Will You Be My...Valentinus?

Hey Gang,

I’m a couple weeks into school now, and none of my classes have killed me yet (hooray!). So, I thought it time for another update. And since Valentine’s Day is on Wednesday, I thought we could chat about that.

Have you ever stopped to think about Valentine’s Day? To begin with, let’s start with the name. Just who was Saint Valentine (he’s the one with the circle around his head in the pic). Well, we don’t really know. There are three different saints who were purportedly martyred on February 14^th and were named either Valentine or Valentinus…and oddly enough, they all died around the year 270. All this stuff about romantic love did not get associated with the day until about 1000 years later.

The pope declared St. Valentine’s Day to be a feast day around the year 500. This day was then dropped in 1969. So, Valentine’s Day as we know it today does not have any official religious ties.

In 1929 there was the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Five members of Al Capone’s mafia family gunned down 7 members of a rival family on the North Side of Chicago. One of the guys who got shot was known as “Tight Lips.” Before he died he was asked who shot him and he replied “nobody shot me”…at least he lived up to his name.

There’s more info to be had at HowStuffWorks and Wikipedia on this stuff. Beware, though – they contradict each other on some points. There’s a good lesson on quality of sources and authorship there (meaning don’t cite either one in your papers!).

Have a good one,

Kevin