Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/February
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February 1: Feast day of St. Brigit of Kildare (Western Christianity); Black History Month begins in Canada and the United States; LGBT History Month begins in the United Kingdom
- 1329 – The Teutonic Knights succeeded in their siege of a fortress in Samogitia, Lithuania, and baptized the defenders in the Catholic rite.
- 1790 – The Supreme Court of the United States (modern building pictured), the highest judicial body in the US and the head of the judicial branch of the federal government, first convened at the Merchants' Exchange Building in New York City.
- 1884 – The first fascicle of the Oxford English Dictionary, a 352-page volume that covered words from A to Ant, was published.
- 1968 – The Government of Canada merged the Royal Canadian Navy, Canadian Army, and the Royal Canadian Air Force into a unified structure, the Canadian Armed Forces.
- 1985 – Aeroflot Flight 7841 crashed shortly after takeoff from Minsk National Airport, killing fifty-eight people on board.
More anniversaries: January 31 – February 1 – February 2
February 2: Groundhog Day in Canada and the United States
- 962 – Pope John XII crowned Otto the Great as Holy Roman Emperor, the first in nearly 40 years.
- 1536 – An expedition to the New World led by Spanish conquistador Pedro de Mendoza founded what is now Buenos Aires, Argentina.
- 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.
- 1943 – World War II: The Soviet Red Army captured 91,000 tired and starving German soldiers, ending the Battle of Stalingrad, one of the bloodiest battles in human history.
- 1990 – President F. W. de Klerk (pictured) declared the end of apartheid in South Africa.
More anniversaries: February 1 – February 2 – February 3
February 3: Setsubun in Japan; Feast day of Dom Justo Takayama in Japan and the Philippines; Four Chaplains' Day in the United States
- 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.
- 1967 – Ronald Ryan became the last person to be legally executed in Australia, sparking public protests across the country.
- 1989 – Alfredo Stroessner (pictured), whose rule as President of Paraguay for 35 years was marked by an uninterrupted period of repression in his country, was overthrown in a military coup by Andrés Rodríguez.
- 2010 – A cast of L'Homme qui marche I by Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti sold for £65 million (US$103.7 million), setting the record for most expensive sculpture sold at a public auction.
More anniversaries: February 2 – February 3 – February 4
February 4: Tu Bishvat (Judaism, 2015); Liberation Movement Day in Angola (1961); Independence Day in Sri Lanka (1948)
- 960 – Emperor Taizu began his reign in China, initiating the Song dynasty period that would eventually last for more than three centuries.
- 1169 – A strong earthquake struck the eastern coast of Sicily, causing an estimated 15,000 deaths.
- 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 (pictured) was elected chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
- 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 New York City.
More anniversaries: February 3 – February 4 – February 5
February 5: Sapporo Snow Festival in Japan begins (2015); Kashmir Solidarity Day in Pakistan
- 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" (pictured).
- 1958 – A Mark 15 nuclear bomb disappeared off the shores of Tybee Island, Georgia, after it was jettisoned during a practice exercise when the bomber carrying it collided in midair with a fighter plane.
- 1994 – The Army of Republika Srpska carried out the first of two bombardments against civilians in the marketplace in Sarajevo, which were the stated reason for NATO air strikes against Bosnian Serb forces.
- 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.
More anniversaries: February 4 – February 5 – February 6
February 6: Sami National Day (Sami people); Waitangi Day in New Zealand (1840)
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- 1851 – The largest bushfire in a populous region in Australian history swept across Victoria, resulting in approximately 5 million hectares burnt.
- 1922 – Britain, France, Japan, Italy and the United States signed the Washington Naval Treaty to avoid a naval arms race.
- 1952 – Elizabeth II (pictured) 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.
- 2000 – Second Chechen War: Russia captured Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, forcing the separatist Chechen government into exile.
More anniversaries: February 5 – February 6 – February 7
- 457 – Leo I (pictured on solidus) was crowned Byzantine emperor, and went on to rule for nearly 20 years.
- 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.
- 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.
- 1940 – Walt Disney's Pinocchio, the first animated motion picture to win a competitive Academy Award, was released to theaters by RKO Pictures.
- 1995 – Ramzi Yousef, 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: Prešeren Day in Slovenia
- 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.
- 1879 – At a meeting of the Royal Canadian Institute, engineer and inventor Sandford Fleming first proposed the adoption of worldwide standard time zones based on a single universal world time.
- 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.
- 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
- 1861 – American Civil War: Jefferson Davis (pictured) was named as the provisional president of the Confederate States of America.
- 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.
- 1920 – The Svalbard Treaty was signed, recognizing Norwegian sovereignty over the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, but all signatories were also given equal rights to engage in commercial activities on the islands.
