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Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a 2011 role-playing video game developed and published by Square Enix. XIII-2 is a direct sequel to the 2009 role-playing game Final Fantasy XIII and part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis subseries. Development of the game began in early 2010 and involved many of the key designers from the previous game. It includes modified features from the previous game, including fast-paced combat and a customizable "Paradigm" system. The development team wanted to improve on the gameplay of Final Fantasy XIII, while making the story's tone more mysterious and darker than the previous game. The new game's plot features heavy use of time travel, allowing players to jump between different time periods in the same location. The game was first released on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and later ported to Microsoft Windows, iOS, and Android. Final Fantasy XIII-2 received generally positive reviews from critics. The game was the fifth-best selling game of 2011 in Japan, and was followed by a sequel, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII. (Full article...)

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Lowe Kong Meng

... that Lowe Kong Meng (pictured) imported goods for Chinese miners during the Victorian gold rush and became one of the wealthiest men in Victoria?
... that Progressive Corporation, an insurer, published 5,000 copies of a book credited to Dr. Rick, its fictional advertising campaign character?
... that the flag of the French Army's 92nd Infantry Regiment was lost when the destroyer Siroco sank off Dunkirk in 1940?
... that at age 12, Shaylee Mansfield became the first deaf actor to be credited alongside the voice actors for a signed performance in an animated production?
... that 250 Jews were imprisoned in a castle in Mladá Boleslav during the Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia?
... that Guy Thwaites and his colleagues hypothesized that the 1993 US hantavirus outbreak was similar to the mysterious medieval sweating sickness?
... that Pitcairn was named after the midshipman on HMS Swallow who first spotted the island?
... that the Hoosier Slide was a popular tourist attraction until it was turned into glass?

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Cyclone Batsirai

Cyclone Batsirai (satellite image shown) makes landfall in Madagascar, displacing more than 112,000 people and leaving at least 92 others dead.
Indian playback singer and composer Lata Mangeshkar dies at the age of 92.
The Winter Olympics open in Beijing, China.

On this day

February 10: Saint Scholastica's Day; National Memorial Day of the Exiles and Foibe in Italy (1947)

Roy Lichtenstein

1712 – Huilliches in Chile's Chiloé Archipelago rose up against Spanish encomenderos as vengeance for perceived injustices.
1763 – Britain, France, and Spain signed the Treaty of Paris to end the Seven Years' War, significantly reducing the size of the French colonial empire while at the same time marking the beginning of an extensive period of British dominance outside of Europe.
1906 – The Royal Navy battleship HMS Dreadnought was launched, representing such a marked advance in naval technology that her name came to be associated with an entire generation of battleships.
1962 – The first solo exhibition by Roy Lichtenstein (pictured) opened, and it included Look Mickey, which featured his first employment of Ben Day dots, speech balloons, and comic imagery sourcing.

Robert Garran (b. 1867)
Árpád Göncz (b. 1922)
Lilly King (b. 1997)

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The Tales of Hoffmann is an opéra fantastique by the French composer Jacques Offenbach. The French libretto was written by Jules Barbier, based on three short stories by E. T. A. Hoffmann, the opera's protagonist. It was Offenbach's final work; he died in October 1880, four months before it premiered on 10 February 1881 at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. This illustration of the premiere, attributed to Pierre-Auguste Lamy, depicts the opera's prologue (or possibly epilogue).

Illustration credit: Pierre-Auguste Lamy (attributed); restored by Adam Cuerden

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