Artist's conception

Epsilon Eridani is a star in the constellation of Eridanus. Viewable from most of Earth's surface along a declination 9.46° south of the celestial equator, it is 10.5 light-years away and has an apparent magnitude of 3.73. It is the third-closest individual star or star system visible to the unaided eye. Estimated at less than a billion years old, the young star has a higher level of magnetic activity than the present-day Sun, with a stellar wind 30 times as strong. Epsilon Eridani is smaller and less massive than the Sun, with a greater proportion of hydrogen and helium. It is a main-sequence star of spectral class K2, which means that energy generated at the core through nuclear fusion of hydrogen is emitted from the surface at a temperature of about 5,000  K, giving it an orange hue. Observations for more than twenty years have yielded evidence of a giant planet orbiting the star, making it one of the nearest systems with a candidate exoplanet. The detection of this planet, Epsilon Eridani b, was announced by Bruce Campbell, Gordon Walker and Stephenson Yang in 1987. ( Full article...)

An OFB MPV

• ... that an Indian Police official called the Ordnance Factory Board Mine Protected Vehicles (example pictured) "coffins on wheels"?
• ... that August Buchner, a professor of poetry and rhetoric at the University of Wittenberg, wrote the libretto for a lost ballet-opera by Heinrich Schütz?
• ... that the 1994 New Jersey Rockin' Rollers, led by Manon Rhéaume, defeated Erin Whitten and the Pittsburgh Phantoms, in the first professional roller hockey game with two women as goaltenders?
• ... that the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine suggested that the depopulated Palestinian village of Dayr Muhaysin was a Crusader village, held as a fief of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre?
• ... that the Gobi big brown bat is thought to include butterflies in its diet?
• ... that the British art historian Humphrey Brooke grew more than 500 varieties of rose?
• ... that Saturday Night! – The Album was described as "artless" in The Washington Post?

Frank-Walter Steinmeier

• A suicide bombing at a protest rally in Lahore, Pakistan, kills at least 18 people and injures more than 90 others.
• La La Land wins in five categories, including Best Film, at the British Academy Film Awards.
• Frank-Walter Steinmeier (pictured) is elected President of Germany.
• Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed is elected President of Somalia.
• In association football, the Africa Cup of Nations concludes with Cameroon defeating Egypt in the final.

February 14: Valentine's Day

Salman Rushdie

• 1779 – English explorer James Cook was killed near Kealakekua when he tried to kidnap Kalaniʻōpuʻu, the ruling chief of the Island of Hawaii.
• 1943 – World War II: General Hans-Jürgen von Arnim's 5th Panzer Army launched a concerted attack against Allied positions in Tunisia.
• 1961 – Lawrencium, the metallic radioactive synthetic element with atomic number 103, was first made at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley.
• 1979 – Adolph Dubs, United States Ambassador to Afghanistan, was kidnapped by unknown agents and killed during a gun battle between Afghan police and the perpetrators.
• 1989 – A fatwa was issued for the execution of Salman Rushdie (pictured) for authoring The Satanic Verses, a novel Islamic fundamentalists considered blasphemous.