Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/February

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February 1: Imbolc / Saint Brigid's Day in Ireland; National Freedom Day in the United States; Black History Month begins in the United States

• 1329 – The Teutonic Knights successfully besieged the hillfort of Medvėgalis (pictured) in Samogitia, Lithuania, and baptised the defenders in the Catholic rite.
• 1884 – The first fascicle of the Oxford English Dictionary, a 352-page volume that covered words from A to ant, was published.
• 2001 – The Timor-Leste Defence Force was established from the erstwhile anti-Indonesian independence movement Falintil.
• 2004 – During the halftime show of Super Bowl XXXVIII, Janet Jackson's breast was exposed by Justin Timberlake in what was later referred to as a "wardrobe malfunction", resulting in an immediate crackdown and widespread debate on perceived indecency in U.S. broadcasting.

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February 2

• 506 – Alaric II, King of the Visigoths, promulgated a collection of Roman law known as the Breviary of Alaric (excerpt pictured).
• 1438 – Nine leaders of the Transylvanian peasant revolt were executed in Torda.
• 1659 – Jan van Riebeeck, the founder of Cape Town, produced the first bottle of South African wine.
• 1963 – Cold War in Asia: 113 alleged communists were arrested and detained without trial by Singapore's security agencies.
• 2009 – Omid, Iran's first domestically made satellite, was launched from Semnan Space Center.

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

• 1266 – Mudéjar revolt: King James I of Aragon entered the formerly Muslim-held city of Murcia following its surrender three days earlier.
• 1813 – Argentine War of Independence: José de San Martín and the Mounted Grenadiers Regiment defeated Spanish royalist forces in the Battle of San Lorenzo (depicted).
• 1941 – World War II: Free French and British forces began the Battle of Keren to capture the strategic town of Keren in Italian East Africa.
• 1986 – Steve Jobs purchased Pixar from Lucasfilm and launched it as an independent computer-animation studio.
• 2006 – Al-Qaeda insurgency in Yemen: 23 convicts, including several militants associated with al-Qaeda, escaped from a prison administered by the Political Security Organization in Sanaa, Yemen.

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February 4: Lichun begins in East Asia (2026); World Cancer Day; National Girls and Women in Sports Day in the United States; Rosa Parks Day in some parts of the United States

• 1801 – John Marshall, whose court opinions helped lay the basis for U.S. constitutional law and made the Supreme Court a coequal branch of government, took office as chief justice.
• 1974 – The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army bombed a motor coach carrying off-duty British Armed Forces personnel and their family members, killing twelve people.
• 1998 – An earthquake registering 5.9 M_W struck northern Afghanistan, triggering landslides that killed over 2,300 people and destroyed around 15,000 homes.
• 2008 – The London low emission zone (sign pictured), charging certain diesel-powered commercial vehicles to enter Greater London, came into operation.

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February 5

• 1783 – The first of five strong earthquakes hit the region of Calabria on the Italian Peninsula, killing more than 32,000 people over a period of nearly two months.
• 1869 – Prospectors in Moliagul, Australia, discovered the largest alluvial gold nugget ever found, known as the Welcome Stranger.
• 1923 – Australian cricketer Bill Ponsford made 429 runs to break the world record for the highest first-class score.
• 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.
• 2008 – Eighty-seven tornadoes occurred over the course of the Super Tuesday tornado outbreak across multiple U.S. states, causing 56 deaths and over $1 billion in damage.

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

• 1778 – France and the United States signed the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the Treaty of Alliance, respectively establishing commercial and military ties between the two nations.
• 1806 – Napoleonic Wars: A British naval squadron captured or destroyed five French ships of the line at the Battle of San Domingo (pictured) in the Caribbean Sea.
• 1918 – Conscientious objector Henry Firth died in a work camp on Dartmoor, England, triggering a strike over living conditions.
• 1951 – A train derailed while crossing a temporary wooden trestle in Woodbridge, New Jersey, causing 85 deaths.
• 1976 – Lockheed Corporation president Carl Kotchian admitted that the company had paid out approximately US$3 million in bribes to the office of Japanese prime minister Kakuei Tanaka.

