February 8
1587:
Mary, Queen of Scots, beheaded.
Mary, Queen of Scots, rival of Queen Elizabeth I of England, was beheaded this day in 1587 at Fotheringhay Castle, her execution a chilling scene redeemed by the great personal dignity with which she met her fate.
2002:
The XIX Winter Olympic Games opened in Salt Lake City, Utah.
1974:
The use of Skylab, a U.S. space station, came to an end after 171 days.
1920/21:
American actress Lana Turner, a sultry Hollywood glamour queen with a tumultuous private life, was born.
1915:
The landmark film The Birth of a Nation, by D.W. Griffith, made its premiere at Clune's Auditorium in Los Angeles.
1887:
The United States passed the Dawes General Allotment Act, providing for the distribution of American Indian reservation land among individual tribesmen.
1867:
The Ausgleich (“Compromise”) established the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary.
February 9
1757:
Calcutta restored to British rule.
Concluded this day in 1757 by Robert Clive, the Treaty of Alinagar restored Calcutta (Kolkata)—which Clive had recovered in January from Siraj-ud-Dawlah—to British rule and served as a prelude to the seizure of Bengal.
1996:
German physicist Peter Armbruster synthesized the chemical element 112, a heavy, transuranium element.
1984:
Soviet Premier Yury Andropov died 15 months after succeeding Leonid Brezhnev and was replaced by Konstantin Chernenko.
1796:
The Qianlong emperor of China abdicated and was succeeded by the Jiaqing emperor.
February 10
1996:
Kasparov-versus-computer chess match.
On this day in 1996, world chess champion Garry Kasparov began a six-round match against Deep Blue, a chess-playing computer built by IBM, in which Kasparov claimed a 4–2 victory (though Deep Blue won a rematch the following year).
1990:
The spacecraft Galileo flew past Venus on its way to Jupiter.
1962:
U.S. airman Francis Gary Powers, captured pilot of the U-2 plane downed by the Soviet Union in 1960, was exchanged for jailed Soviet informant Rudolf Abel.
1898:
German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht was born in Augsburg.
1846:
The British conquered the Sikhs in northwestern India in the Battle of Sobraon, the most decisive engagement of the First Sikh War.
1837:
Russian author Aleksandr Pushkin was killed in a duel defending his wife's honour.
1763:
The Treaty of Paris was signed, ending territorial conflicts between France and Britain in the Seven Years' War, the North American phase of which was called the French and Indian War.
February 11
1858:
St. Bernadette's first visions of Mary at Lourdes.
On this day in 1858 in Lourdes, France, 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous, a miller's daughter, first had visions of the Virgin Mary that were authenticated by Pope Pius IX in 1862, initiating the cult of Our Lady of Lourdes.
1989:
Reverend Barbara Harris of the Protestant Episcopal Church became the first female bishop of an apostolic succession church.
1945:
The Yalta Conference between the Allied leaders of World War II came to a close.
1929:
A committee met in Paris to devise the Young Plan, a revision of the Dawes Plan of 1924, that renegotiated Germany's reparations for World War I.
1929:
Benito Mussolini of Italy and Pietro Gasparri of the Vatican signed the Lateran Treaty, recognizing papal sovereignty over Vatican City, an enclave in Rome.
1847:
American inventor Thomas Edison, who, singly or jointly, held a world record of 1,093 patents and who played a critical role in introducing the modern age of electricity, was born.
February 12
1818:
Chile's independence from Spain declared.
Although the decisive victory over the Spanish did not come until April at the Battle of Maipú, Chile formally declared independence from Spain on this day in 1818, the first anniversary of Chile's victory at Chacabuco.
2002:
Slobodan Milošević, president of Yugoslavia in 1997–2000, went on trial for war crimes in The Hague, at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
1994:
Thieves broke into the National Gallery in Oslo and stole The Scream (later recovered), one of several versions Norwegian artist Edvard Munch made of his most famous painting.
1953:
The Egyptian government signed an agreement with Britain granting self-government for the Sudan and self-determination within three years for the Sudanese.
1912:
Puyi, the last emperor of China, abdicated at the end of the Chinese Revolution.
1804:
German philosopher Immanuel Kant died in K鰊igsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia).
