Today in history–February 5

1576: Noting that “Paris is worth a mass,” Protestant leader King Henry III of Navarre converts to Catholicism so that he can succeed to the French throne.

1631: The story of Rhode Island’s only law school begins when a young preacher name Roger Williams, who is also a protege of Sir Edward Coke, leaves Britain for the shores of New England.

1788: Sir Robert Peel, the British prime minister who will usher in both modern factory regulation and free trade, is born at Bury, Lancashire, to a wealthy merchant family.

1824: Sailor Levi Wyman takes ill while at the house of Daniel Mills.  Mills begins nursing the boy.

1881: Phoenix, Arizona, The largest U.S. city without a law school (so far) is incorporated.

1881: Thomas Carlyle, the man who invented the modern genre of polemical history (or historical polemic) dies at London.

1885: King Leopold II of the Belgians becomes one of the world’s biggest landowners when his own privately held company takes over the Congo.

1900: Adlai Ewing Stevenson II (Northwestern Law 1926), is born in Los Angeles.  Did you know that he was a first cousin of actor McLean Stevenson (M.A.S.H.)?

1917: The Constitution of the United Mexiscan States is adopted.

1919: Director D.W. Griffith and film stars Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks form their own motion picture production company, which they call “United Artists.”

1922: The inventor of the mechanical pencil, Slavoljub Eduard Penkala of Croatia, dies at age 51.

1937: President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces his plan to enlarge the U.S. Supreme Court so that he can appoint members more congenial to his political views.

1997: Morgan Stanley Group and Dean Witter, Discover & Co. announce that they will merge in a $10 billion deal.

2001: Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman separate.  Referring to her diminutive ex, Kidman says, “Now I can start wearing heels again.”