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February 7: Independence Day in Grenada (1974)

• 1783 – American Revolutionary War: After three years and seven months, Spain and France abandoned their attempt (pictured) to capture Gibraltar from the British.
• 1941 – Soviet border guards opened fire on civilians attempting to cross the border from the Soviet Union to Romania near Lunca, killing several hundred people.
• 1948 – Neil Harvey became the youngest Australian to score a century in Test cricket.
• 1986 – President of Haiti Jean-Claude Duvalier fled the country after a popular uprising, ending 28 years of one-family rule in the nation.
• 1991 – The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army shelled 10 Downing Street with mortars in a failed attempt to assassinate British prime minister John Major.

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February 8: Feast day of Saint Josephine Bakhita (Catholicism); Military Foundation Day in North Korea (1948)

• 1587 – Mary, Queen of Scots, was executed at Fotheringhay Castle for her involvement in the Babington Plot to murder her cousin, Elizabeth I of England.
• 1910 – William D. Boyce established the Boy Scouts of America, expanding the Scout Movement into the United States.
• 1965 – After taking evasive action to avoid a mid-air collision just after taking off from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, Eastern Air Lines Flight 663 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 84 people on board.
• 1979 – Denis Sassou Nguesso (pictured) was chosen as the new President of the Republic of the Congo after Joachim Yhombi-Opango was forced from power.
• 1981 – Rhodesian Bush War: Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army cadres in Gwelo attacked Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army troops, killing over 60 of them and starting the 1981 Entumbane uprising.

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February 9: Feast day of Saint Apollonia (in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy)

• 1861 – Jefferson Davis was named the provisional president of the Confederate States of America.
• 1971 – An earthquake registering 6.6 M_w struck the northern San Fernando Valley near the Los Angeles district of Sylmar, killing 65 people.
• 1976 – The Australian Defence Force (ensign pictured) was formed by the integration of the Australian Army, the Royal Australian Navy, and the Royal Australian Air Force.
• 1996 – Breaking a seventeen-month ceasefire, the Provisional Irish Republican Army detonated a powerful truck bomb in the London Docklands, killing two people and injuring more than a hundred others.
• 2001 – The American submarine USS Greeneville collided with the Ehime Maru, a Japanese training vessel operated by a high school, sinking the latter ship and killing nine people on board.

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February 10: Feast day of Saint Scholastica (Christianity); Little New Year in northern China (2026); National Memorial Day of the Exiles and Foibe in Italy

• 1906 – The Royal Navy battleship HMS Dreadnought was launched, representing such a marked advance in naval technology that her name came to be associated with an entire generation of battleships.
• 1936 – Second Italo-Ethiopian War: The Battle of Amba Aradam began, ending nine days later in a decisive tactical victory for Italy and the neutralisation of almost the entire Ethiopian army as a fighting force.
• 1940 – Puss Gets the Boot, the first Tom and Jerry cartoon, was released to theaters.
• 1941 – In the first airborne operation undertaken by the British military, a small force of paratroopers landed near Calitri, Italy, to destroy an aqueduct.
• 2008 – The Namdaemun gate in Seoul, the first of South Korea's National Treasures, was severely damaged by arson (damage pictured).

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February 11: Little New Year in southern China (2026); National Foundation Day in Japan

• 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 (corridor pictured) in Valletta on the last day of the Maltese Carnival.
• 1938 – The BBC aired an adaptation of a section of Czech writer Karel Čapek's play R.U.R. in the first broadcast of science fiction on television.
• 2015 – Turkish student Özgecan Aslan was murdered during a rape attempt, sparking mass demonstrations across the country after her body was discovered two days later.
• 2018 – Saratov Airlines Flight 703 crashed shortly after take-off in Russia due to icing conditions, killing all 71 people on board.

