Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/February
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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 2012 day arrangement |
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February 1: Imbolc (Northern Hemisphere); Lughnasadh (Southern Hemisphere)
- 1327 – Fourteen-year-old Edward III became King of England, but the country was ruled by his mother, Queen Isabella, and her lover, Roger Mortimer.
- 1709 – Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk was rescued by English captain Woodes Rogers and the crew of the Duke after spending four years as a castaway on an uninhabited island in the Juan Fernández archipelago, providing the inspiration for Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe.
- 1942 – Voice of America, the official external radio and television service of the United States federal government, began broadcasting with programs aimed at areas controlled by the Axis powers during World War II.
- 1968 – The Government of Canada merged the Royal Canadian Navy, Canadian Army, and the Royal Canadian Air Force into a unified structure, the Canadian Forces.
- 2009 – Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir (pictured) became Iceland's first female Prime Minister and the world's first openly gay head of government of the modern era.
More anniversaries: January 31 – February 1 – February 2
February 2: Groundhog Day in Canada and the United States
- 1207 – Terra Mariana, comprising present-day Estonia and Latvia, was established as a principality of the Holy Roman Empire.
- 1659 – Jan van Riebeeck, the founder of Cape Town, produced the first bottle of South African wine (vineyard in Stellenbosch pictured).
- 1848 – The Mexican–American War ended with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which gave 1.36 million square kilometres (530,000 sq mi) of Mexican territory known as the Mexican Cession to the United States in exchange for US$15 million.
- 1920 – The signing of the Treaty of Tartu ended the Estonian War of Independence, with Russia agreeing to recognize the independence of Estonia and renounce in perpetuity all rights to that territory.
- 1974 – The F-16 Fighting Falcon, one of the best-selling jet fighters ever built, had its first flight.
- 1982 – The Syrian army bombarded the town of Hama in order to quell a revolt by the Muslim Brotherhood, killing about 7,000–25,000 people.
More anniversaries: February 1 – February 2 – February 3
February 3: Setsubun in Japan; Four Chaplains' Day in the United States
- 1488 – Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias landed in Mossel Bay, becoming the first known European to have sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and the southern tip of Africa.
- 1781 – American Revolutionary War: British forces captured the Dutch island of Sint Eustatius with only two shots fired.
- 1813 – Argentine War of Independence: José de San Martín and his Regiment of Mounted Grenadiers gained a largely symbolic victory against a royalist army in the Battle of San Lorenzo (pictured).
- 1967 – Ronald Ryan became the last person to be legally executed in Australia, sparking public protests across the country.
- 1998 – A United States Marines Corps EA-6B Prowler inadvertently severed a cable supporting a gondola of an aerial tramway in Cavalese, Italy, sending 20 people plummeting to their deaths.
More anniversaries: February 2 – February 3 – February 4
February 4: Mawlid (Sunni Islam, 2012); Day of the Armed Struggle in Angola (1961); Independence Day in Sri Lanka (1948)
- 211 – Roman emperor Septimius Severus died of illness while on a military campaign in Eboracum (modern York, England).
- 960 – Emperor Taizu began his reign in China, initiating the Song Dynasty period that would eventually last for more than three centuries.
- 1899 – The Philippine–American War opened when an American soldier, under orders to keep insurgents away from his unit's encampment, fired upon a Filipino soldier in Manila.
- 1969 – Yasser Arafat was elected chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
- 2008 – The London low emission zone (sign pictured), governing what types of vehicles may enter Greater London, came into being.
More anniversaries: February 3 – February 4 – February 5
February 5: Constitution Day in Mexico (1917)
- 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, Victoria, Australia, discovered the largest alluvial gold nugget ever found, known as the "Welcome Stranger".
- 1917 – The current constitution of Mexico was adopted, establishing a federal republic with powers separated into independent executive, legislative, and judicial branches.
- 1941 – Second World War: British and Free French forces began the Battle of Keren to capture the strategic town of Keren in Italian Eritrea.
- 2000 – Second Chechen War: As the Battle of Grozny came to a close, Russian forces summarily executed at least 60 civilians in the city's Novye Aldi suburb.
- 2009 – The United States Navy guided missile cruiser USS Port Royal ran aground (pictured) on a coral reef off the island of Oahu.
