Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/February

Selected anniversaries / On this day archive

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February 1: Imbolc / Saint Brigid's Day in Ireland; the Fajr decade begins in Iran; Black History Month begins in Canada and the United States

Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir

1329 – The Teutonic Knights successfully besieged the hillfort of Medvėgalis in Samogitia, Lithuania, and baptised the defenders in the Catholic rite.
1814 – More than 1,200 people died in the most destructive recorded eruption of Mayon in the Philippines.
1979 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile and soon led the Iranian Revolution to overthrow the Pahlavi dynasty.
2009 – Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir (pictured) became the first female prime minister of Iceland.

Menas of Ethiopia (d. 1563)
Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix (d. 1761)
Mary Shelley (d. 1851)
Harry Styles (b. 1994)

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February 2: Candlemas (Western Christianity); Groundhog Day in Canada and the United States

F-16 Fighting Falcon

1709 – Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk was rescued by English captain Woodes Rogers and his crew after spending four years as a castaway on an uninhabited island in the Pacific, providing the inspiration for Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe.
1934 – The Export–Import Bank of the United States, the country's official export credit agency, was established.
1974 – The F-16 Fighting Falcon (pictured), the most numerous fixed-wing aircraft currently in military service, made its first flight.
2004 – Swiss tennis player Roger Federer became the top-ranked men's singles player, a position he held for a record 237 consecutive weeks.

William Stanley (b. 1829)
Likelike (d. 1887)
Marian Cruger Coffin (d. 1957)
Philip Seymour Hoffman (d. 2014)

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February 3: Feast day of Saint Laurence of Canterbury (Western Christianity); Four Chaplains' Day in the United States (1943)

British bomber flying to join the Battle of Keren

1813 – Argentine War of Independence: José de San Martín and the Mounted Grenadiers Regiment defeated Spanish royalist forces in the Battle of San Lorenzo.
1941 – Second World War: Free French and British forces (aircraft pictured) began the Battle of Keren to capture the strategic town of Keren in Italian East Africa.
1953 – Hundreds of native creoles known as Forros were massacred on São Tomé Island by the colonial administration and Portuguese landowners.
2023 – A freight train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, releasing hazardous materials into the surrounding area.

Coloman, King of Hungary (d. 1116)
Abu Bakar of Johor (b. 1833)
Simone Weil (b. 1909)
Kanna Hashimoto (b. 1999)

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February 4: Lichun begins in East Asia (2024)

Yasser Arafat

1169 – A strong earthquake struck the eastern coast of Sicily, causing at least 15,000 deaths.
1969 – Yasser Arafat (pictured) was elected chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
1974 – American newspaper heiress and socialite Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, which she later joined, in one of the most well-known cases of Stockholm syndrome.
1999 – Amadou Diallo, a 23-year-old immigrant from Guinea, was shot and killed by four New York City Police Department plain-clothed officers, prompting outrage both within and outside the city.

Bill Haywood (b. 1869)
Virginia M. Alexander (b. 1899)
Jean Bolikango (b. 1909)
Hilda Hilst (d. 2004)

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February 5: Constitution Day in Mexico (1917)

A device for producing Bakelite

1909 – Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland announced his invention of Bakelite (production device pictured), the world's first synthetic plastic.
1913 – Claudio Monteverdi's last opera, L'incoronazione di Poppea, was performed theatrically for the first time in more than 250 years.
1958 – After a mid-air collision with a fighter plane during a practice exercise off Tybee Island, Georgia, a U.S. Air Force bomber jettisoned a Mark 15 nuclear bomb, which was presumed lost.
1985 – The mayors of Carthage and Rome signed a symbolic peace treaty to officially end the Third Punic War, 2,134 years after it began.
2019 – Pope Francis became the first pope to celebrate a papal Mass in the Arabian Peninsula.

