Happy Groundhog Day.

February 2.

Unless it's your birthday or wedding anniversary or maybe the day back in '97 that you coughed up something with a crew cut and its own spleen and decided it was time to stop sucking down Lucky Strikes, it's really a fairly inconsequential date in a fairly inconsequential month.

Oh, yeah, and no disrespect to all those of African descent who've been bestowed the year's shortest month to celebrate their history. From what I understand, during negotiations with the Republican party, the GOP agreed to give the black people February, but continue to hold out for a thirty-two day White History Month.

I think it was John Boehner who tearfully whimpered on the House floor, "Goddammit, we earned it!"

Anyway, a lot of other really amazing stuff has happened on this day in history, or as my twelve-year-old daughter would say, "February second has had some flossy sessions, Pops."

In 1847, the first woman of a group of pioneers commonly known as the Donner Party died during the group's journey through a Sierra Nevada mountain pass. The disastrous trip west ended up killing forty-two people and turned many of the survivors into cannibals.

I always wondered if Dr. Atkins included the Donner Party in the acknowledgments section.

John Simon Ritchie, better known as Sid Vicious, succumbed to a heroin overdose on February 2, 1979. According to the coroner's report, the drug concentration in the Sex Pistols bassist's bloodstream was eighty percent pure.

Holy shit. My flora and fauna reach terminal toxicity after a second double stuff Oreo.

February 2, 1971 was the infamous day when Idi Amin seized power in Uganda. For a more in depth examination of his culinary preferences, please see Donner Party above.

The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, later known simply as the National League, was founded on this date in 1876. Teams took the field under monikers such as Cincinnati Redlegs, Hartford Dark Blues and St. Louis Brown Stockings.

Obviously, baseball has always been a thinking man's game.

February 2, 1946 marks the day when President Harry Truman rejected Josef Stalin's proposal for a get-together in the Soviet Union.

I can't verify this, but I've heard the deal breaker was Stalin's refusal to accommodate Truman's backstage requests of various fine cheeses, high quality chocolate, top of the line champagne (Cristal, Moet) and two bottles of Absinthe along with Haribo gummi bears, Doritos and cereal with two percent milk.

Harry T. also requested a bald-headed, toothless hooker, with no mention of a preferred gender, and that's where Joe drew the line.

Talk about an inflexible, mustachioed mass murdering diva.

Happy Groundhog Day.