February 1

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  1462: Polymath Johannes Trithemius born. He will be remembered as a lexicographer, chronicler, cryptographer, and occultist.

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  1893: Thomas A. Edison finishes construction of the first motion picture studio, the Black Maria in West Orange, New Jersey.

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  1903: Physicist and mathematician Sir George Stokes, 1st Baronet dies. He made pioneering contributions to fluid dynamics (including the Navier–Stokes equations) and to physical optics.

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  1976: Physicist and academic Werner Heisenberg dies. He introduced the uncertainty principle -- in quantum mechanics, any of a variety of mathematical inequalities asserting a fundamental limit to the precision with which certain pairs of physical properties of a particle can be known.

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  1988: Premiere of Small, a 1988 American fantasy comedy film about Josh Baskin (Tom Hanks), an film star who makes a wish to be "a kid again" and is then reverted to childhood overnight.