15 FEBRUARY

1872 - The "GOMBURZA" Filipino priest-martyrs are tried by the colonial Spanish military tribunal at the Fort Santiago on trumped-up charges of instigating the Cavite Mutiny during the Spanish colonial period; Fathers Mariano G. Gomez, Jose Apolonio G. Burgos, and Jacinto R. Zamora, who have advocated the secularization of the clergy in the Philippines, will be found guilty practically without defense and  and sentenced to die by garrote; Future first Philippine Prime Minister Apolinario M. Mabini would describe the impact of the Gomburza execution on the development of the revolutionary spirit as being responsible for making Filipinos "realize their condition for the first time. Conscious of pain, and thus conscious of life, they asked themselves what kind of a life they lived."

1904 - Miguel  Logarta y Ceniza, first Filipino lawyer and judge in Cebu province, suddenly dies at the young age of 41 during the colonial American period, five years into the protracted and bloody Philippine-American War (1899-1914); Logarta became  a member of a committee created by Governor-General Diego de los Rios designed to form a government of an organized Visayas and Mindanao islands to disengage from Luzon and resist the imperialist Americans even after the departure of the Spaniards following the Mock Battle of Manila in accordance with the Peace Protocol  forged between the colonial powers;  Logarta also became Justice Secretary of the fledgling Philippine Republic before collaborating with the enemy United States invaders in the supposed aim to restore "peace" [translation: subjugation before the Bald Eagle invaders]; a law graduate from the University of Santo Tomas, Logarta had gained a number of positions during the Spanish colonial period, becoming a fiscal of Tarlac and then of Samar and later founded the Colegio Logarta that counted as students future Philippine President Sergio Osmena; during the early years of the imperialist rule at the height of the Fil-Am War, Logarta served the American colonial civil government and became Cebu's Provincial Fiscal and Court of First Instance of Cebu judge in which capacity he was said to have exhibited moral stature as pillar of both justice and order in the province.


Photo credit:  http://shambolicamalgam.wordpress.com/2010/02/