1854. Eight steamboats destroyed by fire at New Orleans, and 37 persons perished in the flames.
1856. Fort Nicholas at Sebastopol blown up by the allies, with the aid of 106,000 pounds of powder.
This day in the calendar of Hesiod, is auspicious for marriages and the repairing of ships; but a day of troubles.
FEBRUARY 5.
46 B. C. Marcus Cato killed himself, at the age of 48. He was a lover of philosophy, in which he rigidly followed the doctrines of the stoics. He was a soldier, and his first campaign was against Spartacus; afterwards he led 1000 foot into Asia, where he was ridiculed for the small number of his attendants, but was wholly unmoved by it. He sided with Cicero against Catiline, and opposed Cæsar in the senate on that occasion. He endeavored to bring about a reconciliation between Cæsar and Pompey, but finding it in vain, sided with the latter. When Pompey was slain he fled to Utica, and Cæsar pursuing him, he advised his friends to be gone, and his son to trust to Cæsar's clemency; then lay down upon his bed, read Plato on the immortality of the soul twice over, and rose and thrust his own sword through his body.
41 B. C. Augustus, by a vote of the senate, in full assembly, their brows crowned with laurel, saluted with the title of Father of his Country.
1444. An eruption of Vulcano, one of the Lipari islands, which changed the entire face of the local navigation. Aristotle records a dreadful explosion, which is supposed to have formed the island as it stood in the time of Pliny.
1552. James Meyer, a Flemish historian, died, aged 61.
1556. A truce for five years was concluded between Charles V, emperor of Germany, and Henry II of France.
1617. Prospero Alpini, a famous Venitian physician and botanist, died, aged 64.