Category: Today

February 24

1582 – With the papal bull Inter gravissimas, Pope Gregory XIII announces the Gregorian calendar.

1803 – In Marbury v. Madison, the Supreme Court of the United States officially establishes the principle of judicial review.

1831 – Under terms of The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, the first removal treaty in accordance with the Indian Removal Act, the Choctaws in Mississippi cede land east of the river in exchange for payment and land in the West.

1863 – Arizona is organized as a Territory.

1868 – Andrew Johnson becomes the first President to be impeached by the  House of Representatives.

1917 – The U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom, Walter Hines Page, is given a copy of the Zimmermann Telegram, in which Germany pledges to ensure the return of New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona to Mexico, if Mexico declares war on the United States.

1920 – The NAZI (National Socialist German Workers’ Party –Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei – NSDAP) party is founded by Adolf Hitler in the Hofbräuhaus beer hall in Munich, Germany

1942 – A false alarm, late in the day of attacking Japanese bombers leads to an anti aircraft barrage over the city of Los Angeles that lasts into the early hours of February 25.

1944 – The 5307th Composite Unit ” Merrill’s Marauders” begin their 1,000-mile journey through Japanese occupied Burma to attack an airfield at Myitkyina.

1984 – Opening fire from the 2nd floor room of a house across the street from the 49th Street Elementary School in Los Angeles, Tyrone Mitchell kills 1 student and wounds 13 more, with one dying 18 days later, before killing himself after a police swat team enters the house.

1989 – United Airlines Flight 811, a Boeing 747, bound for New Zealand  from Honolulu, rips open during flight, blowing 9 passengers out of the business-class section before returning to Honolulu and landing without further incident

1991 – Having diverted a large percentage of their troops to defend against a threatened amphibious attack on their positions in Kuwait, Iraqi forces are caught off guard as Coalition ground forces cross the Saudi Arabian border and enter Iraq, beginning the ground phase of Operation Desert Storm

1996 – 2 civilian airplanes operated by the Miami based group Brothers to the Rescue, are shot down in international waters by the Cuban Air Force killing all 2 crew aboard each plane.

2015 – A Metrolink train derails in Oxnard, California following a collision with a truck, leaving more than 30 injured.

2022 – Days after recognizing the Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states, Russian president Vladimir Putin orders a full scale invasion of Ukraine.

February 23

303 – Roman emperor Diocletian orders the destruction of the Christian church in Nicomedia, beginning 8 years of persecution until emperor Constantine becomes sole ruler and converts to Christianity.

532 – Byzantine emperor Justinian I orders the building of a new Orthodox Christian basilica in Constantinople – the Hagia Sophia.

1455 – Johan Gutenberg publishes a Bible, printed for the first time with movable type, in his printing shop in downtown metropolitan Mainz, Germany. (which, btw, I have laid eyes on one of the original copies, inside the vault inside the museum in Mainz, just across the river from Wiesbaden where I was stationed for a few years.)

1778 – Baron Friedrich Wilhelm August Heinrich Ferdinand von Steuben arrives at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania to help to train the Continental Army.

1836 – The Siege of the Alamo begins in San Antonio, Texas.

1870 – Mississippi is readmitted to the Union under Reconstruction.

1883 – Alabama becomes the first state to enact an anti-trust law.

1886 – Charles Martin Hall produces the first samples of aluminum from the electrolysis of aluminum oxide.

1903 – Cuba leases Guantánamo Bay to the United States “in perpetuity”.

1905 – Chicago attorney Paul Harris and three other businessmen meet for lunch to form the Rotary Club, the world’s first service club.

1927 – President Calvin Coolidge signs into law a bill establishing the Federal Radio Commission, later called the Federal Communications Commission.
German theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg writes a letter to fellow physicist Wolfgang Pauli, in which he describes his Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Mechanics.

1941 – The radioactive element Plutonium is first produced and isolated by Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg at the University of California, Berkeley.

1942 – The Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-17 under the command of Commander Kozo Nishino, bombards the Ellwood oilfield, near Santa Barbara, California inflicting minimal real damage and no casualties, but causing mass panic among the population.

1945 – On the Japanese island of Iwo Jima, First Lieutenant Harold G. Schrier, executive officer of Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Marine Regiment, 5th Marine Division, leads a combat patrol up Mount Suribachi, which, on reaching the summit, raises a U.S. flag, which is later replaced by a much larger flag, that raising being both photographed and filmed for posterity.
On the Philippine island of Luzon, troops of the U.S. 11th Airborne Division, along with Filipino guerrillas, free all 2,147 allied civilian and military  captives of the Los Baños internment camp.

1946 – At Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines, Imperial Japanese Army General Tomoyuki Yamashita, commander of all Japanese forces on Luzon, is executed by hanging for war crimes committed by his troops, which he did not attempt to discover and stop from occurring – which is known as the Yamashita standard.

1954 – The first mass inoculation of children against polio with the Salk vaccine begins in Pittsburgh.

1974 – The Symbionese Liberation Army demands $4 million to release kidnap victim Patty Hearst.

1983 – The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency announces the buy out and evacuation of the dioxin contaminated community of Times Beach, Missouri.

1998 – Near Kissimmee, Florida an outbreak of 15 tornados destroy or damage 2,600 structures and kill 42 people.

