In 1898, the novel ‘Futility’ written by Morgan Robertson was published. It’s a story about a giant ship, the Titan, which collided with an iceberg on it’s maiden voyage in April. The Titan was considered unsinkable and only carried the minimum number of lifeboats required by law and able to carry 500 people. There were over 2000 passengers on board.

Milvina Dean was only two months old when along with her parents, Bertram and Georgette Dean and brother Bertram boarded the ship to emigrate to Witchita, Kansas. She was the youngest passenger on the ship. She along with her mother and brother survived that night. When she died on May 31, 2009 she was the last living survivor of the Titanic.

John Jacob Astor, the fourth to hold the name and the Great Grand Son of the first, died on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. He and his 18 year old wife, Astor was 47, were returning from their honeymoon in Europe. His new bride was pregnant and she wished to give birth in New York. She survived and the baby also named John Jacob Astor was born on August 14, 1912.

Of the 1517 people of perished in the sinking of the Titanic, only 306 bodies were recovered.

Had it not been for a strange course of fate, Milton Hershey, the man who founded Hershey Chocolate, may have died in 1912. He and his wife were scheduled to return to the United States from England. His wife, Catherine or “Kitty”, fell ill and canceled his reservations on the maiden voyage of the Titanic.

Since the day happens only a quarter of the time, less since 1900 was not a leap year, this mean that less things could happen on this day than on any other day in the year. Here’s a couple of things that have occurred on the 29th of February.

In 1892 the city of St. Petersburg, Florida was incorporated. At the time it only had 300 people, now it’s population is around 250,000. St. Petersburg is it the fourth largest city in the state of Florida and the largest city in Florida that is not a county seat.

In 1956, Dwight David Eisenhower announced that he was going to run for a second term as President of the United States. In 2008, it’d already be to late for a major party candidate to announce a run, but stay tuned some one may announce still.

When Hank Aaron signed his contract in 1972, he became the first baseball player to make 200,000 a year. Today that’s below the minimum.

Entertainer Dinah Shore was born on February 29, 1916. She celebrated 19 birthdays before passing away two years before her 20th.

Washington was a member of the Second Continental Congress, but he didn’t participate nor sign the Declaration on Independence. On June 14, 1775, a year before the debate and adoption, he was named Commander in Chief of the Continental Army. He was however one of the prime movers to change the Articles of Confederation, which turned out to be the writing and the adoption of the new Constitution.

While Washington had false teeth, they were not made of wood. He did have ones made by Dr. John Greenwoodby of gold and hippopotamus ivory. Dr. John Greenwood is known as the “Father of Modern Dentistry”.

Mason Locke Weems also known as Parson Weems wrote “A History of the Life and Death, Virtues and Exploits of General George Washington.” Weems felt that Washington was the “greatest man that ever lived”. Some of the things he wrote about Washington was more about his character than actual truths. One of these is about a Young Washington cutting down his father’s cherry tree and not lying to his father about his actions. Did he do it, probably not, but Weems felt it fit Washington’s Character of being truthful.

The District of Columbia, or Washington DC, the capital of the United States was begun when he was President and he was involved in the design of the city and the White House, the President’s home. Washington never lived in the White House and probably never in the city itself. The Capitals of the United States while he was President were New York City (March 4, 1789 to December 5, 1790) and Philadelphia (December 6, 1790 to May 14, 1800).

Washington may have spent many years away from his home of Mount Vernon, Virginia, but other than a trip to Barbados in the West Indies when he was 19 he never left the soil of what would become the United States. He went to Barbados with ith his older half-brother, Lawrence, in hopes to improve Lawrence’s health. Lawrence would die within the year. He did travel to foreign soil as a soldier during the French-Indian War, but most, if not all of that area has become the United States. Even though there were battles fought in Canada during the American Revolution, Washington was not at any of those battles.