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February 12: Lincoln's Birthday in some parts of the United States; Red Hand Day

• 1894 – Ère des attentats: In one of the first acts of modern terrorism, Émile Henry threw a bomb into Café Terminus (depicted) in Paris, France, killing one person and injuring 17 more.
• 1935 – USS Macon, one of the largest helium-filled airships ever created, crashed into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California.
• 1993 – Two-year-old James Bulger was led away from New Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle, England, and murdered by two 10-year-old boys, who became the youngest convicted murderers in modern English history.
• 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: Carnival begins in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2026)

• 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.
• 1960 – African-American college students staged the first of the Nashville sit-ins (sign at protest pictured) at three lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee, as part of a nonviolent direct-action campaign to end racial segregation in the U.S.
• 1981 – Explosions caused by the ignition of hexane vapors destroyed more than 13 miles (21 km) of sewer lines in Louisville, Kentucky, United States.
• 1991 – Gulf War: The United States Air Force dropped two laser-guided "smart bombs" on an air-raid shelter in Baghdad, Iraq, which was believed to be a military command site, killing at least 408 civilians.
• 2010 – A terrorist bombing at a bakery popular among foreigners in Pune, India, killed 17 people and injured 60 others.

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February 14: Valentine's Day

• 1779 – American Revolutionary War: At the Battle of Kettle Creek, a militia of Patriots decisively defeated and scattered a Loyalist militia that was on its way to British-controlled Augusta, Georgia.
• 1895 – Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (production pictured), once described as the second-most quoted English-language play after Hamlet, premiered in London.
• 1916 – World War I: Britain, France and Russia made the Declaration of Sainte-Adresse, stating that they would refuse to sign any peace treaty with the Central Powers that failed to ensure the political and economic independence of Belgium.
• 1961 – Lawrencium, the radioactive synthetic element with atomic number 103, was first synthesized at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley.
• 2011 – Arab Spring: On the Day of Rage, Bahraini youths began an uprising against the government in 55 marches across 25 locations.

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February 15: National Flag of Canada Day; Susan B. Anthony Day in some parts of the United States; Family Day in some parts of Canada (2027)

• 1796 – French Revolutionary Wars: The invasion of Ceylon ended with Johan van Angelbeek, the Batavian governor of the island, surrendering Colombo to British forces.
• 1906 – A team of Italian archaeologists led by Ernesto Schiaparelli discovered the tomb of Kha and Merit (pictured), an ancient Egyptian foreman and his wife, in the workmen's village of Deir el-Medina.
• 1961 – All 72 people on board Sabena Flight 548, including the entire U.S. figure-skating team, and one person on the ground were killed when the aircraft crashed on approach to Brussels Airport.
• 1976 – The first constitution since the Cuban Revolution, providing for a system of government and law based on those of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries, was adopted by a national referendum.
• 1996 – A Long March 3B rocket carrying the communications satellite Intelsat 708 crashed immediately after launch from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, China, destroying a nearby town and killing an unknown number of inhabitants.

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February 16: J'ouvert morning, Carnival begins in Trinidad and Tobago; Chinese New Year's Eve (2026); Day of the Shining Star in North Korea; Presidents' Day in the United States (2026); Elizabeth Peratrovich Day in Alaska; Daisy Gatson Bates Day in Arkansas (2026)

• 1270 – Livonian Crusade: In the Battle of Karuse, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania achieved a decisive victory over the Livonian Order on the frozen surface of the Baltic Sea.
• 1900 – The Southern Cross Expedition led by Carsten Borchgrevink (pictured) achieved a new Farthest South of 78° 50'S, making the first landing at the Great Ice Barrier.
• 1936 – The Popular Front, a coalition of left-wing parties, came to power in the Spanish general election, a factor in the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War five months later.
• 1961 – The DuSable Museum, the first museum dedicated to the study and conservation of African American history, culture, and art, was chartered.
• 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.

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February 17: Mardi Gras / Shrove Tuesday (2026); Chinese New Year (2026); Korean New Year (2026); Tết (Vietnam, 2026)

• 1621 – Myles Standish was elected the first commander of the militia of Plymouth Colony.
• 1838 – Great Trek: Zulu impis massacred about 532 Voortrekkers, Khoekhoe, and Basuto near present-day Weenen, South Africa.
• 1913 – The Armory Show (commemorative button pictured), the first large modern-art exhibition in the United States, opened at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York City.
• 1978 – The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army carried out a bombing of a restaurant near Belfast, Northern Ireland, killing twelve people and injuring thirty others.
• 1996 – An earthquake with a moment magnitude of 8.2 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent) occurred in the New Guinea Trench, which generated a tsunami that killed 108 people.

