February 28

1525 – Aztec king Cuauhtémoc is executed on the order of conquistador Hernán Cortés at Itzamkanac, in modern southern Mexico for allegedly conspiring to kill him and other Spaniards while on a journey to modern Honduras

1646 – In Lynn, Massachusetts, Roger Scott is tried, convicted and sentenced to be whipped for striking back at the Tithingman, who had hit him on the head with his staff for sleeping in church.

1794– The US Senate voids Pennsylvania’s election of Abraham Gallatin to the Senate due to him not having been a resident of the U.S. for the required length of time.

1827 – The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad is incorporated, becoming the first railroad in America offering commercial transportation of both people and freight.

1847 – The Battle of the Sacramento River during the Mexican–American War is a decisive victory for the United States leading to the capture of the city of Chihuahua.

1849 – Regular steamship service from the east to the west coast of the United States begins with the arrival of the SS California in San Francisco Bay, 4 months and 22 days after leaving New York Harbor.

1878 – Congress overrides President Hayes veto of the Bland–Allison Act, which required the the U.S. Treasury to buy a certain amount of silver and put it into circulation as silver dollars, returning silver as legal tender money.

1893 – BB-1, the USS Indiana, the lead ship of her class and the first battleship in the United States Navy comparable to foreign battleships of the time, is launched.

1925 – A 6.2 magnitude earthquake strikes northeastern North America near the Charlevoix-Kamouraska area along the Saint Lawrence River causing extensive damage in several villages along the river, but no reported deaths, or injuries.

1933 – The Reichstag Fire Decree is issued by German President Paul von Hindenburg, on the advice of Chancellor Adolf Hitler, a day after the Reichstag fire. It nullifies many of the key civil liberties of German citizens and is used by the Nazis government as the ‘legal’ basis for the imprisonment of anyone considered to be opponents of the Nazism.

1935 – DuPont scientist Wallace Carothers invents Nylon.

1953 – James Watson and Francis Crick announce to friends that they have determined the chemical structure of DNA; the formal announcement takes place on April 25

1954 – The first color television sets using the NTSC standard are offered for sale to the general public.

1958 – A school bus in Floyd County, Kentucky hits a wrecker truck and plunges down an embankment into the Levisa Fork river. The driver and 26 children die in the worst school bus accident in U.S. history.

1966 – A NASA T-38 Talon crashes into the McDonnell Aircraft factory while attempting to land at Lambert Field, St. Louis, killing astronauts Elliot See and Charles Bassett.

1972 – The United States and China sign the Shanghai Communiqué, a pledge to work towards the normalization of the two nations

1983 – The final episode of M*A*S*H airs, holding the record for the highest viewership of a season and series finale.

1991 – 1oo hours after beginning offensive ground operations against Iraq to liberate Kuwait, President Bush, following advice from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell to cease further incursion into Iraq, declares victory and an immediate cease fire, effectively ending the first Gulf War.

1993 – Agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms stage a raid on the compound of the Branch Davidian Seventh-day Adventists, an offshoot group of the Davidian Seventh-day Adventist Church, in Waco, Texas, with a warrant to arrest the group’s leader David Koresh.
4 ATF agents and 6 Davidians die in the initial raid, starting a 51 day standoff.

1997 – After robbing the North Hollywood branch of the Bank of America, Larry Phillips and Emil Mătăsăreanu engage multiple officers of the Los Angeles Police Department in a running street gunfight, wounding 12 officers and 8 citizens, until Phillips is wounded and commits suicide and Mătăsăreanu is wounded and dies before emergency medical personnel arrive.

2001 – The 6.8 magnitude Nisqually earthquake, with the epicenter in the southern Puget Sound, causes over $1 Billion in damage in the Seattle metropolitan area, injures over 400 people and causes 1 person to suffer a fatal heart attack.

2013 – Pope Benedict XVI resigns as the pope of the Roman Catholic Church, becoming the first to do so since Pope Gregory XII, in 1415.