Marcus Ward Lyon Jr. (b. 1875)
William Bostock (b. 1892)
Margaret Oakley Dayhoff (d. 1983)
Bhuvneshwar Kumar (b. 1990)

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February 6: Sámi National Day (1917); Waitangi Day in New Zealand (1840)

News reel of the Munich air disaster

1788 – Massachusetts became the sixth state to ratify the constitution of the United States.
1819 – British official Stamford Raffles signed a treaty with Sultan Hussein Shah of Johor, establishing Singapore as a trading post for the East India Company.
1919 – More than 65,000 workers in Seattle began a five-day general strike to gain higher wages after two years of U.S. World War I wage controls.
1958 – The aircraft carrying the Manchester United football team crashed while attempting to take off from Munich-Riem Airport in West Germany, killing 8 players and 23 people in total (news reel featured).

Joseph Priestley (d. 1804)
Barbara W. Tuchman (d. 1989)
Jack Kirby (d. 1994)
Gary Moore (d. 2011)

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February 7

Bruce McCandless II untethered in space

1497 – Supporters of the Dominican preacher Girolamo Savonarola collected and publicly burned thousands of vanity items such as cosmetics, art and books in Florence, Italy.
1914 – Kid Auto Races at Venice, featuring the first appearance of comedy actor Charlie Chaplin's character the Tramp, was released.
1984 – During the Space Shuttle Challenger mission STS-41-B, astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart performed the first untethered spacewalk (pictured).
2005 – President Ilham Aliyev issued a decree on the redenomination of Azerbaijan's currency, with 1 new manat equal to 5000 old manats.
2014 – An inquiry report of the United Nations Human Rights Council found systematic and wide-ranging violations of human rights in North Korea.

Bartholomäus Sastrow (d. 1603)
John Deere (b. 1804)
Desmond Doss (b. 1919)
Steve Nash (b. 1974)

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February 8

Mary, Queen of Scots

1587 – Mary, Queen of Scots (pictured), was executed at Fotheringhay Castle for her involvement in the Babington Plot to murder her cousin, Elizabeth I of England.
1879 – Angered by a controversial umpiring decision, cricket spectators rioted and attacked the England team during a match in Sydney, Australia.
1924 – Gee Jon became the first person in the United States to be executed by lethal gas.
1948 – The closing ceremony of the first Olympics held after World War II was held in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
1968 – Local police in Orangeburg, South Carolina, fired into a crowd of people who were protesting segregation, killing three and injuring twenty-seven others.
1983 – The Irish-bred race horse Shergar was stolen by gunmen, who demanded a £2 million ransom.

Daniele Barbaro (b. 1514)
Marina de Escobar (b. 1554)
Neila Sathyalingam (b. 1938)
Walther Bothe (d. 1957)

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February 9: Chinese New Year's Eve (2024)

Participants in the Mud March

1799 – Quasi-War: USS Constellation captured the French frigate Insurgente in a single-ship action in the Caribbean Sea.
1861 – American Civil War: Jefferson Davis was named the provisional president of the Confederate States of America.
1907 – More than 3,000 women in London participated in the Mud March (pictured), the first large procession organised by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies.
1976 – The Australian Defence Force was formed by the integration of the Australian Army, the Royal Australian Navy, and the Royal Australian Air Force.
2016 – Two Meridian commuter trains collided head-on at Bad Aibling in southeastern Germany, leaving 12 dead and 85 others injured.

Judith Quiney (d. 1662)
Aletta Jacobs (b. 1854)
Howard Martin Temin (d. 1994)
Masatoshi Gündüz Ikeda (d. 2003)

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February 10: Feast day of Saint Scholastica (Christianity); Chinese New Year (2024); National Memorial Day of the Exiles and Foibe in Italy

Delegates at the Inter-Allied Women's Conference

1258 – The last Abbasid caliph surrendered Baghdad to the besieging Mongol army of Hulegu Khan, who promptly sacked the city, killing hundreds of thousands of people.
1861 – Jefferson Davis was notified that he had been selected as the provisional President of the Confederate States of America.
1919 – The Inter-Allied Women's Conference opened as a counterpart to the Paris Peace Conference, marking the first time that women were allowed formal participation in an international treaty negotiation.
1939 – Spanish Civil War: The Nationalists concluded their conquest of Catalonia and sealed the border with France.
2009 – The first accidental hypervelocity collision between two intact satellites in low Earth orbit took place when Iridium 33 and Kosmos 2251 destroyed each other.

