC Omnibus television documentary about the preparations for the controversial Sensation exhibition hosted by the Academy in 1997 show-casing the Young British Artists.The documentary, according to Ayres, presented an unfair view of the older members of the Academy. Ayres also objected to the inclusion of Marcus Harvey's portrait of the killer Myra Hindley in the exhibition.She is represented by the Alan Cristea Gallery, London.

February 2

World Wetlands Day

 

 

 2 February each year is World Wetlands Day. This day marks the date of the adoption of the Convention on Wetlands on 2 February 1971, in the Iranian city of Ramsar on the shores of the Caspian Sea. Each year since 1997, the Ramsar Secretariat has provided materials so that government agencies, non-governmental organizations, conservation organizations, and groups of citizens can help raise public awareness about the importance and value of wetlands.

From 1997 to 2011, the Convention’s Web site has posted reports from more than 120 countries of WWD activities of all types, from lectures and seminars, nature walks, children’s art contests, sampan races, and community clean-up days, to radio and television interviews and letters to newspapers, to the launch of new wetland policies, new Ramsar sites, and new programmes at the national level. Government agencies and private citizens from all over the world have sent us their news, often with photographs, and these annual summaries and over 1000 individual reports, with more than 1400 images, make an excellent archive of ideas for future celebrations.

February 1

The start of LGBT History Month

LGBT History Month is a month-long annual observance of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history, and the history of the gay rights and related civil rights movements.( * LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community.) It is observed during October in the United States, to include National Coming Out Day on October 11. In the United Kingdom, it is observed during February, to coincide with a major celebration of the 2005 abolition of Section 28, which had the effect of prohibiting schools from discussing LGBT issues or counselling LGBT or questioning youth.

LGBT History Month was instigated in the UK by Sue Sanders and Schools Out and first took place in February 2005. The event came in the wake of the abolition of Section 28 and is intended to raise awareness of, and combat prejudice against, an otherwise substantially invisible minority.

The first celebration of the month in 2005 saw the organization of over 150 events around the UK. The organization's website received over 50,000 hits in February 2005. The organization received a new logo designed by LGBT typographer Tony Malone in 2006, he has also 'modified' the logo for 2007. In 2007, Tony Malone's first concept became the corporate logo for the national committee and each year started to receive its own mark

January 31

Phil Manzanera (born Philip Geoffrey Targett-Adams, 31 January 1951, London, England) is a musician and record producer. He is the lead guitarist with Roxy Music. In 2006 Manzanera co-produced David Gilmour's album On an Island and played in Gilmour's band for tours in Europe and North America. He wrote and presented a series of 14 one-hour radio programmes for station Planet Rock entitled The A-Z of Great Guitarists and his instrumental album, Firebird V11, was released in 2008.

Grant Morrison, MBE (born 31 January 1960) is a Scottish comic book writer, playwright and occultist. He is known for his nonlinear narratives and countercultural leanings in his runs on titles including DC Comics' Animal Man,  Action Comics, All-Star Superman, and Batman, and Marvel Comics' New X-Men and Fantastic Four.

James Sutton (born James Cook, 31 January 1983) is an English television actor, best known for playing the parts of John Paul McQueen in the British Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks and Ryan Lamb in the ITV soap Emmerdale.

January 30

Philip David Charles "Phil" Collins is an English singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and actor best known as a drummer and vocalist for English progressive rock group Genesis and as a solo artist. Collins sang the lead vocals on several chart hits in the United Kingdom and the United States between 1976 and 2010, either as a solo artist or with Genesis. His singles, sometimes dealing with lost love, ranged from the drum-heavy "In the Air Tonight", dance pop of "Sussudio", piano-driven "Against All Odds", to the political statements of "Another Day in Paradise". Collins's professional music career began as a drummer, originally in a band called The Real Thing with Andrea Bertorelli, who later became his first wife. Collins played drums and shared lead vocals (with Brian Chatton) in Flaming Youth which recorded one album, (Ark II). In 1970, he took over drums for Genesis, which had already recorded two albums. In Genesis, Collins originally supplied backing vocals for front man Peter Gabriel, singing lead on only two songs: "For Absent Friends" from 1971's Nursery Cryme album and "More Fool Me" from Selling England by the Pound, which was released in 1973. Following Gabriel's departure in 1975, Collins became the group's lead singer.