- 1945 – World War II: A force of Allied aircraft unsuccessfully attacked a German destroyer in Førdefjorden, Norway.
- 1976 – The Australian Defence Force was formed by the unification of the Australian Army, the Royal Australian Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force.
More anniversaries: February 8 – February 9 – February 10
February 10: Feast of Saint Paul's Shipwreck in Malta
- 1258 – Hulagu Khan and the Mongols sacked and burned Baghdad, a cultural and commercial centre of the Islamic world at the time, ending the rule of the Abbasid caliphate.
- 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.
- 1962 – Roy Lichtenstein's first solo exhibition opened, and it included Look Mickey, which featured his first employment of Ben-Day dots, speech balloons and comic imagery sourcing, all of which he is now known for.
- 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: National Foundation Day in Japan
- 1826 – Swaminarayan wrote the Shikshapatri, a book of 212 verses that serves as the basis of Swaminarayan Hinduism.
- 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.
- 1990 – Anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela, a political prisoner for 27 years, was released from Victor Verster Prison near Paarl, South Africa.
- 2008 – Rebel East Timorese soldiers invaded the homes of President José Ramos-Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão, seriously wounding the former.
More anniversaries: February 10 – February 11 – February 12
- 1818 – On the first anniversary of its victory in the Battle of Chacabuco, Chile formally declared its independence from Spain.
- 1855 – Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, was founded as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the United States' first agricultural college.
- 1912 – Xinhai Revolution: Puyi, 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.
- 1947 – The Sikhote-Alin meteorite (fragment pictured), one of the largest iron meteorite impacts ever observed, fell in the Sikhote-Alin range in Siberia.
- 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.
- 1867 – Work began on the covering of the Senne, burying the polluted main waterway in Brussels to allow urban renewal in the centre of the city.
- 1945 – World War II: The Allies began their strategic bombing of Dresden, Saxony, Germany, resulting in a lethal firestorm that killed tens of thousands of civilians.
- 1978 – A bomb exploded outside the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, the site of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, killing three people and injuring eleven others.
- 1981 – Sewer explosions caused by the ignition of hexane vapors destroyed more than two miles (3 km) of streets in Louisville, Kentucky, US.
More anniversaries: February 12 – February 13 – February 14
February 14: Valentine's Day; Feast of St. Brigit of Kildare (Eastern Christianity)
- 1779 – English explorer James Cook was killed near Kealakekua when he tried to kidnap Kalaniʻōpuʻu, the ruling chief of the Island of Hawaii.
- 1835 – The members of the original Quorum of the Twelve of the Latter Day Saint movement were selected by the Three Witnesses.
- 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.
- 1990 – The Voyager 1 space probe took an iconic photograph of planet Earth (pictured) that later became famous as Pale Blue Dot.
- 2005 – Former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri was assassinated when explosives were detonated as his motorcade drove past the St. George Hotel in Beirut, sparking the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon.
More anniversaries: February 13 – February 14 – February 15
February 15: National Day in Serbia (1804)
- 1898 – The United States Navy battleship USS Maine exploded and sank in Havana, Cuba (wreckage pictured), killing more than 260 people and precipitating the Spanish–American War.
- 1900 – Second Boer War: British cavalry under Major-General John French defeated Boer forces to end a 124-day siege of Kimberley, present-day South Africa.
- 1949 – Gerald Lankester Harding and Roland de Vaux began excavations at Cave 1 of the Qumran Caves in the West Bank, the location of the first seven Dead Sea Scrolls.
- 1965 – Canada adopted the Maple Leaf flag, replacing the Canadian Red Ensign.
- 1999 – Abdullah Öcalan, one of the founding members of the militant organization the Kurdistan Workers' Party, was arrested by Turkish security forces in Nairobi, Kenya.
More anniversaries: February 14 – February 15 – February 16
February 16: Shrove Monday (Western Christianity, 2015); Family Day in various regions of Canada (2015); Statehood Day in Lithuania (1918); Washington's Birthday (Presidents' Day) in the United States (2015)
- 1862 – American Civil War: Union victory in the Battle of Fort Donelson gave General Ulysses S. Grant the nickname "Unconditional Surrender" Grant.
- 1918 – The Council of Lithuania signed the Act of Independence of Lithuania (facsimile pictured), proclaiming the restoration of an independent Lithuania governed by democratic principles, despite the presence of German troops in the country during World War I.
- 1940 – Second World War: The British Royal Navy boarded and captured the German tanker Altmark and freed 299 captured British sailors.
- 1985 – "The Hizballah Program" was released, describing the ideology and goals of the Shia Islamic political and paramilitary organization Hizballah.
- 2005 – The Kyoto Protocol, an amendment to the international treaty on climate change, entered into force.