Ira Remsen (b. 1846)
Edith Clarke (b. 1883)
Joseph Lister (d. 1912)
Joan Curran (d. 1999)

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February 11: National Foundation Day (Japan) (660 BC)

"Le beau vingt-et-unième"
from La fille du régiment

1584 – Spanish explorer Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa founded the town of Nombre de Jesús, the first of two short-lived colonies at the Strait of Magellan.
1823 – Around 110 boys were killed in a human crush at the Convent of the Minori Osservanti in Valletta on the last day of the Maltese Carnival.
1840 – La fille du régiment (audio featured), an opéra comique by Gaetano Donizetti, premiered in Paris to highly negative reviews but later became a success.
1919 – Friedrich Ebert was elected the provisional president of Germany by the Weimar National Assembly.
2008 – Rebel East Timorese soldiers invaded the homes of President José Ramos-Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão, seriously wounding the former.

René Descartes (d. 1650)
Elizabeth Siddal (d. 1862)
Whitney Houston (d. 2012)

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February 12: Red Hand Day; Shrove Monday (Western Christianity, 2024)

"Bar" suit from Dior's New Look

1502 – Queen Isabella I issued an edict outlawing Islam in the Crown of Castile, forcing virtually all her Muslim subjects to convert to Christianity.
1855 – The precursor of Michigan State University in East Lansing was founded as the United States' first agricultural college.
1947 – The French fashion company Dior unveiled its New Look collection (suit pictured), which revolutionized women's dress and re-established Paris as the centre of the fashion world after World War II.
2001 – The NASA space probe NEAR Shoemaker touched down on Eros, becoming the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.
2016 – In the first meeting between the leaders of the Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church, Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow signed the Havana Declaration at José Martí International Airport in Cuba.

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February 13: Shrove Tuesday (Western Christianity, 2024)

Covering of the Senne

1692 – Members of Clan MacDonald of Glencoe in the Scottish Highlands were massacred, allegedly for failing to pledge allegiance to the new monarchs, William III and Mary II.
1867 – Work began on the covering of the Senne (pictured), burying the polluted main river of Brussels to allow for urban renewal in the centre of the city.
1945 – World War II: The Allies began a strategic bombing of Dresden, Germany, resulting in a lethal firestorm that killed tens of thousands of civilians.
1970 – The English rock band Black Sabbath released their eponymous debut album, which is generally accepted as the first heavy metal album.
2012 – The first Vega rocket was launched by the European Space Agency.

Béla II of Hungary (d. 1141)
Sarojini Naidu (b. 1879)
Waylon Jennings (d. 2002)

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February 14: Valentine's Day; Ash Wednesday (Western Christianity, 2024)

The southern facade of Sri Temasek

1804 – Serb chieftains elected Đorđe Petrović as their leader, and began an uprising against the Ottoman Empire.
1852 – The Hospital for Sick Children, the first hospital in England to provide in-patient beds specifically for children, was founded in London.
1924 – The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company was renamed to International Business Machines, which grew into one of the world's largest companies by market capitalization.
1992 – Sri Temasek (pictured), the official residence of the Prime Minister of Singapore, was declared a national monument.