2008 – The U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit bomber Spirit of Kansas crashes on takeoff from Anderson Air Force Base, on Guam, MI, with both pilots safely ejecting, the first operational loss of a B-2.

2019 – Atlas Air Flight 3591, a Boeing 767 freighter, crashes into Trinity Bay near Anahuac, Texas, killing all 3 crew on board.

February 22

1512 – Amerigo Vespucci, Italian cartographer, sailor and namesake of the continents of the New World, dies, age 60 in Seville, Spain.

1732 –  George Washington in born in the family home at Popes Creek, Westmoreland County, Virginia. The date is celebrated from 1879 until 1971 as a federal holiday.

1819 – Under terms of the Adams–Onís Treaty, Spain sells Florida to the United States for 5 million dollars.

1847 – In the Mexican–American War’s Battle of Buena Vista, 5000 American troops under the command of General Zachary Taylor, defeat 15,000 Mexican troops under the command of General Antonio López de Santa Anna (yes of Alamo and San Jacinto notoriety)

1856 – The Republican Party opens its first national convention in Pittsburgh.

1862 – Jefferson Davis is officially inaugurated for a 6 year term as the President of the Confederate States of America in Richmond, Virginia. He was previously inaugurated as a provisional president on February 18, 1861.

1872 – The Prohibition Party holds its first national convention in Columbus, Ohio, nominating James Black as its presidential nominee.

1878 – In Utica, New York, Frank Woolworth opens the first of many of five-and-dime Woolworth stores.

1881 – Cleopatra’s Needle, a 3,500-year-old Ancient Egyptian obelisk, relocated from the ruins of the Caesareum temple of Alexandria is erected in Central Park, New York.

1889 – President Grover Cleveland signs into law a bill admitting North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Washington as U.S. states.

1901 – The Pacific Mail Company’s steamer City of Rio de Janeiro strikes a rock hidden by dense fog in Golden Gate harbor and quickly sinks, with the loss of 122 of the 201 passengers and crew aboard.

1909 – The 16 battleships of the Great White Fleet, led by USS Connecticut, return to the United States after a voyage around the world.

1942 – As Japanese victory becomes inevitable in the Philippines, President Roosevelt orders General Douglas MacArthur to evacuate to Australia.

1959 – Lee Petty wins the first Daytona 500 stock car race.

1974 –Reportedly inspired by the news reports of the buzzing of the White House by U.S. Army soldier Robert K. Preston in a stolen helicopter on February 17; Samuel Byck attempts to hijack a Delta Air Lines DC-9 jet at Baltimore/Washington International Airport with the intention of crashing it into the White House to assassinate President Nixon, but commits suicide aboard the aircraft after being shot and wounded by police.

1980 – In Lake Placid, New York, the United States Olympic hockey team defeats the Soviet Union hockey team 4–3.

1994 – CIA officer Aldrich Ames and his wife are charged with spying for the Soviet Union.

1997 – In Roslin, Midlothian, British scientists announce that an adult sheep named Dolly has been successfully cloned.

2006 – An unknown party at the time detonates 2 bombs at the Shite al-Askari Shrine in Samara, Iraq causing extensive damage, but no casualties, which incites a full on civil war between the U.S. backed Iraqi government and forces of Al Qaida and the Mahdi Army lasting over 2 years.

2018 – A Serbian man throws a grenade at the U.S embassy in Podgorica, Montenegro then detonates a suicide vest, managing to kill only himself and not even wound anyone else.

February 21

1828 – The initial issue of the ᏣᎳᎩ ᏧᎴᎯᏌᏅᎯ Tsalagi Tsulehisanvhi  -Cherokee Phoenix – still in publication today, is published; the first periodical to use the Cherokee syllabary invented by Chief George Guess Sequoyah.

1848 – Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish The Communist Manifesto.

1878 – The first telephone directory is issued in New Haven, Connecticut.

1885 – The newly completed Washington Monument is dedicated.

1918 – The last Carolina parakeet dies in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo.

1945 – During the Battle of Iwo Jima, Japanese kamikaze planes sink the escort carrier USS Bismarck Sea with the loss of 318 sailors of the 923 crew aboard, the last carrier lost in the war, and damage the fleet carrier USS Saratoga, killing 123 crew members and wounding another 192.

1947 – In New York City, Edwin Land demonstrates the first “instant camera”, the Polaroid Land Camera, to a meeting of the Optical Society of America.

1948 – NASCAR, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, is incorporated.

1965 – Malcolm X Little is assassinated while giving a talk at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem.

1971 – Under terms of the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, the observance of Washington’s Birthday (often called President’s Day) is moved to the third Monday in February, which can occur from February 15 to the 21st.

1972 – President Nixon visits the People’s Republic of China to normalize Sino-American relations.

1975 –Former United States Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman are sentenced to prison for their parts in the Watergate burglary scandal.

1994 – CIA counter intelligence officer Aldrich Ames is arrested for selling national secrets to the Soviet Union.

1995 – Steve Fossett lands in Leader, Saskatchewan, becoming the first person to make a solo flight across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon.

2022 – Russian President Vladimir Putin declares the Luhansk People’s Republic and Donetsk People’s Republic as independent from Ukraine, and moves orders troops into the region starting a general war in Ukraine.

February 20

1521 – Juan Ponce de León sets out from Spain for Florida with about 200 prospective colonists.