1554:
At age 16, Lady Jane Grey, titular queen of England, was executed in London by order of Mary I.
February 13
1689:
William and Mary crowned.
Following the Glorious Revolution, William and Mary were proclaimed king and queen of England this day in 1689, after which they ruled jointly as King William III and Queen Mary II until her death in 1694.
2002:
The Scottish Parliament passed the Protection of Wild Mammals Bill, which made it illegal to hunt wild mammals with dogs, effectively outlawing foxhunting in Scotland.
1997: The Dow Jones Industrial Average first eclipsed the 7,000 mark, then closed at 7,022.44.
1960:
France detonated its first atomic bomb in the Sahara desert.
1883:
German composer Richard Wagner died in Venice at age 69.
1692:
Scottish soldiers under Archibald Campbell, 10th earl of Argyll, slaughtered the MacDonalds of Glencoe for their refusal to submit to King William III.
1649:
English author John Milton published his first political tract, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, in response to the execution of King Charles I.
1542:
King Henry VIII of England had Catherine Howard, his fifth wife, beheaded on charges of adultery.
February 14
1989:
Fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie.
On this day in 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa and offered a bounty for the assassination of author Salman Rushdie, whose novel The Satanic Verses (1988) Khomeini denounced as blasphemous.
Today:
Today is Valentine's Day, the feast day of St. Valentine, a priest and physician who was martyred about AD 270 in Rome, and the tradition of exchanging greetings of love on Valentine's Day is based on the legend that Valentine had signed a letter to his jailer's daughter, with whom he had fallen in love, “from your Valentine.”
1946:
The first general-purpose high-speed electronic digital computer, the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), was demonstrated to the public by its creators, J. Presper Eckert, Jr., and John W. Mauchly.
1929:
Members of Al Capone's gang of bootleggers massacred a rival gang run by George Moran in Chicago during the Prohibition era.
1920:
With the establishment of woman suffrage in the United States, Carrie Chapman Catt formed the League of Women Voters in Chicago.
1876:
Alexander Graham Bell applied for a patent for the telephone.
1779:
Captain James Cook was killed by Hawaiians in a dispute over the theft of a cutter.
1766:
Thomas Malthus, the English economist and demographer best known for his theory that population growth will always tend to outrun the food supply and should be checked by stern limits on reproduction, is believed to have been born this day.
1760:
Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, was born in Philadelphia.
February 15
898:
USS Maine destroyed, leading to Spanish-American War.
On this day in 1898, an explosion in Havana harbour sank the battleship USS Maine, killing 260 American seamen and precipitating the Spanish-American War, which originated in the Cuban struggle for independence from Spain.
1989:
Under President Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union withdrew its last troops from Afghanistan after occupying the country since 1979.
1978:
Leon Spinks defeated Muhammad Ali to become the heavyweight boxing champion of the world.
1933:
An assassin's bullet meant for the U.S. president-elect, Franklin D. Roosevelt, wounded Mayor Anton J. Cermak of Chicago, who died three weeks later.
1764:
Auguste Chouteau settled St. Louis at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.
February 16
1959:
Power in Cuba seized by Fidel Castro.
After defeating the forces of dictator General Fulgencio Batista, Fidel Castro became premier of Cuba this day in 1959 and transformed the island country into the Western Hemisphere's first communist state.
1959:
American tennis player John McEnroe was born in West Germany.
1949:
The first Knesset (Hebrew: “Assembly”), the unicameral parliament of Israel and supreme authority of that state, opened in Jerusalem.
1945:
American paratroopers landed on Corregidor Island in the Philippines during World War II, and within two weeks they recaptured it from the Japanese.
1938:
Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg admitted an Austrian Nazi to his cabinet, believed to be the first step in the German overthrow of his government.
1937:
DuPont chemist Wallace Hume Carothers patented nylon.
1918:
The 20-member Taryba (council) of Lithuanian delegates proclaimed their country an independent state.
1903:
American ventriloquist and radio comedian Edgar Bergen was born in Chicago.
1620:
Frederick William, the Great Elector of Brandenburg in 1640–88, who restored the Hohenzollern dominions after the devastations of the Thirty Years' War, was born.
February 17
1996:
An earthquake and an accompanying tsunami in Indonesia left 108 people dead, 423 injured, and 58 missing.