More anniversaries: February 4 – February 5 – February 6
February 6: Sami National Day (Sami people); Sapporo Snow Festival in Japan begins (2012)
- 1819 – British official Stamford Raffles signed a treaty with Sultan Hussein Shah of Johor, establishing Singapore as a trading post for the British East India Company.
- 1833 – Otto (pictured) became the first modern King of Greece.
- 1922 – Britain, France, Japan, Italy and the United States signed the Washington Naval Treaty to avoid a naval arms race.
- 1952 – Elizabeth II ascended to the thrones of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and three other Commonwealth countries upon the death of her father, George VI.
- 1976 – In testimony before a U.S. Senate subcommittee, Lockheed 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.
More anniversaries: February 5 – February 6 – February 7
February 7: 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens (1812); Lantern Festival (Chinese calendar, 2012)
- 1795 – The Eleventh Amendment to the United States Constitution, limiting the ability of U.S. citizens and foreign nationals to sue U.S. states in federal courts, was ratified in order to overrule the Supreme Court decision in Chisholm v. Georgia.
- 1904 – The Great Baltimore Fire in Maryland began, and would destroy over 1,500 buildings in 30 hours.
- 1907 – More than 3,000 women in London participated in the Mud March, the first large procession organized by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, seeking women's suffrage in the United Kingdom.
- 1943 – World War II: Japan successfully withdrew its troops from Guadalcanal.
- 1986 – President of Haiti Jean-Claude Duvalier fled the country after a popular uprising, ending 28 years of one-family rule in the nation.
- 1995 – Ramzi Yousef (pictured), one of the main perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the bombing of Philippine Airlines Flight 434, was arrested in Islamabad, Pakistan.
More anniversaries: February 6 – February 7 – February 8
February 8: Tu Bishvat (Judaism, 2012)
- 1887 – The Dawes Act, a law meant to help the assimilation of Native Americans into American society, but which instead had a negative effect, was signed by President Grover Cleveland.
- 1915 – Film director D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (film poster pictured) was released, becoming one of the most influential and controversial films in the history of American cinema.
- 1950 – The Stasi, the secret police of East Germany, was established.
- 1965 – After taking evasive action to avoid a mid-air collision just after takeoff from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, Eastern Air Lines Flight 663 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean and exploded, killing all 84 people on board.
- 2010 – A freak storm in the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan triggered a series of at least 36 avalanches that buried over 3.5 km (2.2 mi) of road, killed at least 172 people and trapped over 2,000 travellers.
More anniversaries: February 7 – February 8 – February 9
February 9: Mawlid (Shia Islam, 2012)
- 1825 – After no presidential candidate received a majority of electoral votes, the U.S. House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams (pictured) president.
- 1913 – A group of meteors was visible across much of the eastern seaboard of North and South America, leading astronomers to conclude that the source had been a small, short-lived natural satellite of the Earth.
- 1945 – World War II: HMS Venturer sank U-864 in history's only incident where one submarine has intentionally sunk another while both were fully submerged.
- 1959 – The Soviet R-7 Semyorka, the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile, became fully operational.
- 1971 – A 6.6 Mw earthquake struck the northern San Fernando Valley near the Los Angeles district of Sylmar, killing 65 people.
More anniversaries: February 8 – February 9 – February 10
February 10: Feast of Saint Paul's Shipwreck in Malta
- 1862 – American Civil War: A Union naval flotilla destroyed the bulk of the Confederate Mosquito Fleet in the Battle of Elizabeth City on the Pasquotank River in North Carolina.
- 1906 – The Royal Navy battleship HMS Dreadnought (pictured) 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-Abyssinian War: The Battle of Amba Aradam began and ended nine days later in a decisive tactical victory for Italy and the neutralisation of almost the entire Ethiopian army as a fighting force.
- 1962 – "Rudolf Abel", a Soviet spy arrested by the FBI, was exchanged for Gary Powers, the pilot of the CIA spy plane that had been shot down over Soviet airspace two years earlier.
- 2008 – The Namdaemun gate in Seoul, the first of South Korea's National Treasures, was severely damaged by arson.
More anniversaries: February 9 – February 10 – February 11
February 11: Victory of the Revolution in Iran (1979), National Foundation Day in Japan
- 1250 – Seventh Crusade: After three days of fighting, the Ayyubids successfully defended Al Mansurah, Egypt, from invading crusaders.
- 1826 – University College London was founded as the first secular university in England.