1685 – René-Robert Cavelier establishes Fort St. Louis at Matagorda Bay, northeast of modern day Corpus Christi, becoming the basis for France’s claim to Texas.

1792 – The Postal Service Act, establishing the United States Post Office Department, is signed into law by President Washington.

1864 – The largest battle fought in Florida during the Civil War occurs near Ocean Pond in Olustee, Baker county Florida

1872 – The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens in New York City.

1901 – The legislature of Hawaii Territory convenes for the first time.

1905 – The Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of Massachusetts’s mandatory smallpox vaccination program in Jacobson v. Massachusetts.

1931 – Congress approves the construction of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge by the state of California.

1933 – Congress approves the Blaine Act to repeal federal prohibition, sending the 21st Amendment to the Constitution to the states for ratification to repeal the 18th Amendment.

1942 – In the South Pacific off Bougainville Island, while flying a Grumman F4F3A from the carrier USS Lexington as part of a carrier defense intercept flight against 9 Japanese bombers, Navy Lieutenant Edward O’Hare is credited with shooting down 5 of the bombers, becoming the first U.S. Navy  “Ace” of World War II and is later awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions.

1943 – American movie studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor movies.

1956 – The United States Merchant Marine Academy becomes a permanent Service Academy.

1962 – While aboard Mercury capsule Friendship 7, John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the earth, making 3 orbits in 4 hours, 55 minutes.

1965 – NASA’s Ranger 8 probe crashes into the Moon after a successful mission of photographing possible landing sites for the Apollo program astronauts.

1986 – The Soviet Union launches its Mir space station, remaining in orbit for 15 years.

1998 – American figure skater Tara Lipinski, at the age of 15, becomes the youngest Olympic figure skating gold medalist at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

2003 – During a concert performance in West Warwick, Rhode Island by the rock group Great White, a pyrotechnics display sets The Station nightclub ablaze, killing 100 people and injuring over 200 others.

2016 – 6 people are killed and 2 wounded by an Uber driver in multiple random shootings in Kalamazoo County, Michigan with the shooter finally being arrested the next day.

 

February 19

356 – Emperor Constantius II issues a decree closing all pagan temples in the Roman Empire.

1649 – The Second Battle of Guararapes takes place, effectively ending Dutch colonization efforts in Brazil.

1674 – England and the Netherlands sign the Treaty of Westminster, ending the Third Anglo-Dutch War. A provision of the agreement transfers the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam to England, and it is renamed New York.

1807 – Charged with Treason for supposedly plotting a rebellion and secession in the then western frontier, former Vice President Aaron Burr is arrested in Wakefield, Alabama, but later acquitted due to a lack of evidence.

1846 – In Austin, Texas, the Republic of Texas government officially transfers power to the State of Texas government following annexation by the United States.

1847 – 4 months after becoming trapped by snowfall near Truckee Lake in the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California, the first group of rescuers finally reaches the Donner Party.

1878 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for his phonograph.

1915 – The first naval attack on the Dardanelles begins when a strong Anglo-French task force bombards Ottoman artillery along the coast of Gallipoli during World War I

1942 – During World War II, President Roosevelt signs executive order 9066, allowing the U.S. military to relocate Japanese Americans to internment camps.

1943 – The first actions between U.S and German ground forces begins around the Kasserine Pass of the Atlas Mountains in Tunisia.

1945 – U.S. forces, mainly consisting of 3 divisions of U.S. Marines, begin assault landings on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima. During the assault, Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone, awarded the Medal of Honor for action on Guadalcanal, is killed by mortar fire.

1976 – Executive Order 9066, which led to the relocation of Japanese Americans to internment camps, is finally officially rescinded by President Gerald Ford’s Proclamation 4417.

1985 – William J. Schroeder becomes the first recipient of a Jarvik 7 artificial heart to leave the hospital. 18 days later he suffers a stroke that leaves him in a permanent coma but lives until August of the next year.

2002 – NASA’s Mars Odyssey space probe begins to map the surface of Mars from orbit.

February 18

1229 – During the 6th Crusade, Frederick II signs a 10 year truce with Al Kamil Meledin , regaining rule of Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem

1294 – Mongol emperor Kublai Khan doesn’t make it to his stately pleasure dome in Xanadu and instead dies at the imperial capital of Khanbaliq – modern Peking.

1546 – Martin Luther dies at his home in Eisleben, Germany, age 62

1564 – Michelangelo Buonarroti dies in Rome, age 88

1791 – Congress passes a law to allow admitting the independent Republic of Vermont to join the Union as the State of Vermont, which took effect on March 4th.

1861 – In Montgomery, Alabama, Jefferson Davis is inaugurated as the provisional President of the Confederate States of America.

1878 – John Tunstall is murdered by outlaw Jesse Evans, sparking the Lincoln County War in Lincoln County, New Mexico.

1885 – Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, is published in the United States.

1930 – While studying photographs taken in January at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto.

1972 – The California Supreme Court in the case of People v. Anderson,  invalidates the state’s death penalty and commutes the sentences of all death row inmates to life imprisonment.

1977 – The Space Shuttle Enterprise test vehicle is carried on its maiden flight on top of a Boeing 747.

1983 – 13 people are murdered and 1 wounded during a robbery of the Wah Mee Gambling Club in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District

2001 – FBI agent Robert Hanssen is arrested for spying for the Soviet Union.