1955:
British Minister of Defense Harold Macmillan announced plans to develop and produce hydrogen bombs.
1897:
The National Congress of Parents and Teachers, better known as the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA), was founded in Washington, D.C., as the National Congress of Mothers.
1843:
The British annexed most of what is now Sindh province in Pakistan after winning the Battle of Miani.
February 18
1930:
Pluto discovered by Clyde Tombaugh.
Using a 13-inch (33-cm) telescope at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, Clyde W. Tombaugh, a 24-year-old American with no formal training in astronomy, discovered the planet Pluto this day in 1930.
2001:
American stock-car racer Dale Earnhardt, Sr., died from injuries suffered during a crash in the final lap of the Daytona 500.
1975:
REA Express, Inc., at one time the largest delivery service in the United States, filed for bankruptcy.
1960:
Seven nations established the Latin American Free Trade Association (LAFTA), predecessor to the Latin American Integration Association.
1861:
Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as provisional president of the Confederate States of America.
1848:
Louis Comfort Tiffany—an American designer internationally recognized as one of the greatest proponents of Art Nouveau, particularly in the art of glassmaking—was born.
1546:
Martin Luther, leader of the Protestant Reformation, died at age 62 in Eisleben, Saxony.
February 19
1945:
Iwo Jima invaded by U.S. Marines.
On this day in 1945, during the final phases of World War II, U.S. Marines invaded Iwo Jima so as to wrest control of the strategically important island from the Japanese, who put up fierce resistance in the ensuing battle.
1997:
Deng Xiaoping, who introduced economic reforms to China in 1978, died in Beijing.
1942:
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the executive order allowing the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
1881:
Kansas became the first U.S. state to include the prohibition of alcoholic beverages in its state constitution.
1878:
American inventor Thomas Edison patented the phonograph.
February 20
1962:
John Glenn's orbit of Earth.
John H. Glenn, Jr., the oldest of seven astronauts selected by NASA for Project Mercury spaceflight training (and later a U.S. senator), became on this day in 1962 the first American to orbit Earth, doing so three times.
1986:
The Soviet Union launched the core module of the space station Mir.
1976:
The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization held its final exercise in Manila (and formally ended on June 30, 1977).
1943:
The volcano Parícutin in Michoacán, Mexico, erupted, eventually burying two villages.
1929:
The U.S. Congress formally accepted the deeds of cession of eastern Samoa, forming American Samoa.
1909:
Italian author Filippo Tommaso Marinetti coined the term Futurism in the Parisian newspaper Le Figaro.
February 21
1965:
Malcolm X assassinated.
Malcolm X, who articulated concepts of racial pride and black nationalism in the United States, was assassinated this day in 1965 and became an ideological hero after the posthumous release of The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
1972:
U.S. President Richard M. Nixon paid a state visit to the People's Republic of China, ending a 21-year estrangement between the communist country and the United States.
1925:
The American weekly magazine The New Yorker began publication under Harold W. Ross.
1921:
Reza Khan (later Reza Shah Pahlavi) overthrew the Qājār dynasty in Iran.
1916:
The Battle of Verdun, one of the most devastating engagements of World War I, began.
1907:
W.H. Auden, one of the foremost English-language poets of his era, was born.
1885:
The Washington Monument was dedicated on the grounds of the Mall in Washington, D.C.
1876:
Abstract sculptor Constantin Brancusi was born in Romania.
February 22
1997:
Cloning of Dolly.
On this day in 1997, a team of British scientists working under the direction of Ian Wilmut at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh announced the birth of Dolly the sheep, the first clone of an adult mammal.
1980:
During the 1980 Winter Olympics, against the backdrop of the Cold War, the U.S. ice hockey team defeated the favoured Soviet team in one of the greatest upsets in the history of the Olympic Games.
1932:
The Purple Heart, a U.S. military decoration originally instituted by George Washington in 1782 to honour bravery in battle, was revived as an award for those wounded or killed in action against an enemy.
1847:
U.S. General Zachary Taylor led troops against a Mexican force commanded by General Antonio López de Santa Anna at the Battle of Buena Vista.
1680:
Catherine Deshayes, Madame Monvoisin—known as “La Voisin”—was executed in Paris for her involvement in the Affair of the Poisons.
