Recycling February 1st events

I hope you all won’t think I’m cheating to post an earlier entry, but I’ve lost so much time fighting off my computer demons and dealing with chronic back pain that I am willing to cut a few corners. Besides, this particular entry is over three years old, so I assume no one will remember it; I certainly didn’t! Some things never change, for I was moaning back then, too, about deadlines. So here it is.
A quick escape from Deadline Doomland to report that on February 1st, 1327, Edward III was crowned King of England; he was only 14 and the government remained in the hands of his mother, Queen Isabella, and her lover, Roger Mortimer. Jumping forward a few centuries, on February 1st, 1587, a conflicted Elizabeth I finally signed the death warrant for her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots. And on a much happier, albeit non-medieval, occasion, Abraham Lincoln signed the Thirteenth Amendment on February 1st, 1865 after it had been approved by the House and the Senate, and then sent it to the states for ratification. It would eventually be ratified by the requisite number of states in December of 1865. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in the United States, completing what had begun with Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. This is covered in Steven Spielberg’s powerful film, Lincoln.