2010 – WikiLeaks publishes the first of hundreds of thousands of classified documents illegally disclosed by soldier Bradley Manning.

2021 – NASA’s Perseverance rover lands successfully on its mission to explore the Jezero crater in Isidis Planitia on Mars

February 17

1621 – Myles Standish is appointed as first military commander of the English Plymouth Colony in North America.

1801 – An electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr is resolved when Jefferson is elected President of the United States and Burr, Vice President by the House of Representatives.

1819 – The House of Representatives passes the Missouri Compromise admitting Missouri as a slave state, Maine as a free state and declaring a policy of prohibiting slavery in the remaining Louisiana Purchase lands north of the 36°30′ parallel.

1863 – A group of citizens of Geneva found an International Committee for Relief to the Wounded, which later becomes known as the International Committee of the Red Cross using the reverse of the colors of the Swiss flag in honor of that nation.

1864 – The CSS H. L. Hunley becomes the first submarine to engage and sink a warship, the USS Housatonic in Charleston harbor.

1867 – The first ship passes through the Suez Canal.

1909 – Goyaałé of the Bedonkohe Chiricahua Apache, known as Geronimo and still held as a Prisoner of War, dies at the Fort Sill Hospital, age 79.

1919 – The Ukrainian People’s Republic asks the Triple Entente and the US for help fighting the Bolsheviks.

1944 – U.S. forces invade Eniwetak atoll in the Marshall islands supported by attacks against Truk Lagoon, 700 miles to the southwest, Japan’s main base in the central Pacific.

1964 – In the case of Wesberry v. Sanders the Supreme Court rules that congressional districts have to be approximately equal in population.

1965 – The Ranger 8 probe is launched on its mission to photograph the Mare Tranquillitatis region of the Moon in preparation for the manned Apollo missions

1968 – In Springfield, Massachusetts, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame opens.

1974 – Robert K. Preston, a disgruntled U.S. Army private buzzing the White House in a stolen helicopter, is shot and wounded by Secret Service agents and arrested on landing.

1991 – Ryan International Airlines Flight 590, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9 cargo jet, crashes during takeoff from Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, killing both pilots, the aircraft’s only occupants.

1996 – In Philadelphia, world champion Garry Kasparov beats the IBM Deep Blue supercomputer in a chess match.

February 16

1630 – Dutch forces led by Hendrick Lonck capture the city of Olinda in what is to later become part of Dutch Brazil.

1804 – Off the shores of Tripoli, Stephen Decatur leads a raid to burn the frigate USS Philadelphia that had been captured by Barbary pirates

1923 – In the Valley of The Kings in Egypt, Howard Carter breaks the seals on the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun.

1937 – Wallace H. Carothers receives a U.S. patent for nylon.

1945 – American forces land on Corregidor Island in the Philippines to retake it from Japanese forces.

1959 – Fidel Castro becomes Premier of Cuba after dictator Fulgencio Batista was overthrown on January 1.

1960 – The U.S. Navy’s nuclear powered submarine USS Triton sets sail from New London, Connecticut, to begin the first submerged circumnavigation of the globe.

1968 – In Haleyville, Alabama, the first 911 emergency telephone system goes into service.

1978 – The first computer bulletin board system is created in Chicago by Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, members of CACHE, the Chicago Area Computer Hobbyists’ Exchange

1985 – The moslem terrorist group Hezbollah (Party of Allah) is founded in Beirut, Lebanon

1996 – A Chicago bound Amtrak train, the Capitol Limited, collides with a MARC (MAryland Rail Commuter) train bound for Washington, D.C. in Silver Spring Maryland, killing 3 crew members and 8 passengers  and injuring 26 more aboard both trains.

2000 – Emery Worldwide Airlines cargo flight 17,  a McDonnell Douglas DC-8, crashes near Sacramento Mather Airport in Rancho Cordova, California, shortly after takeoff, killing all 3 crew aboard.

February 15

1113 – Pope Paschal II issues Pie Postulatio Voluntatis, recognizing Ordo Fratrum Hospitalis Sancti Ioannis Hierosolymitani –The Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem-the Knights Hospitaller

1493 – While aboard the Niña on his return voyage to Portugal, Christopher Columbus writes an open letter, distributed in Portugal describing his discoveries and the unexpected items he came across in the New World

1764 – The city of St. Louis is established in Spanish Louisiana

1870 – Stevens Institute of Technology is founded in New Jersey, USA and offers the first Bachelor of Engineering degree in Mechanical Engineering.

1879 – President Rutherford B. Hayes signs into law a bill allowing female attorneys to argue cases before the Supreme Court of the United States.

1898 – The battleship USS Maine explodes and sinks in Havana harbor in Cuba, killing 274 crew members.

1933 – In Miami, Giuseppe Zangara attempts to assassinate US President Elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, but instead shoots Chicago mayor Anton J. Cermak, who later dies of his wounds.

1946 – ENIAC, the first first programmable, electronic, general purpose digital computer, is formally dedicated at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

1949 – Gerald Lankester Harding and Roland de Vaux begin excavations at Cave 1 of the Qumran Caves, where they will eventually discover the first 7 Dead Sea Scrolls.

1954 – Canada and the United States agree to construct the Distant Early Warning Line, a system of radar stations in the far northern Arctic regions of Canada and Alaska.

