Today in history—February 1

1552: Sir Edward Coke is born at Mileham, Norfolk.

1790: The first session of the new United States Supreme Court convenes in New York City.

1796: The capital of Upper Canada (now Ontario) is moved from Newark (now Niagara-on-the-Lake) to York (now Toronto).

1851: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein in her spare time while caring for the life and legacy of her deadbeat husband Percy, dies 80 years before her creation will make people wealthy.

1861: Texas, which had joined the United States only 16 years earlier, secedes.

1882: Louis Stephen St. Laurent, a future law professor at Laval University and president of the Canadian Bar Association, is born at Compton, Quebec.  He will also serve as Canada’s 13th prime minister.

1884: The first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary is published.

1893: Thomas A. Edison completes construction of the first motion picture studio, in West Orange, New Jersey.  Bad weather will eventually drive film-making to Southern California.

1894: Sean Aloysius O’Fearna is born in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.  As “John Ford” he will become one of the greatest and most successful film makers in history.

1913: The world’s largest train station, New York’s Grand Central Station, opens for business.

1965: Princess Stéphanie Marie Elisabeth Grimaldi of Monaco, whose life’s mission is to show that European royalty can, too, be just as trashy as American pop stars, is born at the Palais Princier, Monaco.

2019: Life on earth ends when Near Earth Object 89959 2002 NT7 hits the planet.