- 1858 – Fourteen-year-old peasant girl Bernadette Soubirous (pictured) reported the first of eighteen Marian apparitions in Lourdes, France, resulting in the town becoming a major site for pilgrimages by Catholics.
- 1919 – Friedrich Ebert was elected the first President of the German Weimar Republic by the Weimar National Assembly.
- 1938 – The BBC aired an adaptation of Karel Čapek's play R.U.R., the first science fiction television programme ever broadcast.
- 1990 – Anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela, a political prisoner for 27 years, was released from Victor Verster Prison near Paarl, South Africa.
More anniversaries: February 10 – February 11 – February 12
February 12: Darwin Day; Red Hand Day
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- 1818 – On the first anniversary of its victory in the Battle of Chacabuco, Chile formally declared its independence from Spain.
- 1912 – Xinhai Revolution: Puyi (pictured), the last Emperor of China, abdicated under a deal brokered by military official and politician Yuan Shikai, formally replacing the Qing Dynasty with a new republic in China.
- 1935 – The USS Macon, one of the two largest helium-filled airships ever created, crashed into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California and sank.
- 1946 – Black United States Army veteran Isaac Woodard was severely beaten by a South Carolina police officer to the point that he lost his vision in both eyes, an incident that galvanized the Civil Rights Movement.
- 1994 – Edvard Munch's iconic painting The Scream was stolen from the National Gallery of Norway.
- 2009 – Just before it was scheduled to land at Buffalo Niagara International Airport, Colgan Air Flight 3407 crashed into a house in Clarence Center, New York, killing the house's occupant and all 49 people on board the aircraft.
More anniversaries: February 11 – February 12 – February 13
- 1542 – Catherine Howard (pictured), the fifth wife of Henry VIII of England, was executed for adultery.
- 1880 – American inventor Thomas Edison observed the Edison effect, which later formed the basis of vacuum tube diodes designed by English electrical engineer John Ambrose Fleming.
- 1970 – The English rock band Black Sabbath released their eponymous debut album, which is recognised as the first major album to be credited with the development of the heavy metal genre.
- 1981 – Sewer explosions caused by the ignition of hexane vapors destroyed more than two miles (3 km) of streets in Louisville, Kentucky, US.
- 2010 – A terrorist bombing at a bakery popular among foreigners in Pune, India, killed 17 people and injured 60 more.
More anniversaries: February 12 – February 13 – February 14
- 1912 – Arizona became the 48th and last of the contiguous United States to be admitted.
- 1919 – The first serious armed conflict of the Polish–Soviet War took place near present-day Biaroza, Belarus.
- 1949 – The Knesset, the legislature of Israel, convened for the first time, succeeding the Assembly of Representatives that had functioned as the Jewish community's parliament during the British Mandate Era.
- 1989 – A fatwa was issued for the execution of Salman Rushdie for authoring The Satanic Verses, a novel Islamic fundamentalists considered blasphemous.
- 2007 – The first of several bombings in Zahedan, Iran, claimed the lives of 18 members of the Revolutionary Guards.
- 2008 – Steven Kazmierczak opened fire into a crowded lecture hall on the campus of Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois, killing 6 and injuring 21.
- 2011 – As a part of Arab spring, the still ongoing 2011–2012 Bahraini uprising (protests pictured), began.
More anniversaries: February 13 – February 14 – February 15
February 15: Candlemas in Eastern Christianity; Flag Day in Canada; National Day in Serbia
- 1493 – Christopher Columbus wrote an open letter describing his discoveries and the unexpected items he came across in the New World, which was widely distributed upon his return to Portugal.
- 1949 – Gerald Lankester Harding and Roland de Vaux began excavations at Cave 1 of the Qumran Caves in the West Bank region of Jordan, the location of the first seven Dead Sea Scrolls.
- 1965 – Canada adopted the Maple Leaf flag (pictured), replacing the Canadian Red Ensign.
- 1979 – Don Dunstan resigned as Premier of South Australia, ending a decade of sweeping social liberalisation.
- 2003 – In one of the largest anti-war rallies in history, millions around the world in approximately 800 cities took part in protests against the impending invasion of Iraq.
More anniversaries: February 14 – February 15 – February 16
February 16: Statehood Day in Lithuania (1918)
- 1918 – The Council of Lithuania signed the Act of Independence of Lithuania, proclaiming the restoration of an independent Lithuania governed by democratic principles, despite the presence of German troops in the country during World War I.