1961 – Sabena Flight 548,  a Boeing 707, en route to the World Figure Skating Championships, crashes on approach to Zaventem Airport, Brussels, Belgium, killing all 72 passengers and crew aboard, including the entire U.S. figure skating team, 1 person on the ground and injuring another.

1982 – The offshore drilling rig Ocean Ranger, owned by ODECO ( Ocean Drilling and Exploration Company, Inc. of New Orleans ) sinks during a storm off the coast of Newfoundland, killing all 84 personnel aboard

1989 – The Soviet Union officially announces that all of its troops have left Afghanistan.

1992 – Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is sentenced in Milwaukee to life in prison.
Air Transport International Flight 805, A Douglas DC-8 crashes near Toledo Express Airport in Ohio, killing all 4 crew on board.

1996 – The U.S. Embassy in Athens is attacked by members of the criminal, terrorist Revolutionary Organization 17 November firing an antitank rocket that hits the perimeter wall of the parking lot causing minor property damage.

2001 – The first draft of the complete human genome is published in Nature.

2013 – An undetected, 60 foot diameter, superbolide meteor explodes at high altitude over Chelyabinsk Russia, with a force equivalent to around 500 kilotons of TNT, injuring 1,500 people as the shock wave blows out windows and rocks buildings.

February 14

269 – Refusing Emperor Claudius II Gothicus command to renounce his faith, Sebastien Valentinus is martyred in Rome.

1778 – The United States flag is formally recognized by a foreign naval vessel for the first time, when French Admiral Toussaint-Guillaume Picquet de la Motte renders a 9 gun salute to USS Ranger, commanded by John Paul Jones.

1779 – Captain James Cook is killed by Native Hawaiians near Kealakekua on the Island of Hawaii.

1849 – In New York City, James Knox Polk becomes the first serving President of the United States to have his photograph taken.

1855 – With the completion of the line between New Orleans and Marshall, Texas, the state is linked by telegraph to the rest of the U.S.

1859 – Oregon is admitted as the 33rd U.S. state.

1876 – Both Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray separately apply for a patent for the telephone.

1899 – Voting machines are approved by the U.S. Congress for use in federal elections.

1903 – The United States Department of Commerce and Labor is established, later split into the Department of Commerce and the Department of Labor. (more departments, more Cabinet Secretaries and bureaucraps)

1912 – Arizona is admitted as the 48th and the last contiguous U.S. state.
The U.S. Navy commissions its first diesel powered submarine, the “E” class USS Skipjack, under the command of Lt. Chester W. Nimitz.

1920 – The League of Women Voters is founded in Chicago.

1924 – The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company changes its name to International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).

1929 – In Chicago, 7 members of George “Bugs” Moran’s North Side Gang are murdered by members of rival Al Capone’s Chicago Outfit gang in what is quickly called The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre.

1945 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt meets King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia aboard the USS Quincy, officially beginning U.S.-Saudi diplomatic relations.

1949 – The Knesset, the parliament of Israel, convenes for the first time.

1979 – In Kabul, Setami Milli militants kidnap the American ambassador to Afghanistan, Adolph Dubs, who is later killed during a gunfight between his kidnappers and police.

1989 – Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini issues a fatwa encouraging Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses.

1990 – The Voyager 1 spacecraft takes the photograph of planet Earth that later becomes famous as the Pale Blue Dot.

2005 – YouTube is launched by a group of college students

2008 –A mentally ill man off his medications, opens fire in a lecture hall of Northern Illinois University in DeKalb County, Illinois, killing 5 in attendance and wounding 21 more before committing suicide.

2018 – A former student stages an attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 students and faculty and wounding 17 more before fleeing.

February 13

1633 – Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition.

1689 – The Convention Parliament passes The Declaration of Right, declaring that the flight to France the previous year by James II constitutes his abdication from the throne, and that William and Mary are co-rulers,  king and queen regnant, of England.

1880 – Thomas Edison observes Thermionic Emission, the liberation of electrons from an electrode by being heated.

1913 –  Thubten Gyatso, the 13th Dalai Lama proclaims Tibetan independence from the Chinese Manchu Qing dynasty

1914 – In New York City the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers – ASCAP – is established to protect the copyrighted musical compositions of its members.

1935 – A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the baby, Charles Lindbergh Jr. and  sentences him to death in the electric chair.

1960 – France becomes the fourth country to possess nuclear weapons, successfully detonating a 70 kiloton weapon in the Tanezrouft region of the Sahara desert.

1979 – An intense windstorm strikes western Washington and sinks a ​half mile long section of the Hood Canal Bridge.

1981 – A series of sewer explosions destroys more than 2 miles of streets in Louisville, Kentucky.

1991 – Allied forces bomb and destroy a bunker mistaken for a military communications outpost, but actually being used by over 400 Iraqi civilians for shelter, killing them.

2001 – An earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale hits along the southern coast of El Salvador, killing over 900 people.

2004 – The Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announces that white dwarf star BPM 37093, in the constellation Centaurus, with a calculated mass in excess of 500 Septillion – 10^{24  –} Tons is almost totally composed  of cubic crystal carbon, also known as diamond.

2011 – Under terms of an 1855 treaty, the Umatilla tribe are allowed to restart their traditional bison hunt on lands just outside Yellowstone National Park.

2021 – Former U.S. President Donald Trump is acquitted in his second impeachment trial, 22 days after already having left office.

