02
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848): Mexico. This treaty, which marked the end of the Mexican War, established U.S. sovereignty over 1,193,061 squares miles of formerly disputed of Mexican territory including the present states of Texas Arizona, California, and Utah, and parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming.

02
Candlemas : Christian. This religious holiday originated with the ancient Jewish custom that required mothers to present their first male child in the temple. As a Jewish mother, Mary would have presented Jesus on February 2. The day is associated with light and purification. The holiday takes its name from the custom of blessing the churchis candles for the year on this date.

03
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946): Lesbian. Author. An avant-garde American writer whose Paris home became a salon for the leading artists and writers of the period between World Wars I and II, attended Radcliffe Collage, studying psychology with the philosopher William James. After further study at Johns Hopkins medical school, she went to Paris where she lived with her lifelong companion, Alice B. Toklas. Stein was among the first collectors of works by the Cubists and other experimental painters of the period, such as Pablo Picasso (who painted her portrait), Henry Matisse, and Georges Braque. These painters were introduced to expatriate American writers, such as Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway, and other visitors drawn by her literary reputation. Her first published book, Three lives (1909), the stories of three working-class women, has been called a minor masterpiece. Her only book to reach a wide public was The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933), actually Steinsis own autobiography. The performance in the United States of her Four Saints in Three Acts (1934), which the composer Virgil Thompson had made into an opera, led to a triumphal American lecture tour in 1934-35.

04
Bean Scattering Festival (Setsubun): Japan. This festival expresses everyoneis desire for good health and good fortune in the new year. At home, children throw beans at the idevili and shout iout with the devil, in with good lucki.

04
Outbreak of Philippine revolt against the United States (1899) : Philippines. During the Spanish American War the United States encouraged the Philippine people to organize an army of resistance against Spanish rule. When the treaty ending the war transferred control from Spain to the United States, the rebel leader Emilio Aguinaldo called for the people to declare their independence. On February 4, they rose in armed insurrection. An American force of 700,000 men succeeded in the ending organized resistance by the end of the year. However many influential Americans denounced the governmentis policies.

05
Constitution Day: Mexico. On this day in 1917 Mexico adopted its first constitution. November 20 marks the anniversary of this holiday.

06
Bob Marley (1945-1981): Jamaican. Musician. Marley was the most influential star of reggae, a Jamaican form of popular music that draws on Afro-Caribbean dance and American soul music and was one of the first musical idioms from the Third World to become popular in Europe and the United States. Reggae is associated with Rastafarianism, a faith founded by Marcus Garvey, whose adherents see the late Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia as a divine figure and themselves as black Hebrews exiled in the Babylon of western colonial capitalism. Marleyis intense compelling presence and the stirring messages of his songs brought him the acclaim of international audiences and influenced singers and songwriters throughout the Western Hemisphere, Europe and Africa.

06
Waitangi Day: New Zealand. This commemorates the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 between the indigenous Maoris of New Zealand and the European colonists, providing for British sovereignty in exchange for guaranteed possession by the Maoris of their lands.

07
Lantern Festival (Yuan-hsiao): China. This celebrates the end of the New Year season. In Taiwan people make elaborate lanterns to hang in the temples and hold contests to choose the most beautiful one. They also write riddles on the lanterns and compete to s *solve them. In the Peopleis Republic of China the lanterns are hung in public parks.

08
Martin Buber (1878-1965): Jewish Austrian. Theologian. Buber developed a theology of Jewish existentialism that emphasized a strong relationship between God and the individual. His most famous work is I and Thou.

08
Dawes General Allotment Act (1887): United States. This law dissolved American Indian tribes as legal entities and divided formerly tribal lands among individual property owners.

09
Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906): African American. Dunbar became nationally known for his poems and tales, many of them depicting the life of Blacks on southern plantations. He also wrote essays protesting the conditions of Black Americans.