- 1923 – English archaeologist and Egyptologist Howard Carter unsealed the burial chamber of Tutankhamun (mask pictured), an Egyptian Pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty.
- 1961 – The DuSable Museum, the first museum dedicated to the study and conservation of African American history, culture, and art, was chartered.
- 1977 – Archbishop Janani Luwum of the Church of Uganda, a leading voice against the regime of Idi Amin, was arrested for treason and murdered the next day.
- 1983 – The Ash Wednesday fires burned 513,979 acres (2,080 km2) in South Australia and 518,921 acres (2,100 km2) in Victoria, killing 75 people and injuring 2676 others.
- 1985 – "The Hizballah Program" was released, describing the ideology and goals of the Shia Islamic political and paramilitary organization Hizballah.
More anniversaries: February 15 – February 16 – February 17
- 1621 – Myles Standish was elected as the first commander of the Plymouth Colony militia, a position he would hold for the rest of his life.
- 1872 – Mariano Gómez, José Apolonio Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora, collectively known as Gomburza (pictured), were executed in Manila, Philippines, by Spanish colonial authorities on charges of subversion arising from the 1872 Cavite mutiny.
- 1904 – Italian composer Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly premiered at La Scala in Milan, generating negative reviews that forced him to rewrite the opera.
- 1913 – In the U.S. National Guard's 69th Regiment Armory in New York City, the Armory Show opened, introducing Americans to avant-garde and modern art.
- 1964 – Gabonese military officers overthrew President Léon M'ba, but France, honoring a 1960 treaty, forcibly reinstated M'ba the next day.
More anniversaries: February 16 – February 17 – February 18
February 18: Independence Day in The Gambia (1965)
- 1637 – Eighty Years' War: Off the coast of Cornwall, England, a Spanish fleet intercepted an important Anglo-Dutch merchant convoy of 44 vessels escorted by 6 warships, destroying or capturing 20 of them.
- 1766 – A mutiny by captive Madagascans began at sea on the slave ship Meermin, leading to the ship's destruction, and subsequent rulings in the Dutch East India Company's Council of Justice were a "huge step in the recognition of oppressed people as free-thinking individuals."
- 1873 – Vasil Levski (pictured), the national hero of Bulgaria, was executed in Sofia by Ottoman authorities for his efforts to establish an independent Bulgarian republic.
- 1970 – An American jury acquitted the "Chicago Seven" of conspiracy and inciting riots stemming from protests during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
- 2001 – Inter-ethnic violence between Dayaks and Madurese broke out in Sampit, Indonesia, that would ultimately result in more than 500 deaths and 100,000 Madurese displaced from their homes.
- 2007 – Terrorist bombs exploded on the Samjhauta Express train in Panipat, Haryana, India, killing 68 people.
More anniversaries: February 17 – February 18 – February 19
- 1600 – The Peruvian stratovolcano Huaynaputina exploded in the most violent eruption in the recorded history of South America.
- 1942 – Second World War: In the largest attacks mounted by a foreign power against Australia, more than 240 bombers and fighters of the Imperial Japanese Navy bombed Darwin, Northern Territory.
- 1942 – A book-burning was held and politicians were arrested in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada as part of a simulated Nazi invasion.
- 1963 – Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, a non-fiction book credited with sparking the beginning of second-wave feminism in the United States, was first published.
- 1999 – U.S. President Bill Clinton issued a posthumous pardon to Henry Ossian Flipper, the first African American graduate of West Point, who had been accused of embezzlement in 1881.
More anniversaries: February 18 – February 19 – February 20
February 20: Shrove Monday (Western Christianity, 2012); Family Day in various regions of Canada (2012); Washington's Birthday/Presidents' Day in the United States (2012);
- 1685 – French colonists, led by Robert de La Salle (pictured), landed at Matagorda Bay in present-day Texas, which later allowed the United States to claim the region as part of the Louisiana Purchase.
- 1877 – Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake debuted at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.
- 1959 – The Canadian government under Prime Minister John Diefenbaker cancelled the Avro CF-105 Arrow interceptor aircraft program amid much political debate.
- 1988 – The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast voted to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia, triggering the Nagorno-Karabakh War.
- 2009 – The Tamil Tigers attempted to crash two aircraft packed with C-4 in suicide attacks on Colombo, Sri Lanka, but the planes were shot down before they reached their targets.