February 12

1502 – Queen Isabella I of Spain issues an edict outlawing Islam, forcing virtually all her moslem subjects to convert to Christianity.

1541 – Santiago, Chile is founded by Pedro de Valdivia.

1733 –  Englishman James Oglethorpe settling at Savannah, founds Georgia, the 13th American colony

1825 – Under terms of the Treaty of Indian Springs, the Creek nation cedes the last of their lands in Georgia to the United States.

1832 – Ecuador annexes the Galápagos Islands.

1855 – Michigan State University is established at East Lansing.

1901 – The state of Delaware finally ratifies the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments

1915 – In Washington, D.C., the first stone of the Lincoln Memorial is put into place.

1935 – USS Macon, one of the two largest helium filled airships ever created, crashes into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California and sinks, resulting in the death of 2 crewmembers, 1 jumping from the ship too high to survive the impact with the water and the 2nd drowning while attempting to salvage gear.

1963 – Construction begins in St. Louis, on the Gateway Arch of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.
Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 705, a Boeing 720, crashes into the Everglades shortly after takeoff from Miami International Airport, killing all 45 passengers and crew on board.

1974 – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is exiled from the Soviet Union.

1988 – The U.S. missile cruiser USS Yorktown is intentionally rammed by the Soviet frigate Bezzavetnyy, off Crimea, claimed to be in Soviet territorial waters, while Yorktown claimed innocent passage.

1999 – President Bill Clinton is acquitted by the United States Senate in his impeachment trial.

2001 – The U.S. NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft touches down in the “saddle” region of 433 Eros, becoming the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.

2009 – Colgan Air Flight 3407, a Bombardier Dash-8 Q400, crashes into a house in Clarence Center, New York, while on approach to Buffalo Niagara International Airport, killing all 49 passengers and crew on board and 1 person on the ground.

2016 – Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill sign an Ecumenical Declaration in the first such meeting between leaders of the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches since the ‘Great Schism’ in 1054.

February 11

55 – On the eve of his coming of age, the mysterious death of Tiberius Claudius Caesar Britannicus, heir to the Roman empire, clears the way for Nero Claudius Caesar Germanicus to become Emperor.

1534 – Henry VIII of England is recognized as supreme head of the Church of England.

1586 – Sir Francis Drake with an English force captures and occupies the Spanish colonial port of Cartagena de Indias, on the northern coast of modern Columbia for two months until a ransom is paid.

1650 – René Descartes, French mathematician and philosopher, author of Cogito Ergo Sum ( I think, therefore I am) dies in Stockholm, Sweden.

1794 – The United States Senate opens sessions to the public.

1808 – Jesse Fell of Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania, burns anthracite on an open grate as an experiment in heating homes with coal.

1858 – Bernadette Soubirous has her first vision of Mary in Lourdes, France.

1861 – In an attempt to stop further secession and avert possible conflict with the newly formed Confederacy, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passes a resolution guaranteeing noninterference with slavery in any state.

1937 – The Flint Michigan Autoworkers strike ends when General Motors recognizes the United Auto Workers trade union.

1953 – President Eisenhower denies all appeals for clemency for the Soviet spies, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who have been sentenced to death in the electric chair in New York. Documents uncovered after the fall of the Soviet Union later confirm their espionage for the Soviets.

1979 – The Iranian Revolution establishes an Islamic theocracy under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

1991 – Over Iraq, USAF Captains Steve Dingee and Mark McKenzie flying F-15s share a 1/2 victory apiece for them both shooting down an Iraqi Mil Mi-8 helicopter at the same time.

1997 – Space Shuttle Discovery is launched on mission STS-82 to service the Hubble Space Telescope.

2011 – The first wave of the Egyptian revolution results in the resignation of Hosni Mubarak and the transfer of power to the Supreme Military Council after 17 days of protests.

2017 – North Korea test fires the ballistic missile Pukkuksong-2 across the Sea of Japan.

2020 –  The World Health Organization officially names the coronavirus outbreak as COVID-19, with the virus being designated SARS-CoV-2.

February 10

1258 – Under the command of Hulagu Khan, the Mongol Hoard takes Baghdad after a 13 day siege

1502 – Vasco da Gama sets sail from Lisbon, Portugal, on his second voyage to India.[3]

1763 – The Treaty of Paris officially ends the French and Indian War in North America.

1861 – Jefferson Davis is notified by telegraph that he has been chosen as provisional President of the Confederate States of America.

1923 – Texas Tech University is founded as Texas Technological College in Lubbock, Texas

1933 – In round 13 of a boxing match at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, Primo Carnera knocks out Ernie Schaaf, who dies 4 days later.

1962 – Captured American U2 spy plane pilot Gary Powers is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.

1967 – The 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified.

1996 – The IBM supercomputer Deep Blue defeats Garry Kasparov in chess for the first time.

2021 – The traditional Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil is canceled for the first time because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

February 9

1098 – The army of the First Crusade under Bohemond of Taranto defeats a relief force under Seljuq emir Ridwan of Aleppo sent to break the siege of Antioch

1555 – Under the reign of Queen Mary I, Bishop of Gloucester John Hooper is burned at the stake for protestant heresy.

1775 – The British Parliament declares the colony of Massachusetts in rebellion.

1778 – Rhode Island becomes the fourth US state to ratify the Articles of Confederation.