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February 18: First day of Ramadan (2026); Ash Wednesday (Western Christianity, 2026); Tibetan New Year begins (2026)

• 1268 – Northern Crusades: The Battle of Wesenberg (depicted) took place between Novgorodian and Pskovian forces against the Livonian Order and its allies, ending with Russian forces retreating from Danish Estonia.
• 1766 – Enslaved Malagasy captives on the Dutch East India Company slave ship Meermin began a mutiny that led to the ship's destruction on Cape Agulhas in present-day South Africa and the recapture of the instigators.
• 1943 – The core members of the White Rose, an anti-Nazi resistance group, were arrested by the Gestapo.
• 1946 – President Harry S. Truman signed the Rescission Act, annulling benefits payable to Filipino troops who fought for the U.S. during World War II.
• 2001 – American FBI agent Robert Hanssen was arrested for having spied for the KGB and GRU over a 22-year period.

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February 19

• 1600 – Huaynaputina, a stratovolcano in present-day Peru, produced the largest recorded volcanic explosion in South America.
• 1931 – The Socialist Soviet Republic of Abkhazia (flag pictured) was dissolved and reformed as the Abkhaz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, an autonomous republic of the Soviet Union within Georgia.
• 1942 – A book-burning was held and politicians were arrested in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, as part of a simulated Nazi invasion.
• 2006 – A methane explosion in a coal mine in Nueva Rosita, Mexico, trapped and killed 65 miners.
• 2011 – Items from the Belitung shipwreck, the largest single collection of Tang-dynasty artefacts found in one location, were first exhibited in Singapore.

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

• 1685 – The French colonization of Texas began with the landing of colonists led by Robert de La Salle near Matagorda Bay.
• 1959 – Canadian prime minister John Diefenbaker cancelled the Avro CF-105 Arrow (pictured) interceptor-aircraft program amid much political debate.
• 1970 – Wat Phra Dhammakaya, one of the largest Buddhist temples in Thailand, was founded in Pathum Thani.
• 1998 – At the age of 15, American figure skater Tara Lipinski became the then-youngest winner of an Olympic gold medal in the history of the Winter Olympic Games.

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February 21

• 1746 – Jacobite rising of 1745: The siege of Inverness ended with British forces surrendering to the Jacobite army.
• 1862 – American Civil War: The Confederate Army began an attempt to gain control of the Southwest with a major victory in the Battle of Valverde.
• 1952 – A number of student protesters demanding the establishment of Bengali as an official language were killed by police in Dhaka, East Pakistan.
• 1965 – American Black nationalist Malcolm X (pictured) was assassinated while giving a speech in New York City's Audubon Ballroom.
• 1973 – After accidentally straying into Israeli-occupied airspace, Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 was shot down by two fighter aircraft, killing 108 of the 113 people on board.

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February 22

• 1371 – Robert II became King of Scots as the first monarch of the House of Stewart.
• 1959 – Lee Petty won the first edition of the Daytona 500, a NASCAR auto race at the Daytona International Speedway (pictured) in Florida.
• 1974 – Samuel Byck attempted to hijack an aircraft at Baltimore/Washington International Airport with the intention of crashing it into the White House to assassinate U.S. president Richard Nixon, but he was stopped by police.
• 2019 – A group broke into the North Korean embassy in Madrid, Spain, and stole several mobile telephones and digital storage devices.

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

• 1725 – J. S. Bach first performed his Shepherd Cantata for the birthday of Christian, Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels (pictured).
• 1854 – The Orange River Convention was signed in Bloemfontein, with the United Kingdom agreeing to recognise the independence of the Orange Free State in present-day South Africa.
• 1886 – American inventor Charles Martin Hall discovered an inexpensive method of producing aluminium.
• 1987 – SN 1987A, the first supernova that modern astronomers were able to study in great detail, was observed from Earth occurring in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
• 2021 – Riots in four Ecuadorian prisons, caused by gang rivalries, resulted in the deaths of 79 inmates.

