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February 1
The battlecruisers of Germany were built in the first half of the 20th century by the Kaiserliche Marine, the navy of the German Empire. The battlecruiser type was an outgrowth of older armored cruiser designs; they were intended to scout for the main battle fleet and attack the reconnaissance forces of opposing fleets. Kaiser Wilhelm II maintained that the new battlecruisers be able to fight in the line of battle with battleships to counter Germany's numerical inferiority. SMS Von der Tann (pictured) was the first German battlecruiser, built in 1908–1910. The Kaiserliche Marine eventually built four more battlecruisers before the start of the First World War to serve with the High Seas Fleet, and another two were completed during the conflict. A further seven were planned, including four of the Mackensen and three of the Ersatz Yorck-class ships. Six of the seven battlecruisers completed before or during World War I saw relatively heavy combat, primarily in the North Sea. All of the ships, with the exception of Goeben, were assigned to the I Scouting Group under the command of Admiral Franz von Hipper. (Full list...)
February 5
Abhishek Bachchan's acting career has mainly consisted of his work in Hindi films. Bachchan, an Indian actor, made his screen debut as the male lead in Refugee (2000), and starred in a series of unsuccessful films between 2000 and 2003. In 2004, he played supporting roles in the political drama Yuva and action thriller Dhoom, winning a Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor for the former. Between 2005 and 2007 Bachchan appeared in many Bollywood films. Among others, his performance in Guru (2007) was positively received. After Bachchan suffered a brief setback in his career as he starred in another series of films that performed poorly at the box-office, including the drama Raavan (2010), and the action thriller Game (2011), Bachchan played a supporting role in the comedy Bol Bachchan (2012), opposite Ajay Devgan. Bachchan followed this with two more supporting appearances in commercially successful films: Dhoom 3 (2013) and the action heist comedy Happy New Year (2014). (Full list...)
February 8
National Football League (NFL) champions from 1920 to 1969 were determined by two different systems. The NFL was established on September 17, 1920, as the American Professional Football Association, which changed its name in 1922 to the NFL. From 1920 to 1931, the APFA/NFL determined its champion by overall win–loss record, with no playoff games; ties were not counted in the winning percentage total. The 1932 NFL season resulted in a tie for first place between the Chicago Bears and Portsmouth Spartans, and could not be resolved by the typical win–loss system. To settle the tie, a playoff game was held; Chicago won the game and the championship. The following year the NFL split into two divisions, and the winner of each division would play in the NFL Championship Game. The Green Bay Packers won the most NFL championships during the period, winning eleven of the fifty championships. The Packers were also the only team to win three straight championships, an achievement they accomplished twice: from 1929–31 and from 1965–67. (Full list...)
February 12
The Crafoord Prize is an annual science prize established in 1980 by Holger Crafoord, a Swedish industrialist, and his wife Anna-Greta Crafoord. Administered by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the prize is awarded in four categories: astronomy and mathematics; geosciences; biosciences, with particular emphasis on ecology; and polyarthritis, the disease from which Holger severely suffered in his last years. Only one award is given each year, according to a rotating scheme – astronomy and mathematics; then geosciences; then biosciences. The recipient of the Crafoord Prize is announced each year in mid-January; on Crafoord Day in April, the prize is presented by the King of Sweden, who also presents the Nobel Prizes at the ceremony in December. The prize money is intended to fund further research by the winner. The inaugural winners, Vladimir Arnold and Louis Nirenberg, were cited by the Academy for their work in the field of non-linear differential equations. The first woman to be awarded the prize was astronomer Andrea Ghez (pictured) in 2012. (Full list...)
February 15
The Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals was an honor presented at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards, to quality country music collaborations for artists who do not normally perform together. Honors in several categories are presented at the ceremony annually by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to "honor artistic achievement, technical proficiency and overall excellence in the recording industry, without regard to album sales or chart position". Originally called the Best Country Vocal Performance, Duet, the award was first presented to Kenny Rogers and Ronnie Milsap at the 30th Grammy Awards in 1988 for the single "Make No Mistake, She's Mine". Alison Krauss (pictured) holds the record for having the most wins in this category, with a total of five. She is followed by seven others, who have all won the award twice. Among the most nominated are Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson, both nine-time nominees. (Full list...)
February 19
There are nineteen colleges and universities in Washington, D.C. that are listed under the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. These institutions include five research universities, four master's universities, and ten special-focus institutions. Sixteen of Washington, D.C.'s post-secondary institutions are private, of which three are for-profit. Only three of the city's post-secondary institutions listed under the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education are public. Washington, D.C.'s oldest post-secondary institution is Georgetown University (pictured), founded in 1789. George Washington University, founded in 1821, is the city's largest institution of higher learning in terms of enrollment, as it had 25,653 students as of the spring of 2013. The University of the District of Columbia is Washington, D.C.'s largest public university, with an enrollment of 5,110 students. The city has two historically black colleges and universities that are members of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund: Howard University and the University of the District of Columbia. (Full list...)
February 22
The 22nd Presidium of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union lasted from 1961 to 1966. A member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was a member of the nomenklatura, the country's de facto ruling class. Nikita Khrushchev (pictured) chaired the Presidium from 1955 to 1964; Leonid Brezhnev succeeded him that year and chaired until 1982. In contrast to full members, candidate members of the Presidium could not vote during Presidium sessions. It was normal that a full member of the Presidium had previously served as a candidate member, but this was not always the case. During the period, 23 people held seats in the Presidium: 14 full members and 9 candidate members. The Central Committee was, according to sovietologists Merle Fainsod and Jerry F. Hough, elected unanimously at the 22nd Party Congress (17–31 October 1961). The 22nd Central Committee in turn elected the Politburo unanimously. (Full list...)
February 26
Twenty ant subfamilies are currently recognized, of which sixteen contain extant taxa, while four are exclusively fossil. Ants (family Formicidae) first arose during the mid-Cretaceous, more than 100 million years ago, associated with the rise of flowering plants and an increase in forest ground litter. They have come to occupy virtually all major terrestrial habitats, with the exception of tundra and cold ever-wet forests, and are the most species-rich of all social insects, with more than 12,000 described species and many others awaiting description. In volume 1 of Systema Naturae, Linnaeus (1758) described seventeen species of ants (F. rufa pictured), all of which he placed in the single genus Formica. Within a few decades additional genera had been recognized, and this trend continued in the ensuing years, together with the development of a more complex hierarchical classification in which genera were apportioned among subfamilies and tribes. The ant species described by Linnaeus are now dispersed in eleven different genera, belonging to four subfamilies. (Full list...)
February 29
The 68th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored films released in 1995 and took place on March 25, 1996, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, California. During the ceremony, AMPAS presented Academy Awards in 24 categories. The ceremony, televised in the United States by ABC, was produced by Quincy Jones and directed by Jeff Margolis. Actress Whoopi Goldberg hosted the show for the second time, having previously presided over the 66th ceremony in 1994. Braveheart won five awards including Best Picture, the ninth film to do so without any acting nominations, and Best Director for Mel Gibson (pictured). Other winners included Apollo 13, Pocahontas, Restoration, and The Usual Suspects with two awards each. The telecast garnered almost 45 million viewers in the United States. (Full list...)