Katherine Stinson (b. 1891)
Keiji Nishioka (b. 1933)
Annalisa Buffa (b. 1973)

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February 15: National Flag of Canada Day (1965); Statehood Day in Serbia (1804)

Chelyabinsk meteor

1113 – Pope Paschal II issued the papal bull Pie postulatio voluntatis, formally recognising the establishment of the Knights Hospitaller.
1493 – Christopher Columbus wrote a letter widely distributed upon his return to Portugal that announced the results of his first voyage to the Americas.
1900 – Second Boer War: British cavalry led by John French defeated Boer forces to end a 124-day siege of Kimberley in present-day South Africa.
1942 – Second World War: Japanese forces led by General Tomoyuki Yamashita captured Singapore with the largest surrender of British-led military personnel in history.
2013 – A meteor exploded (video featured) over Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia; the resulting shock wave injured about 1,500 people.

Ibn Tabataba (d. 815)
V. A. Urechia (b. 1834)
Roger B. Chaffee (b. 1935)

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February 16: Day of the Shining Star in North Korea; Elizabeth Peratrovich Day in Alaska

Painting of Philadelphia burning by Edward Moran

1804 – First Barbary War: Lieutenant Stephen Decatur led a U.S. Navy raid to destroy the captured USS Philadelphia in the harbor of Tripoli (depicted), denying her use to the Barbary States.
1859 – The French government passed a law setting the musical note A₄ to a frequency of 435 hertz, in the first attempt to standardize concert pitch.
1959 – Fidel Castro was sworn in as Prime Minister of Cuba, beginning his decades-long rule over the country.
2013 – At least 91 people were killed and 190 others injured after a bomb hidden in a water tank exploded at a market in Hazara Town, Pakistan.

Henry Raspe (d. 1247)
Henry Wilson (b. 1812)
Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer (b. 1922)

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February 17

United States bombers fly over Param Island in Chuuk Lagoon during Operation Hailstone.

1815 – The United States ratifies the Treaty of Ghent – signed in late 1814 – formally ending the War of 1812.
1894 – Rudolf Diesel's first working diesel engine ran for one minute.
1944 – World War II: The U.S. Navy began Operation Hailstone, a massive naval air and surface attack against the Japanese naval and air base at Chuuk Lagoon in the Caroline Islands.
1959 – Vanguard 2 (model pictured), the first weather satellite, was launched to measure cloud cover distribution.

Denzil Holles, 1st Baron Holles (d. 1680)
Margot Heuman (b. 1928)
Nestor Chylak (d. 1982)

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February 18

Robert Hanssen

1943 – The core members of the White Rose, an anti-Nazi resistance group, were arrested by the Gestapo.
1977 – The Xinjiang 61st Regiment Farm fire started during Chinese New Year when a firecracker ignited the wreaths of late Mao Zedong, killing 694 personnel.
2001 – American FBI agent Robert Hanssen (pictured) was arrested for having spied for the KGB and GRU over a 22-year period.
2013 – Eight gunmen stole US$50,000,000 worth of diamonds from a Swiss-bound aircraft at Brussels Airport.

Michelangelo (d. 1564)
George Henschel (b. 1850)
Sergo Ordzhonikidze (d. 1937)

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February 19: Family Day in Canada (2024); Washington's Birthday / Presidents' Day in the United States (2024)

Bombing of Darwin

1600 – The stratovolcano Huaynaputina, in present-day Peru, produced the largest recorded volcanic explosion in South America.
1910 – Old Trafford, a football stadium in Greater Manchester, England, hosted its inaugural match, between Manchester United and Liverpool.
1942 – Second World War: In the largest attack mounted by a foreign power against Australia, more than 240 Japanese aircraft bombed the city of Darwin (pictured).
2012 – Mexican drug war: Forty-four inmates died in a prison riot in Apodaca, Mexico, between members of Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel.