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February 24: Independence Day in Estonia (1918)

• 1711 – George Frideric Handel's Rinaldo, the first Italian-language opera written specifically for the London stage, premiered.
• 1809 – Napoleonic Wars: The British invasion of Martinique ended with the unconditional surrender of French admiral Louis Thomas Villaret de Joyeuse (pictured), beginning a five-year occupation of the island.
• 1979 – Uganda–Tanzania War: Ugandan government forces fled Masaka as the Tanzania People's Defence Force bombarded and captured the town.
• 1989 – United Airlines Flight 811 experienced uncontrolled decompression after leaving Honolulu International Airport, Hawaii, blowing seats out of the aircraft and killing nine passengers.

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February 25: Soviet Occupation Day in Georgia (1921); National Day in Kuwait (1961); Beginning of the Nineteen-Day Fast (Baháʼí Faith, 2024)

• 1843 – Royal Navy captain Lord George Paulet began a five-month occupation of the Hawaiian Islands.
• 1933 – USS Ranger (pictured), the United States Navy's first purpose-built aircraft carrier, was launched.
• 1951 – After being postponed due to World War II, the inaugural Pan American Games opened in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 1994 – Israeli physician Baruch Goldstein opened fire on Palestinian Muslims praying at the mosque in Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs, killing 29 people and wounding 125 others.
• 2009 – At their headquarters in Pilkhana, members of the Bangladesh Rifles began a mutiny that resulted in 82 deaths.

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February 26

• 747 BC – According to Ptolemy, the reign of the Babylonian king Nabonassar (name in Akkadian pictured) began, marking a new era characterized by the systematic maintenance of chronologically precise historical records.
• 1914 – RMS Britannic, the third and largest Olympic-class ocean liner of the White Star Line after RMS Olympic and RMS Titanic, was launched at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast.
• 1979 – The Superliner railcar entered revenue service with Amtrak.
• 1995 – Barings Bank, the oldest merchant bank in London, was declared insolvent after its head derivatives trader in Singapore, Nick Leeson, lost £827 million while making unauthorised trades on futures contracts.
• 2014 – Former editor-in-chief of Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao Kevin Lau was stabbed, prompting concerns and protests about media freedom.

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

• 1776 – American Revolutionary War: A Patriot victory at the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge resulted in the arrests of 850 Loyalists over the following days.
• 1814 – Peninsular War: In the south of France, Spanish, British and Portuguese soldiers under the command of the Marquess of Wellington defeated French soldiers in the Battle of Orthez, causing the French to retreat east.
• 1988 – The Armenian community of Sumgait in Azerbaijan was the target of a violent pogrom (memorial pictured).
• 1996 – The multimedia franchise Pokémon was launched with the release of the video games Pocket Monsters Red and Green.

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February 28: Kalevala Day in Finland; Peace Memorial Day in Taiwan

• 202 BC – Rebel leader Liu Bang declared himself Emperor Gaozu of Han after overthrowing the Qin dynasty, the first imperial dynasty of China.
• 1897 – Ranavalona III (pictured), 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.
• 1975 – A London Underground train failed to stop at the terminal Moorgate station, crashing and causing the deaths of 43 people.
• 2002 – During a period of religious violence in Gujarat, India, mobs of Hindus attacked Muslims in Naroda Patiya and in Chamanpura, resulting in 166 deaths.

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February 29

• 1704 – Queen Anne's War: French and Native American forces raided the English settlement of Deerfield, Massachusetts, killing more than 50 colonists.
• 1944 – World War II: The Admiralty Islands campaign began when American forces assaulted Los Negros Island, the third largest of the Admiralty Islands.
• 1960 – The deadliest earthquake in Moroccan history (damaged building pictured) struck the city of Agadir, killing at least 12,000 people.
• 2004 – Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overthrown following popular rebel uprising.
• 2012 – Construction of Tokyo Skytree, the world's tallest tower and third-tallest structure, was completed.

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