1825 – After no candidate receives a majority of electoral votes in the US presidential election of 1824, the United States House of Representatives elects John Quincy Adams as President of the United States.

1861 – Jefferson Davis is elected the Provisional President of the Confederate States of America by the Confederate convention at Montgomery, Alabama.

1870 – President Ulysses S. Grant signs a joint resolution of Congress establishing the U.S. Weather Bureau.

1889 – President Grover Cleveland signs a bill elevating the United States Department of Agriculture to a Cabinet level agency.

1922 – Brazil becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty.

1942 – Year round Daylight saving time (aka War Time) is reinstated in the United States as a wartime measure to help conserve energy resources.

1943 – The Allies declare Guadalcanal secure after confirming the last of Imperial Japanese forces had been evacuated from the island.

1950 – Senator Joseph McCarthy accuses the United States Department of State of being filled with Communists. (Turns out he was right)

1964 – The Beatles make their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

1965 – The United States sends a Marine Corps MIM-23 Hawk missile battalion to South Vietnam, the first American troops deployed without an official advisory or training mission.

1971 – Apollo 14 returns to Earth, spalshing down in the south Pacific after making the 3rd manned Moon landing.

1986 – Comet 1P/Halley “Halley’s Comet”, appears in the inner Solar System for the second time in the 20th century.

2001 – Demonstrating an emergency surface south of Oahu, Hawaii, the submarine USS Greeneville collides with the Japanese fishing vessel Ehime Maru, sinking it, killing 9 of the 35 crew aboard.

2021 – The second impeachment trial of President Donald Trump begins, 20 days after he left office.

February 8

1250 – During the Seventh Crusade, Crusader forces under Louis IX, King of France, engage and defeat Ayyubid forces of Queen Shajar al-Durr and Sultan Baibars al-Bunduqdarin of Egypt near Al Mansurah, Egypt in the Nile River delta.

1587 – Mary Queen of Scots is executed on suspicion of having been involved in the Babington Plot to murder her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I.

1693 – The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, is granted a charter by King William III and Queen Mary II. (Still in operation)

1837 – Richard Johnson becomes the first Vice President of the United States chosen by the United States Senate under provisions of the 12th amendment

1879 – Canadian Engineer Sir Sandford Fleming first proposes the adoption of Universal Standard Time at a meeting of the Royal Canadian Institute.

1885 – The first government approved Japanese immigrants arrive in Hawaii.

1887 – The Dawes Act authorizes the President of the United States to survey Native American tribal land, excepting the lands of the ‘Five Civilized Tribes’ in Indian Territory (modern Oklahoma) until the Curtis Act of 1898,  and divide it into individual allotments.

1904 – A surprise torpedo attack by Japanese destroyers on the Russian fleet anchored at Port Arthur, Manchuria starts the Russo-Japanese War.

1910 – The Boy Scouts of America is incorporated by William D. Boyce.

1915 – D. W. Griffith’s film The Birth of a Nation premieres in Los Angeles.

1924 –  At the Nevada state prison at Carson City, Gee Jon, a member of the Hip Sing Tong becomes the first person executed by use of lethal gas for the murder of Tom Quong Kee, a member of the rival Bing Kong Tong.

1946 – The first portion of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible is published.

1965 – Shortly after takeoff from JFK airport, Eastern Air Lines Flight 663, a Douglas DC-7B crashes into the Atlantic Ocean attempting to avoid a mid-air collision with incoming Pan American Airways Flight 212, a Boeing 707, and explodes, killing all 84 passengers and crew aboard.

1974 – After 84 days in space, the all rookie crew of Skylab 4, the last crew to visit American space station Skylab, returns to Earth.

1978 – The proceedings of the Senate are broadcast on radio for the first time.

1993 – General Motors sues NBC after Dateline NBC allegedly rigs two crashes intended to demonstrate that some GM pickups can easily catch fire if hit in certain places. NBC settles the lawsuit the next day.

2013 –  Two winter storm systems in the U.S. merge into a hurricane force ‘bomb cyclone’ causing a blizzard –Winter Storm Nemo – dropping up to 40 inches of snow, disrupting transportation and communications in the Northeastern States and parts of Canada and leaving over 700,000 people without electricity, resulting in the deaths of 18 people with $100,000,000 in damages

February 7

1301 – Edward of Caernarvon, son of King Edward I (known as Longshanks), later King Edward II of England, is invested by his father as the first English Prince of Wales and heir to the throne.

1497 – In Florence, Italy, supporters of Girolamo Savonarola burn cosmetics, art, and books, in a “Bonfire of the vanities”.

1795 – The 11th Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified.

1812 – The strongest in a series of earthquakes that began the previous December, strikes New Madrid, Missouri.

1894 – The Cripple Creek miner’s strike, led by the Western Federation of Miners, begins in – you guessed it – Cripple Creek, Colorado.

1900 – A Chinese immigrant in San Francisco falls ill to bubonic plague in the first plague epidemic in the continental United States.

1904 – A fire begins in Baltimore, Maryland, destroying over 1,500 buildings in 30 hours.

1943 – Imperial Japanese Navy forces complete the evacuation of Imperial Japanese Army troops from Guadalcanal, ending attempts to retake the island.

1962 – The United States bans all Cuban imports and exports.