More anniversaries: February 15 – February 16 – February 17
February 17: Mardi Gras/Shrove Tuesday (Western Christianity, 2015); Independence Day in Kosovo (2008)
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- 1400 – The body of the deposed king Richard II was put on display in London's Old St Paul's Cathedral, after his death in Pontefract Castle.
- 1600 – Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno, best-known as a proponent of heliocentrism and the infinity of the universe, was burned at the stake as a heretic for his denial of several core Catholic doctrines by the Roman Inquisition.
- 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.
- 1949 – Chaim Weizmann (pictured) began his term as the first President of Israel.
- 2011 – Bahrain security forces launched a pre-dawn raid on protesters in Pearl Roundabout in Manama, killing four of them.
More anniversaries: February 16 – February 17 – February 18
February 18: Ash Wednesday in Western Christianity (2015); 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 Malagasy began at sea on the slave ship Meermin, leading to the ship's destruction on Cape Agulhas in present-day South Africa and the recapture of the instigators.
- 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.
- 1942 – World War II: The Imperial Japanese Army began the systematic extermination of perceived hostile elements among Chinese Singaporeans.
- 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.
More anniversaries: February 17 – February 18 – February 19
February 19: Chinese New Year, Korean New Year, Tsagaan Sar in Mongolia, and Losar in Bhutan and Tibet (2015)
- 1600 – The Peruvian stratovolcano Huaynaputina exploded in the most violent eruption in the recorded history of South America.
- 1807 – Former U.S. Vice-President Aaron Burr was arrested for treason after having raised a private army to allegedly create an independent nation in Spanish Texas.
- 1910 – The football stadium Old Trafford in Greater Manchester, England, hosted its first match between Manchester United and Liverpool.
- 1965 – Colonel Phạm Ngọc Thảo of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, and a communist spy of the North Vietnamese Viet Minh, along with Generals Lâm Văn Phát and Trần Thiện Khiêm attempted a coup against the military junta of Nguyễn Khánh.
- 1986 – The first module of the Soviet space station Mir (pictured) was launched, establishing the first long-term research station in space.
More anniversaries: February 18 – February 19 – February 20
- 1685 – French colonists, led by Robert de La Salle, landed at Matagorda Bay in present-day Texas, which later allowed the United States to claim the region as part of the Louisiana Purchase.
- 1816 – Italian composer Gioachino Rossini's opera buffa The Barber of Seville was hissed by the audience during its debut at the Teatro Argentina in Rome.
- 1943 – A fissure opened in a cornfield in the Mexican state of Michoacán and turned into the cinder cone volcano Parícutin, growing 424 m (1,391 ft) in eight years.
- 1965 – NASA's Ranger 8 spacecraft successfully transmitted 7,137 photographs (sample pictured) of the Moon in the final 23 minutes of its mission before crashing into Mare Tranquillitatis.
- 2010 – Severe flooding and mudslides on the island of Madeira, Portugal, killed 42 people.
More anniversaries: February 19 – February 20 – February 21
February 21: Language Movement Day in Bangladesh
- 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.
- 1848 – Communist theorists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto, which became one of the world's most influential political tracts.
- 1921 – Rezā Khan seized Tehran to make himself the most powerful person in Iran, which eventually led to the establishment of the Pahlavi dynasty.
- 1965 – Black nationalist Malcolm X (pictured) was assassinated while giving a speech in New York City's Audubon Ballroom.
- 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: Feast of Cathedra Petri (Catholicism)
- 1316 – The forces of the infante Ferdinand of Majorca fought against those loyal to Princess Matilda of Hainaut in the Battle of Picotin on the Peloponnese peninsula in Greece.
- 1876 – Swedish woman Karolina Olsson went to sleep and purportedly fell into a state of hibernation for the next 32 years.
- 1909 – The sixteen United States Navy battleships of the Great White Fleet, led by Connecticut (pictured), completed a circumnavigation of the globe.
- 1995 – The photos taken by the Corona spy satellite program were declassified under an executive order signed by U.S. President Bill Clinton.
- 2012 – A train failed to apply its brakes and crashed through a buffer stop at Once Station in Buenos Aires, resulting in 51 deaths and more than 700 injuries.
More anniversaries: February 21 – February 22 – February 23
February 23: Clean Monday (Eastern Christianity, 2015); National Day in Brunei (1984); Defender of the Fatherland Day in Russia and several other former Soviet republics
- 1739 – The identity of English highwayman Dick Turpin was uncovered by his former schoolteacher, who recognised his handwriting, leading to Turpin's arrest.
- 1885 – Sino-French War: France gained an important victory in the Battle of Đồng Đăng in the Tonkin region of what is now Vietnam.
- 1909 – The Silver Dart (pictured) was flown off the ice of Bras d'Or Lake on Cape Breton Island, making it the first controlled powered flight in Canada.