More anniversaries: February 19 – February 20 – February 21
February 21: Mardi Gras and Shrove Tuesday in Western Christianity (2012); International Mother Language Day; Language Movement Day in Bangladesh
- 1245 – Thomas, the first known Bishop of Finland, was granted resignation by Pope Innocent IV after having confessed to torture and forgery.
- 1543 – Battle of Wayna Daga: Led by the Emperor Galawdewos, the combined army of Ethiopian and Portuguese troops defeated a Muslim army led by Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrihim al-Ghazi.
- 1919 – Bavarian socialist Kurt Eisner (pictured), who had organized the Socialist Revolution that overthrew the Wittelsbach monarchy and established Bavaria as a republic, was assassinated.
- 1958 – British artist Gerald Holtom designed a logo for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament that became more commonly known as the peace symbol.
- 1971 – The Convention on Psychotropic Substances, a United Nations treaty designed to control psychoactive drugs, was signed at a conference of plenipotentiaries in Vienna.
More anniversaries: February 20 – February 21 – February 22
February 22: Ash Wednesday/Start of Lent in Western Christianity (2012); Independence Day in Saint Lucia (1979); Feast of Cathedra Petri (Catholicism)
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- 1744 – War of the Austrian Succession: British ships began attacking the Spanish rear of a Franco-Spanish combined fleet in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast near Toulon, France.
- 1909 – The sixteen United States Navy battleships of the Great White Fleet, led by Connecticut (pictured), completed a circumnavigation of the globe.
- 1983 – The play Moose Murders opened and closed on the same night at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre in New York City, becoming the standard of awfulness against which all Broadway theatre failures are judged.
- 1997 – Scientists at the Roslin Institute in Scotland announced the birth of a cloned sheep named Dolly, the first mammal to have been successfully cloned from an adult cell, seven months after the fact.
- 2002 – Jonas Savimbi, leader of the Angolan anti-Communist rebel and political party UNITA, was killed in a battle with Angolan government troops.
More anniversaries: February 21 – February 22 – February 23
February 23: National Day in Brunei (1984)
- 1739 – The identity of English highwayman Dick Turpin, who had been living under an alias in York, was uncovered by his former schoolteacher, who recognised his handwriting, leading to Turpin's arrest.
- 1909 – The Silver Dart was flown off the ice of Baddeck Bay, a sub-basin of Bras d'Or Lake on Cape Breton Island, making it the first controlled powered flight in Canada and the British Empire.
- 1941 – Plutonium (a button of the metal pictured) was first chemically identified by chemist Glenn T. Seaborg and his team at the University of California, Berkeley.
- 1945 – Second World War: In an Allied bombing run on Pforzheim, Germany, approximately 31% of the town's population were killed and 83% of its buildings were destroyed.
- 1945 – American photographer Joe Rosenthal took the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima during the Battle of Iwo Jima], an image that was later reproduced as the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial.
More anniversaries: February 22 – February 23 – February 24
February 24: Independence Day in Estonia (1918); Flag Day in Mexico
- 1607 – Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, considered the first fully developed opera, was first performed in Mantua, Duchy of Mantua (now in Italy).
- 1822 – The first Swaminarayan temple, Swaminarayan Mandir in present-day Ahmedabad, India, was inaugurated.
- 1826 – The Treaty of Yandabo was signed, ending the First Anglo-Burmese War, the longest and most expensive war in the history of the British Raj.
- 1944 – World War II: The United States Army long-range penetration special operations unit known as Merrill's Marauders began a 1000-mile (1600 km) march over the Patkai region of the Himalayas and into the Burmese jungle behind Japanese lines.
- 2006 – Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (pictured) declared a state of emergency in an attempt to subdue a possible military coup.
More anniversaries: February 23 – February 24 – February 25
February 25: Soviet Occupation Day in Georgia (1921); National Day in Kuwait (1950)
- 138 – Roman Emperor Hadrian adopted Antoninus Pius as his son and successor, after the death of his first adopted son Lucius Aelius.
- 1570 – Pope Pius V issued the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis to excommunicate Queen Elizabeth I and her followers in the Church of England.
- 1870 – Representing Mississippi in the Senate, Hiram Rhodes Revels (pictured) became the first African American to serve in the United States Congress.