Martin Van Buren was born on December 5, 1782 and is the first President who was born after July 4, 1776, the date of the Declaration of Independence. John Tyler born March 29, 1790 was the first born after the adoption of the Constitution.

When John F. Kennedy was elected President during the 1960 election he became the youngest elected President. He was not the youngest President. When William McKinley was assassinated in 1901, Theodore Roosevelt became the youngest President at the age of 42.

Ronald Reagan was the oldest man to hold the office of President. He was just a few weeks short of his 70th birthday when he took the oath of office in January 1980. He was just short of 78 when he left office 8 years later.

Benjamin Harrison was not only the first President to be a grandson of a president (William Henry Harrison), he was also the great-grandson to a signer of the Declaration of Independence (Benjamin Harrison).

Herbert Hoover, elected President in 1928, was the first President who was born west of the Mississippi River. He was born in West Branch, Iowa on August 10, 1874.

Five years have had two Presidents born in them:
* Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams were both born in 1767.
* Ulysses S. Grant and Rutherford B. Hayes were both born in 1822.
* Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford were both born in 1913.
* George H. W. Bush and Jimmy Carter were both born in 1924.
* George W. Bush and Bill Clinton were both born in 1946.
With the exception of George H. W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, the men were successive in terms.

Zachary Taylor is the only president that died in office who was not elected in a “0″ year. He did die in a year that ended in “0″, 1850.

John Tyler died on January 18, 1862 in Richmond, Virginia. Since Virginia had seceded from the United States it could be said that he is the only president to have died in a “foreign” country. Tyler supported state rights and had sided with the Confederacy and had been elected to the House of Representatives of the Confederate Congress, although he died before he could serve. A Confederate flag draped his coffin.

John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson and Gerald Ford are the only Presidents who replaced a President, all but Gerald Ford upon their predecessor’s death, and not be be elected President in their own right. John Tyler’s party (Whig) expelled him from their party. Although he tried to create another party and run as their candidate, he decided before the election of 1844 to drop out. Millard Fillmore failed to be nominated by his party (Whig) in 1852. Andrew Johnson, a Democrat who had been elected Vice President along with Abraham Lincoln on the short lived National Union Party (1864-1868), also failed to be nominated by his party (Democrat). Gerald Ford lost his bid for election to Jimmy Carter in 1976.

John F. Kennedy is the only president to predeceased both parents. He also predeceased a grandparent. His grandmother, Mary Josephine Hannon Fitzgerald, died in 1964. Only James Polk, his mother, James Garfield, his mother and Warren G. Harding , his father, had a parent survive them.

The balls didn’t actually go for miles. Shepard later gave his estimate to be about 200 to 400 yards. Considering that he swung with one hand in a suit that restricted movement, with a rigged six iron, it wasn’t a bad shot. The golf shot was unplanned and unauthorized. Shepard smuggled the golf club head inside his uniform.

The Apollo 14 mission was the first mission after the failed Apollo 13 mission. Alan Shepard along with Edgar Mitchell became the 5th and 6th man to walk on the moon. Stuart Roosa orbited the moon in the Command Module.

The mission lasted from January 31 to February 9, 1971. Shepard and Mitchell spent 33 1/2 hours on the moon. Nine hours and 23 minutes was spent outside of the Lunar Capsule.

This was Shepard’s second and final time in space. Ten years earlier on May 5, 1961, he became the first American to travel into space when he piloted Freedom 7. That flight was a sub-orbital flight which carried him to an altitude of 116 statute miles. With the Apollo 14 mission he became the only astronaut from Project Mercury to reach the moon. At 47, he also was the oldest to walk on the moon.

For Shepard the mission was a personal triumph. He had been grounded from 1964 to 1968 from Ménière’s disease, a condition in which fluid pressure builds up in the inner ear. An operation performed in 1968 was able to remedy the problem and he was allowed to fly again. Even though Alan B. Shepard never intended to be a hero, he was one.