- 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.
- 2005 – France passed a law requiring lycée teachers to teach students "the positive role" of French colonialism, creating so much public opposition that it was repealed within a year.
More anniversaries: February 22 – February 23 – February 24
February 24: Independence Day in Estonia (1918); Flag Day in Mexico; National Artist Day in Thailand
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- 1809 – After standing only 15 years, London's Drury Lane theatre, the third building of that name, burned down.
- 1826 – The Treaty of Yandabo was signed, ending the First Anglo-Burmese War, the longest and most expensive war in the history of British India.
- 1875 – The steamship SS Gothenburg hit a section of the Great Barrier Reef at low tide and sank northwest of Holbourne Island, Queensland, Australia, with over 100 deaths.
- 1920 – At a meeting of the German Workers' Party, Adolf Hitler outlined its 25-point programme and the party changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers' Party.
- 1946 – Colonel Juan Perón (pictured), founder of the political movement that became known as Peronism, was elected to his first term as President of Argentina.
More anniversaries: February 23 – February 24 – February 25
February 25: Soviet Occupation Day in Georgia (1921); National Day in Kuwait (1961)
- 1570 – Pope Pius V issued the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis to excommunicate Queen Elizabeth I and her followers in the Church of England.
- 1836 – American inventor and industrialist Samuel Colt received a patent for a "revolving gun", later known as a revolver.
- 1948 – Fearful of civil war and Soviet intervention in recent unrest, Czechoslovakian president Edvard Beneš (pictured) ceded control over the government to the Communist Party.
- 1992 – Nagorno-Karabakh War: Armenian armed forces killed 613 ethnic Azerbaijani civilians from the town of Khojali in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan.
- 2011 – The Fianna Fáil-led government suffered the worst defeat of a sitting Irish government since the formation of the Irish state in 1921.
More anniversaries: February 24 – February 25 – February 26
February 26: Ayyám-i-Há begins (Bahá'í calendar); Liberation Day in Kuwait (1991); Saviours' Day (Nation of Islam)
- 1233 – Mongol–Jin War: The Mongols captured Kaifeng, the capital of the Jin dynasty, after besieging it for months.
- 1815 – Napoleon Bonaparte (pictured) escaped from Elba, an island off the coast of Italy where he had been exiled after the signing of the Treaty of Fontainebleau one year earlier.
- 1935 – With the aid of a radio station in Daventry, England, and two receiving antennas, Scottish engineer and inventor Robert Watson-Watt first demonstrated the use of radar.
- 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: Independence Day in the Dominican Republic (1844)
- 380 – Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire as a result of the Edict of Thessalonica.
- 1776 – American Revolutionary War: A Patriot victory in the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge resulted in the capture or arrest of 850 Loyalists over the following days.
- 1900 – FC Bayern Munich, Germany's most successful football club, was founded by eleven players led by Franz John.
- 1933 – The Reichstag building in Berlin, the assembly location of the German Parliament, was set on fire (pictured), a pivotal event in the establishment of the Nazi regime in Germany.
- 2002 – A violent riot in Gujarat, India, where at least 1,000 people (mostly Muslims) were killed, was triggered by a train fire.
More anniversaries: February 26 – February 27 – February 28
February 28: Kalevala Day in Finland
- 202 BC – Rebel leader Liu Bang was enthroned as Emperor Gaozu of Han after overthrowing the Qin dynasty, the first imperial dynasty of China.
- 1897 – Ranavalona III, the last sovereign ruler of the Kingdom of Madagascar, was deposed by a French military force.
- 1928 – Indian physicist C. V. Raman (pictured) and his colleagues discovered what is now called the Raman effect, for which he later became the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize in Physics.
- 1975 – In London an underground train failed to stop at Moorgate terminus station and crashed into the end of the tunnel, killing 43 people.
- 1985 – The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army launched a mortar attack on a Royal Ulster Constabulary station in Corry Square, Newry, Northern Ireland, killing nine.
More anniversaries: February 27 – February 28 – March 1
February 29: Leap day (Gregorian calendar)
- 1704 – Joint French and Native American forces destroyed the English settlement at Deerfield, Massachusetts, during Queen Anne's War, killing over fifty colonists.
- 1720 – Unable to establish a joint sovereignty similar to Great Britain'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, 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.
- 1944 – The Admiralty Islands campaign during the Pacific War of World War II began when American forces assaulted Los Negros Island, the third largest of the Admiralty Islands.
- 2004 – Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced to resign as President of Haiti following popular rebel uprising.
More anniversaries: February 28 – March 1 – March 2
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
It is now 10:25 on Sunday, March 1, 2015 (UTC) – Purge cache for this page