Thomas Arundel (d. 1414)
Émilie Gamelin (b. 1800)
Tim Shadbolt (b. 1947)

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February 20: Day of the Heavenly Hundred Heroes in Ukraine (2014)

Parícutin

1816 – Italian composer Gioachino Rossini's opera buffa The Barber of Seville premiered at the Teatro Argentina in Rome to jeers from the audience.
1943 – A fissure opened in a cornfield in the Mexican state of Michoacán and continued to erupt for nine years, forming the cinder cone Parícutin (pictured).
1988 – The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast voted to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia, triggering the First Nagorno-Karabakh War.
1992 – Appearing on the talk show Larry King Live, U.S. industrialist Ross Perot announced that he would begin a presidential campaign if "ordinary people" wanted him to run for office.

Laura Bassi (d. 1778)
Forbes Burnham (b. 1923)
Jiah Khan (b. 1988)

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February 21: Language Movement Day in Bangladesh (1952)

Lucy Hobbs Taylor

1437 – King James I of Scotland was murdered at Perth in a failed coup by his uncle and former ally Walter Stewart, Earl of Atholl.
1828 – The inaugural issue of the Cherokee Phoenix, the first newspaper in a Native American language, was published.
1866 – Lucy Hobbs Taylor (pictured) became the first woman to receive a doctorate from a dental college.
1929 – In the first battle of the Warlord Rebellion in northeastern Shandong against the Nationalist government of China, a 24,000-strong rebel force led by Zhang Zongchang was defeated at Zhifu by 7,000 NRA troops.

Raimondo Montecuccoli (b. 1609)
Goscombe John (b. 1860)
Helen Hooven Santmyer (d. 1986)

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February 22:

USS Connecticut

1316 – The Catalan forces of Ferdinand of Majorca defeated troops loyal to Princess Matilda of Hainaut at the Battle of Picotin on the Peloponnese peninsula in modern-day Greece.
1909 – The sixteen United States Navy battleships of the Great White Fleet, led by Connecticut (pictured), completed a circumnavigation of the globe.
1997 – Scientists at the Roslin Institute in Scotland announced the existence of Dolly, a female sheep who was the first mammal to have successfully been cloned from an adult cell.
2006 – Seven men staged the largest cash robbery in Britain at a Securitas depot in Tonbridge, Kent, United Kingdom.

August Bebel (b. 1840)
Saufatu Sopoanga (b. 1952)
Chuck Jones (d. 2002)

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February 23: The Emperor's Birthday in Japan (1960)

Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima

1739 – The identity of English highwayman Dick Turpin was uncovered by his former schoolmate, who recognised his handwriting, leading to Turpin's trial.
1847 – Mexican–American War: The United States Army used artillery to repulse the much larger Mexican army at the Battle of Buena Vista near Saltillo.
1941 – Plutonium was first chemically identified by chemist Glenn T. Seaborg and his team at the University of California, Berkeley.
1945 – American photographer Joe Rosenthal took the Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima (pictured) during the Battle of Iwo Jima, an image that was later reproduced on the Marine Corps War Memorial.
2017 – Syrian civil war: Allied troops led by the Turkish Armed Forces captured the city of al-Bab from the Islamic State.

Pope Paul II (b. 1417)
George Taylor (d. 1781)
James Herriot (d. 1995)

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February 24: Lantern Festival in China (2024); Independence Day in Estonia

Theatre Royal, Drury Lane

1720 – War of the Quadruple Alliance: Spanish forces began a failed assault on the British settlement of Nassau in the Bahamas.
1809 – After having stood for only 15 years, London's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane (pictured), the third building of that name, burned down.
1968 – Vietnam War: South Vietnamese forces led by Ngô Quang Trưởng recaptured the citadel of Huế.
1978 – Five men disappeared after attending a college basketball game in Chico, California; the bodies of four of them were discovered in June that year.

