February 6 Birthday
February 6, 1952: King George VI died in his sleep at Sandringham House at the age of fifty-six. He had been king since 1936, when his brother Edward VIII abdicated to marry Wallis Simpson. George was unprepared for the throne — he had a stammer, was shy, and had never expected to rule. He led Britain through World War II, refusing to leave London during the Blitz. His daughter Elizabeth, who was twenty-five and on a royal tour of Kenya, became queen immediately upon his death. She had been climbing a tree at the Treetops Hotel when her father died. She returned to London as Queen Elizabeth II. She would reign for seventy years, the longest of any British monarch. Bob Marley was born on this day in 1945 in Nine Mile, Jamaica. His father was a white Jamaican of English descent, a captain in the Royal Marines. His mother was a Black Jamaican teenager. Marley grew up in the slums of Trenchtown, Kingston. He fused ska, rocksteady, and reggae with Rastafarian theology and Pan-African politics. His album Exodus, released in 1977, was named by Time magazine as the album of the century. He was shot in an assassination attempt in 1976, two days before a concert intended to ease political tensions. He performed anyway. He died of cancer in 1981 at thirty-six, having refused to have a toe amputated because of his Rastafarian beliefs. The cancer spread. Ronald Reagan, born this day in 1911, was the oldest person elected president, at sixty-nine. He had been a Hollywood actor, governor of California, and a salesman for General Electric. He was shot seventy days into his presidency — the bullet missed his heart by an inch. He survived and told his wife, "Honey, I forgot to duck." He presided over the end of the Cold War, the largest peacetime military buildup in American history, and the Iran-Contra scandal, in which his administration sold weapons to Iran and used the proceeds to fund right-wing guerrillas in Nicaragua. He could not recall the details when testifying. His Alzheimer's diagnosis in 1994 raised questions about when the disease had begun. Zsa Zsa Gabor, born this day in 1917, was married nine times. She once slapped a Beverly Hills police officer who pulled her over, for which she spent three hours in jail. She won a $10 million judgment against him for excessive force. People born on February 6 fall under the zodiac sign of Aquarius. The birthstone is Amethyst and the birth flower is Violet. Historical events on February 6 include 1788: Massachusetts becomes 6th state to ratify US Constitution, 1952: King George VI dies; Elizabeth II becomes Queen, 1971: Alan Shepard hits golf ball on the Moon during Apollo 14 EVA. Famous people born on February 6 include Ronald Reagan (1911), Bob Marley (1945), Zsa Zsa Gabor (1917).