1979 – The body of fugitive war criminal, Josef Mengele is found in the waters off the coast of Bertioga, Brazil, purported drowned after suffering a stroke while swimming.

1984 – On Mission STS-41-B,  aboard Shuttle Challenger,  Astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert Stewart make the first untethered space walk using the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU).

1991 – USAF Air Combat Victories: Rick Parsons-1 SU-7, Randy May-1 Mi-24, and Anthony Murphy-2 SU-22s

1992 – The Maastricht Treaty is signed, leading to the creation of the European Union.

1995 – Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, is arrested in Islamabad, Pakistan.

2001 – Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched on mission STS-98, carrying the Destiny laboratory module to the International Space Station.

2013 – Mississippi officially ratifies the 13th Amendment, becoming the last state to approve it after Mississippi in 1995.

2016 – North Korea demonstrates it ability to launch to orbit by launching the Kwangmyŏngsŏng-4 reconnaissance satellite, in violation of multiple UN treaties.

February 6

1778 –In Paris, the Treaty of Alliance, and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce are signed between the United States and France

1788 – Massachusetts becomes the sixth state to ratify the United States Constitution.

1820 – The first 86 African American immigrants sponsored by the American Colonization Society depart New York to start a settlement in  Liberia, Africa

1899 – The Treaty of Paris between the United States and Spain, is ratified by the United States Senate officially ending the Spanish American War.

1919 – The American Legion is founded.

1922 – The Washington Naval Treaty is signed in Washington, D.C., limiting the naval armaments of United States, Britain, Japan, France, and Italy.

1951 – Travelling at 50 mph, twice the speed limit for the location under repair construction, The Broker # 733, a Pennsylvania Railroad passenger train, derails on a curve near Woodbridge Township, New Jersey, killing 85 passengers and injuring over 500 more. The wreck is still to date one of the worst rail disasters in American history.

1952 – Elizabeth II becomes Queen of the United Kingdom and her other Realms and Territories and Head of the Commonwealth upon the death of her father, George VI. The longest reigning monarch, so far, of the UK.

1959 – Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments files the first patent for an integrated circuit.

1976 – Lockheed Corporation president Carl Kotchian,  in testimony before a Senate subcommittee, admits that the company had paid out around $3 million in bribes to the office of Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka.

1978 – The Blizzard of 1978, one of the worst Nor’easter storms in New England history, hits the region, with sustained winds of 65 mph and in snowfall of 4 inches an hour, dropping from 20 to 27 inches of snow over the region and causing the deaths of over 100 people.

1991 – Over Iraq, USAF Pilots Thomas Dietz and Bob Hehemann, each flying F-15 fighters, shoot down 2 MiG-21s and 2 SU-25s. USAF Pilot Robert Swain, flying an A-10 attack jet, shoots down a Messerschmitt B0-15 helicopter and USN pilots Stuart Broce and Ron McElraft flying an F-14 fighter shoot down a Mil Mi-8 helicopter.

1998 – Washington National Airport is renamed Ronald Reagan National Airport.

2018 – SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, a super heavy launch vehicle, makes its maiden flight.

February 5

1576 – Henry of Navarre rejects Catholicism at Tours, France and rejoins the Protestant forces in the French Wars of Religion.

1597 – A group of Japanese Christians are killed by the new government of Japan for being seen as a threat to Japanese society.

1849 – University of Wisconsin–Madison’s first class meets at Madison Female Academy.

1862 – The voivode of Moldavia and the warlords of ancient Wallachia formally unite to create the Romanian United Principalities with Alexandru Cuza as Domnitor.

1907 – Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland announces the creation of Bakelite, the first synthetic plastic.

1918 – West Plains, Missouri native, Lt. Stephen W. Thompson, flying with a French squadron as a bombardier/gunner, shoots down a German Albatros D.III over Saarbrucken, the first aerial victory by the U.S. military.
The British Anchor Line SS Tuscania is torpedoed off the coast of Ireland, the first ship carrying American troops to Europe to be torpedoed and sunk.

1919 – Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith launch United Artists.

1924 – The Royal Greenwich Observatory begins broadcasting the hourly time signals known as the Greenwich Time Signal.

1958 – Off Tybee Island near Savannah, Georgia, a US F-86 fighter collides mid-air with a US B-47 bomber carrying a Mark-15 thermonuclear bomb. While there are no fatalities or injuries, the crew of the bomber jettisons the bomb,  which has never been recovered, into the water near Wassaw Sound

1971 – Apollo 14 Astronauts Alan B. Shepard Jr. and Edgar D. Mitchell undock from the Command Module Kitty Hawk piloted by Stuart Roosa and land the Lunar Module Antares on the Frau Mauro highlands on the mission originally planned for Apollo 13.

1985 – Ugo Vetere, the mayor of Rome, and Chedli Klibi, the mayor of Carthage meet in Tunis to sign a treaty of friendship officially ending the 3rd Punic War which lasted 2,131 years.

1988 – Panamanian military dictator Manuel Noriega is indicted by federal grand juries in Miami and Tampa on drug smuggling and money laundering charges, eventually leading, in large part, to the U.S. invasion of Panama in late 1989.

2008 – A major tornado outbreak of 87 tornadoes across the southern U.S. and the lower Ohio Valley kills 57 people across four states and 18 counties, with hundreds of others injured.

2020 – President Donald Trump is acquitted by the United States Senate in his first impeachment trial.