Edmund Andros (d. 1714)
Carlo Buonaparte (d. 1785)
Risa Hontiveros (b. 1966)

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February 25: Soviet Occupation Day in Georgia (1921); National Day in Kuwait (1961)

Henck Arron

628 – Khosrow II, the last great king of the Sasanian Empire, was overthrown by his son Kavad II.
1866 – Miners in Calaveras County, California, discovered a human skull that was taken to show that humans had existed during the Pliocene, a thesis that was later disproved.
1956 – In a speech to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced the personality cult and dictatorship of his predecessor Joseph Stalin.
1980 – The first prime minister of independent Suriname, Henck Arron (pictured), was deposed in a military coup led by Dési Bouterse.
2020 – Hong Kong–based writer and publisher Gui Minhai, known for writing about Chinese Communist Party politicians, was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment for intelligence violations.

Sharafkhan Bidlisi (b. 1543)
George Harrison (b. 1943)
Kana Hanazawa (b. 1989)

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February 26

Napoleon leaving Elba

1606 – Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon made the first recorded European landing in Australia, although he believed that he was on New Guinea.
1815 – Napoleon escaped from the Italian island of Elba (depicted), to which he had been exiled after the signing of the Treaty of Fontainebleau.
1917 – The Original Dixieland Jass Band recorded "Livery Stable Blues", the first jazz single ever released.
2008 – In the first significant cultural visit from the United States to North Korea since the Korean War, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra performed in East Pyongyang Grand Theatre.

Reginald St John Battersby (b. 1900)
Raosaheb Gogte (d. 2000)
Joseph Wapner (d. 2017)

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February 27: Feast day of Saint Gregory of Narek (Catholicism)

Mary of Guise

1560 – The Treaty of Berwick was signed, setting the terms under which an English fleet and army could enter Scotland to expel French troops defending the regency of Mary of Guise (pictured).
1962 – Two dissident Republic of Vietnam Air Force pilots bombed the Independence Palace in Saigon in a failed attempt to assassinate President Ngo Dinh Diem.
1982 – The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, known for its performances of Gilbert and Sullivan's Savoy operas, gave its final performance.
2002 – Violent riots, perceived to have been instigated by a train fire that killed 59 Hindu pilgrims, broke out in the Indian state of Gujarat, killing at least 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, over three days.

Pietro Gnocchi (b. 1689)
Ellen Terry (b. 1847)
Tina Strobos (d. 2012)

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February 28: Kalevala Day / Finnish Culture Day

Protesters in Taipei before the shooting

1638 – The National Covenant was formally adopted in opposition to proposed reforms to the Church of Scotland by King Charles I.
1897 – Ranavalona III, the last sovereign ruler of the Kingdom of Madagascar, was deposed by French military forces.
1928 – Indian physicist C. V. Raman and his colleagues discovered what is now known as Raman scattering, for which he later became the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize in Physics.
1947 – Nationalist soldiers fired on protesters in Taipei (crowd pictured), triggering widespread uprisings and the violent suppression in the Taiwanese White Terror.
1975 – A London Underground train failed to stop at the terminal Moorgate station, crashing and causing the deaths of 43 people.

Cornelius Gemma (b. 1535)
Pierre Fatou (b. 1878)
Anna Muzychuk (b. 1990)

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February 29: Beginning of the Nineteen-Day Fast (Baháʼí Faith, 2024)

Stanisław II Augustus of Poland

1704 – Queen Anne's War: French and Native American forces raided the English settlement of Deerfield, Massachusetts, killing more than 50 colonists.
1768 – A group of Polish nobles established the Bar Confederation to defend the internal and external independence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth against Russian influence and King Stanisław II Augustus (portrait shown).
1960 – The deadliest earthquake in Moroccan history struck the city of Agadir, killing at least 12,000 people.
1980 – La Bougie du Sapeur, a humorous French newspaper that is published only on leap days, printed its first issue.
2008 – Belgian author Misha Defonseca admitted that her bestselling memoir about surviving the Holocaust was in fact a literary forgery.

Oswald of Worcester (d. 992) · Ina Coolbrith (d. 1928) · Pedro Sánchez (b. 1972)

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Selected anniversaries / On this day archive

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An archive of historical anniversaries that appeared on the Main Page 2024 day arrangement