Feast of St. Carmen

Today is the Ninth of February. On this day in 1825, John Quincy Adams was elected President, in the first election to be decided by the U.S. House of Representatives.

In 1895, Wm. G. Morgan invented a game called Mintonette, for those who thought basketball would be too strenuous. This game involved hitting the basketball over a rope; it would later be known as Volleyball.

In 1909, Carmen Miranda was born.

In 1913, a group of three or four luminous bodies with tails moved across the sky with a 'peculiar majestic deliberation', according to the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. Another one followed, and another. There were 30 or 32 in all, according to one observer, in strict formation. Some compared them to a fleet of battleships in the air. They were seen in Canada, USA, Bermuda and from the sea. There was another procession over Toronto the next day, only this time there were seven or eight dark non-luminous bodies, which moved across the sky and back.