Christian Charles Philip Bale is an English actor. Best known for his roles in American films, Bale has starred in blockbuster films and smaller projects from independent producers and art houses. Bale first caught the public eye at the age of 14, when he was cast in the starring role of Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun (1987). Based on the original story by J. G. Ballard, Bale played an English boy who is separated from his parents and subsequently finds himself lost in a Japanese internment camp during World War II. In 2000, he garnered critical acclaim for his portrayal of serial killer Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. He earned a reputation as a method actor after he lost 63 pounds to play the role of Trevor Reznik in the 2004 film The Machinist.

Peter James Crouch is an English footballer who plays for Premier League club Stoke City as a striker. He was capped 42 times by England national team from 2005 to 2010. Crouch started his career as a trainee with Tottenham Hotspur. He failed to make an appearance for Spurs and after loan spells at Dulwich Hamlet and Swedish club IFK Hässleholm he joined Queens Park Rangers. QPR were relegated at the end of the 2000–01 season and Portsmouth stepped in and paid £1.5 million for Crouch. He had a good season at Fratton Park and after scoring 19 goals he joined Aston Villa in March 2002 for £5 million. He did not have a good spell at Villa and was loaned out to Norwich City in 2003 before making a move to Southampton where he re-gained his form and was signed by Liverpool in July 2005. At Liverpool, Crouch enjoyed considerable success winning the FA Community Shield and FA Cup in 2006 and also gained a runner-up medal in the 2007 UEFA Champions League Final. After scoring 42 goals in three season at Anfield Portsmouth re-signed him for £11 million and he forged an effective partnership with Jermain Defoe. He spent just one season at Portsmouth and left for Tottenham Hotspur where he again linked up with Defoe and Harry Redknapp. He scored a vital goal for Tottenham against Manchester City which earned the club a place in the UEFA Champions League. He scored seven goals in ten European matches for Spurs in 2010–11, but was unable to replicate this form in the Premier League. He joined Stoke City on 31 August 2011 for a club record fee of £10 million. In his first season with Stoke he scored 14 goals and won the club's player of the year award.

January 29

Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine (January 29, 1737 [1] (NS February 9, 1737) – June 8, 1809) was an English-American political activist, author, political theorist and revolutionary. As the author of two highly influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, he inspired the American Patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Britain. His ideas reflected Enlightenment era rhetoric of transnational human rights. He has been called "a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination."

Born in Thetford, England, in the county of Norfolk, Paine emigrated to the British American colonies in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin and he arrivied in time to participate in the American Revolution.

Paine lived in France for most of the 1790s, becoming deeply involved in the French Revolution. He wrote the Rights of Man (1791), in part a defense of the French Revolution against its critics. His attacks on British writer Edmund Burke led to a trial and conviction in absentia in 1792 for the crime of seditious libel.  In 1802, he returned to America where he died on June 8, 1809. Only six people attended his funeral as he had been ostracized for his ridicule of Christianity.

Linda Smith (comedian)

Linda Helen Smith (29 January 1958 – 27 February 2006) was a British stand-up comic and comedy writer. She appeared regularly on Radio 4 panel games, and was voted "Wittiest Living Person" by listeners in 2002. She met her partner, Warren Lakin, at university, and they were together for nearly 30 years until her death.

Life and career

Smith was born in Erith in Kent in 1958 and was educated at Erith College (now Bexley College) and at the University of Sheffield where she graduated in English and Drama. She joined a professional theatre company before turning to comedy. In 1987, she won the Hackney Empire New Act of the Year, then known as the New London Comic Award, and performed on the Edinburgh Fringe before breaking into radio comedy.

Her first appearances on national radio were on Radio 5's The Treatment in 1997. She was subsequently a regular panellist on The News Quiz and Just a Minute and appeared frequently on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue (from June 2001 onwards).

On the 17 November 2003, Smith appeared on the BBC television show Room 101, where she successfully managed to put in Adults who read Harry Potter books, Tim Henman, 'Back to School' signs that appear in shops and Posh People. However, she failed to put in Bow ties after host Paul Merton pointed out that Stan Laurel regularly wore a bow tie.