Key events in Russkiy Mir for February 7

• Safer Internet Day
• St. Gregory the Theologian Day
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Chief of the Foreign Intelligence Service Mikhail Fradkov will visit Damascus for talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
• The awards ceremony for the Silver Camera 2011 Prize for the best photographic journalism will be held in Moscow
• 1238 — Batu Khan storms the city of Vladimir as Prince Vsevolod and Prince Mstislav are killed in battle
• 1693 — Empress Anna (Duchess of Courland from 1711 to 1730 and as Empress of Russia from 1730 to 1740) was born
• 1710 — Peter I order the first audit of state income and expednitures
• 1762 — Peter III liquidated the Secret Chancellery and forbade torture during interrogation
• 1780 — The city of Syktyvar was founded, present-day capital of the Komi Republic
• 1795 — The Black Sea port of Hacibey was renamed Odessa
• 1832 — Nikolai Lobachevsky presented to the Academy of Sciences the first work on non-Euclidian geometry
• 1846 — Painter Vladimir Makovsky was born
• 1847 — Doctor Nikolai Inozemtsev carried out the first surgical operation on a patient under general anesthesia via inhalation
• 1855 — The Treaty of Shimoda of 1855, formally Treaty of Commerce and Navigation between Japan and Russia was signed between the Russian Vice-Admiral Euphimy Putiatin and Toshiakira Kawaji of Japan in the city of Shimoda, Izu Province, Japan, marking the start of official relations between Russia and Japan
• 1870 — Russian political economist, philosopher and editor Peter Struve was born
• 1885 — The first Russian aviation corpus is formed
• 1885 — Nikolai Severtzov, Russian explorer, naturalist, ecologist and early proponent of evolution, died after falling into the water of the half-frozen Don
• 1892 — Football player Vasily Butusov was born
• 1906 — Airplane designer Oleg Antonov was born
• 1920 — Polar explorer and White Army leader Admiral Alexander Kolchak was executed on the bank of the Angara river in Siberia
• 1926 — Cosmonaut Konstantin Feoktistiv was born
• 1939 — Russian painter and graphic artist Boris Grigoriev in died southeastern France
• 1942 — Ivan Bilibin, the 20th-century illustrator and stage designer who took part in the Mir iskusstva and contributed to the Ballets Russes, died during the siege of Leningrad
• 1960 — Soviet Physicist Igor Kurchatov died in Moscow
• 1971 — Soviet-era stage actor and People’s Artist of the Soviet Union Nikolai Yakushenko died in Kazan
• 1977 — The Soyuz-24 successfully launched from Baikonur
• 1991 — A crucession delivered the relics of St. Seraphim of Sarov, on foot, from St. Petersburg to the Diveyevo Convent in Moscow, where they remain to this day
• 1996 — Lydia Chukovskaya, the Soviet writer and poet and daughter of celebrated children's writer Korney Chukovsky, died in Peredelkino