- 1956 – In his speech On the Personality Cult and its Consequences to the 20th Party Congress, Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced the personality cult and dictatorship of his predecessor Joseph Stalin.
- 1986 – In the Philippines, the non-violent People Power Revolution culminated with the removal of Ferdinand Marcos from power and the inauguration of Corazon Aquino as the nation's first female President.
- 1994 – Israeli physician Baruch Goldstein opened fire on Muslim Arabs praying at the mosque in Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs, killing 29 people and wounding 125 others.
More anniversaries: February 24 – February 25 – February 26
February 26: Liberation Day in Kuwait (1991); Ayyám-i-Há begins (Bahá'í calendar); Saviours' Day in the Nation of Islam
- 1658 – Treaty of Roskilde: After a devastating defeat in the Northern Wars (1655–1661), the King of Denmark–Norway was forced to give up nearly half his Danish territory to Sweden to save the rest.
- 1815 – After escaping from Elba where he had been exiled, Napoleon Bonaparte (pictured) returned to France and regained power for a period known as the Hundred Days.
- 1917 – New Orleans' Original Dixieland Jass Band recorded "Livery Stable Blues", the first jazz single ever released.
- 1952 – Vincent Massey was sworn in as the first Canadian-born Governor-General of Canada.
- 1995 – Barings Bank, the oldest merchant bank in London, collapsed after its head derivatives trader in Singapore, Nick Leeson, lost £827 million while making unauthorized speculative trades on futures contracts.
More anniversaries: February 25 – February 26 – February 27
February 27: Clean Monday (Eastern Christianity, 2012); Independence Day in the Dominican Republic (1844)
- 1560 – The Treaty of Berwick was signed, which set the terms under which an English fleet and army could come to Scotland to expel the French troops who were defending the Regency of Mary of Guise.
- 1812 – Manuel Belgrano (pictured) raised the Flag of Argentina, which he designed, for the first time in the city of Rosario, during the Argentine War of Independence.
- 1962 – Two dissident Republic of Vietnam Air Force pilots bombed the Independence Palace in Saigon in a failed assassination attempt of President of South Vietnam Ngo Dinh Diem.
- 1982 – The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, known for its performances of Gilbert and Sullivan's Savoy operas, gave its last performance.
- 1989 – A wave of protests, riots and looting known as the Caracazo resulted in a death toll of anywhere between 275 and 3000 people in the Venezuelan capital Caracas and its surrounding towns.
More anniversaries: February 26 – February 27 – February 28
February 28: Kalevala Day in Finland; Teachers' Day in Arab countries
- 1893 – The USS Indiana (pictured), the lead ship of her class and the first battleship in the United States Navy comparable to foreign battleships of the time, was launched.
- 1914 – In the aftermath of the Balkan Wars, Greeks living in southern Albania proclaimed the Autonomous Republic of Northern Epirus.
- 1939 – The erroneous word "dord", one of the most famous errors in lexicography, was discovered in Webster's New International Dictionary by a Merriam–Webster editor, in which the term was defined as "density".
- 1972 – Japanese police stormed a mountain lodge near Karuizawa, Nagano prefecture, to end a ten-day siege by members of the paramilitary group United Red Army.
- 1997 – Two heavily armed bank robbers exchanged gunfire with officers of the Los Angeles Police Department in North Hollywood, California, the longest and bloodiest shootout in American police history.
More anniversaries: February 27 – February 28 – February 29
February 29: A leap day in the Gregorian calendar
- 1704 – Joint French and Native American forces destroyed Deerfield, Massachusetts during Queen Anne's War, killing over fifty colonists.
- 1720 – Unable to establish a joint sovereignty similar to England's William and Mary, Queen Ulrika Eleonora of Sweden (pictured) abdicated in favour of her husband, who became Frederick I.
- 1940 – At the 12th Academy Awards ceremony, Hattie McDaniel became the first African American to be awarded an Oscar, winning Best Supporting Actress for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind.
- 1960 – Playboy Enterprises founder Hugh Hefner opened his first Playboy Club in Chicago, featuring the first service uniform registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
- 1996 – A court ruled that book publisher Random House owed British actress and author Joan Collins over US$1 million for breach of contract over an unpublished manuscript.
More anniversaries: February 28 – February 29 – March 1
Selected anniversaries/On this day archive
January – February – March – April – May – June – July – August – September – October – November – December
Recent changes to Selected anniversaries – Selected anniversaries editing guidelines
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