896:
Arnulf was crowned Holy Roman emperor by Pope Formosus, who declared the previous emperor, Lambert, deposed.
February 23
1836:
Alamo besieged by Santa Anna's Mexican army.
This day in 1836, during the Texas war for independence, Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna began a siege of the Alamo, which was captured after 13 days and which became for Texans a symbol of heroic resistance.
1945:
Six U.S. servicemen raised the American flag over Mount Suribachi on the island of Iwo Jima during World War II.
1905:
The first Rotary Club was founded by Chicago attorney Paul P. Harris.
1870:
Mississippi was readmitted to the United States following the American Civil War.
1822:
Boston was granted a charter to become a city.
1685:
Composer George Frideric Handel, a leading figure of late Baroque music, was born in Germany.
February 24
1868:
U.S. President Andrew Johnson impeached.
On this day in 1868, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 126–47 to impeach President Andrew Johnson, whose lenient Reconstruction policies regarding the South after the Civil War angered Radical Republicans in Congress.
1991:
U.S. ground operations began in the Persian Gulf War, more than a month after an air war was launched against Iraq to free Iraqi-occupied Kuwait.
1976:
The regime of Fidel Castro adopted the constitution of Cuba, which mandated the operation of only one political party—the Communist Party of Cuba.
1942:
The Voice of America made its first broadcast, in German, to counter the propaganda of Nazi leaders.
1848:
The antimonarchal Revolutions of 1848 reached France, the one nation where the insurgency was successful.
1821:
Agustín de Iturbide made an appeal for an independent Mexico in the Iguala Plan.
1803:
In Marbury v. Madison, the U.S. Supreme Court declared an act of Congress unconstitutional, thus establishing the doctrine of judicial review.
1739:
The Battle of Karnal pitted the invading forces of Nādir Shah of Iran against Muḥammad Shah, Mughal emperor of India.
February 25
1986:
Ousting of Marcos in Philippines.
On this day in 1986, Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos, under pressure from the United States, fled his country for Hawaii after a fraudulent electoral victory over Corazon Aquino, who replaced him as president.
1990:
In Nicaragua, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro of the U.S.-financed National Opposition Union achieved an upset victory over the incumbent president, Daniel Ortega of the Sandinista National Liberation Front.
1964:
American boxer Muhammad Ali, known at the time as Cassius Clay, became the world heavyweight champion by knocking out Sonny Liston in seven rounds.
1956:
The Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union came to a close after First Secretary Nikita S. Khrushchev delivered a secret speech denouncing the late Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
1948:
The communists seized control of the government of Czechoslovakia.
1570:
As pope, Pius V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I of England from the Roman Catholic Church.
February 26
1815:
Napoleon's escape from Elba.
Forced to abdicate as French emperor in 1814, Napoleon escaped from exile on the island of Elba this day in 1815 and, gathering support en route, retook power on his return to Paris on March 20, ushering in the Hundred Days.
1993:
The World Trade Center in New York City was bombed in an act of terrorism, Islamic radicals being later convicted for the crime.
1951:
American novelist James Jones published From Here to Eternity, about the U.S. Army in Hawaii before the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
1919:
The U.S. Congress established Grand Canyon National Park in northwestern Arizona.
1885:
The Berlin West Africa Conference concluded, the major European countries having staked claims to their colonial expansions in Central Africa.
1802:
Victor Hugo, a poet, novelist, and dramatist who was the most important of the French Romantic writers, was born.
February 27
1991:
U.S. victory declared in Persian Gulf War.
On this day in 1991, U.S. President George Bush ordered a cease-fire effective at midnight and declared victory in the Persian Gulf War, a conflict triggered by Iraq's invasion and occupation of Kuwait in August 1990.
1973:
Two hundred members of the American Indian Movement forcefully took the reservation hamlet of Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
1967:
Saint Kitts and Nevis (with Anguilla) became an independent state associated with the United Kingdom.
1933:
In Berlin the Reichstag (parliament) building caught fire, a key event in the establishment of Nazi dictatorship.
1884:
Paul Kruger, president of the South African Republic, signed a treaty in London that disavowed British authority over the Transvaal.
1807:
American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Massachusetts (now in Maine).
1776:
At the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge, North Carolinian revolutionaries defeated loyalists during the American Revolution.