Here are the suggestions for January. We are trying to avoid birthdays and focus an important event.
February 2015 – BAH Suggestions
Publication of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
“Just because you’re taught that something’s right and everyone believes it’s right, it don’t make it right.” ― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn “The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it” ― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony completed in February 1824.
The Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 (sometimes known simply as “the Choral”), is the final complete symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827). Completed in 1824, the symphony is one of the best-known works of the repertoire of classical music.[1] Among critics, it is almost universally considered to be among Beethoven’s greatest works, and is considered by some to be the greatest piece of music ever written.
- Publication of article identifying DNA as the hereditary material of biology. Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod, and Maclyn McCarty
In their paper “Studies on the Chemical Nature of the Substance Inducing Transformation of Pneumococcal Types: Induction of Transformation by a Deoxyribonucleic Acid Fraction Isolated from Pneumococcus Type III”, published in the February 1944 issue of the Journal of Experimental Medicine, Avery and his colleagues suggest that DNA, rather than protein as widely believed at the time, may be the hereditary material of bacteria, and could be analogous to genes and/or viruses in higher organisms.[1][2] Please comment below if you prefer one of these or suggest someone or an event for January. Below are some places to look. Anti-Defamation League ADL 2015 02 February Freedom from Religion Foundation FFRF Calendar 02 United Nations Observations UN Proclomations & Observances 2015 02 February3
February Full BAH Research Listing
| Name & Event | Reason important to Secular Humanism | Calendar Month |
| Samuel Clements | “Just because you’re taught that something’s right and everyone believes it’s right, it don’t make it right.” ― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn “The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it” ― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer The main premise behind Huckleberry Finn is the young boy’s belief in the right thing to do though most believed that it was wrong. Hemingway also wrote in the same essay: “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.”[64] | February Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (or, in more recent editions, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885 |
| Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod, and Maclyn McCarty | The Avery–MacLeod–McCarty experiment was an experimental demonstration, reported in 1944 by Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod, and Maclyn McCarty, that DNA is the substance that causes bacterial transformation, in an era when it had been widely believed that it was proteins that served the function of carrying genetic information (with the very word protein itself coined to indicate a belief that its function was primary). It was the culmination of research in the 1930s and early 1940s at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research to purify and characterize the “transforming principle” responsible for the transformation phenomenon first described in Griffith’s experiment of 1928: killed Streptococcus pneumoniae of the virulent strain type III-S, when injected along with living but non-virulent type II-R pneumococci, resulted in a deadly infection of type III-S pneumococci. In their paper “Studies on the Chemical Nature of the Substance Inducing Transformation of Pneumococcal Types: Induction of Transformation by a Deoxyribonucleic Acid Fraction Isolated from Pneumococcus Type III“, published in the February 1944 issue of the Journal of Experimental Medicine, Avery and his colleagues suggest that DNA, rather than protein as widely believed at the time, may be the hereditary material of bacteria, and could be analogous to genes and/or viruses in higher organisms.[1][2] | February 1944 Publication date |
| Beethoven | Composition of Ninth Symphony completed [edit] The Philharmonic Society of London originally commissioned the symphony in 1817.[5] The main composition work was done between autumn 1822 and the completion of the autograph in February 1824.[6] The symphony emerged from other pieces by Beethoven that, while completed works in their own right, are also in some sense sketches for the future symphony. The Choral Fantasy Opus. 80 (1808), basically a piano concerto movement, brings in a chorus and vocal soloists near the end to form the climax. As in the Ninth Symphony, the vocal forces sing a theme first played instrumentally, and this theme is highly reminiscent of the corresponding theme in the Ninth Symphony (for a detailed comparison, see Choral Fantasy). Going further back, an earlier version of the Choral Fantasy theme is found in the song “Gegenliebe” (“Returned Love”), for piano and high voice, which dates from before 1795.[7] According to Robert W. Gutman, Mozart’s K. 222 Offertory in D minor, “Misericordias Domini”, written in 1775, contains a melody that foreshadows “Ode to Joy”.[8] Premiere[edit] Although his major works had primarily been premiered in Vienna, Beethoven was eager to have his latest composition performed in Berlin as soon as possible after finishing it, since he thought that musical taste in Vienna had become dominated by Italian composers such as Rossini.[9] When his friends and financiers heard this, they urged him to premiere the symphony in Vienna in the form of a petition signed by a number of prominent Viennese music patrons and performers.[9] Beethoven was flattered by the adoration of Vienna, so the Ninth Symphony was premiered on 7 May 1824 in the Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna, along with the overture The Consecration of the House (Die Weihe des Hauses) and three parts of the Missa solemnis (the Kyrie, Credo, and the Agnus Dei). | February 1824 finished Premiered in May |
| Upton Sinclair | The Jungle is a 1906 novel written by the American journalist and novelistUpton Sinclair (1878–1968).[1] Sinclair wrote the novel to portray the lives ofimmigrants in the United States in Chicago and similar industrialized cities. Many readers were most concerned with his exposure of health violations and unsanitary practices in the American meatpacking industry during the early 20th century, based on an investigation he did for a socialist newspaper. The book depicts working class poverty, the absence of social programs, harsh and unpleasant living and working conditions, and a hopelessness among many workers. These elements are contrasted with the deeply rooted corruption of people in power. A review by the writer Jack London called it, “the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of wage slavery.”[2] Sinclair was considered a muckraker, or journalist who exposed corruption in government and business.[3] He first published the novel in serial form in 1905 in the socialist newspaper, Appeal to Reason, between February 25, 1905, and November 4, 1905. In 1904, Sinclair had spent seven weeks gathering information while working incognito in the meatpacking plants of the Chicago stockyards for the newspaper. It was published as a book on 26 February 1906 by Doubleday and in a subscribers’ edition.[4] A film version of the novel was made in 1914, but it has since become lost. | February Publication of the Jungle was in the socialist newspaper, Appeal to Reason, between February 25, 1905, and November 4, 1905. |