Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/February

Selected anniversaries / On this day archive

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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

Medvėgalis hillfort in 2010

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.

Francesco Maria Veracini (b. 1690)
Thomas Campbell (b. 1763)
George Whipple (d. 1976)
Sheila Heaney (d. 1991)

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February 2

Excerpt of the Breviary of Alaric

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.

Piotr Skarga (b. 1536)
Alix Le Clerc (b. 1576)
Vincenzo Dimech (d. 1831)
Abu Salman Shahjahanpuri (d. 2021)

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

Painting of the Battle of San Lorenzo

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.

Coloman, King of Hungary (d. 1116)
Horace Greeley (b. 1811)
Simone Weil (b. 1909)
Henri Claireaux (b. 1911)

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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

London low emission zone sign

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.

Rabanus Maurus (d. 856)
Anders Bure (d. 1646)
Karen Carpenter (d. 1983)
Hy Cohen (d. 2021)

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February 5

The "Welcome Stranger" gold nugget

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.

Shunzhi Emperor (d. 1661)
Thomas Carlyle (d. 1881)
Colin Robert Chase (b. 1935)
Margaret Oakley Dayhoff (d. 1983)

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

Battle of San Domingo

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.

Pierre André Latreille (d. 1833)
Maria Mies (b. 1931)
Juan Sartori (b. 1981)
Gary Moore (d. 2011)

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February 7: Independence Day in Grenada (1974)

Contemporary painting of the siege of Gibraltar

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.

Henry Fuseli (b. 1741)
Tony Tan (b. 1940)
Angel Aquino (b. 1973)
Richard Williams (d. 1980)

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

Denis Sassou Nguesso

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.

Guercino (b. 1591)
Rebecca Lee Crumpler (b. 1831)
Peter Kropotkin (d. 1921)
Emman Atienza (b. 2006)

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

Australian Defence Force Ensign

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.

Agnès Sorel (d. 1450)
Alberto Vargas (b. 1896)
Philipp Harnoncourt (b. 1931)
Tom Hiddleston (b. 1981)

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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

Namdaemun gate during the arson event

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, six 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.

Guillermo Trujillo Durán (b. 1878)
Wilhelm Röntgen (d. 1923)
Bob Iger (b. 1951)
Lisa Marie Varon (b. 1971)

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

UCL Main Building

1826 – London University, later University College London (pictured), was founded as the first secular university in England.
1851 – As part of celebrations marking the separation of Victoria from New South Wales, the inaugural first-class cricket match in Australia began at the Launceston Racecourse in Tasmania.
1976 – The Frente de Liberación Homosexual made their final public appearance, shortly before the group's dissolution due to political repression after the Argentine coup d'état.
2001 – The computer worm Anna Kournikova, which would affect millions of users worldwide, was released by a 20-year-old Dutch student.

Thomas Edison (b. 1847)
Helene Kröller-Müller (b. 1869)
Keith Holyoake (b. 1904)
Jennifer Aniston (b. 1969)

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

Edvard Munch's The Scream

1691 – A papal conclave convened to select a new pope after the death of Pope Alexander VIII.
1924 – George Gershwin's composition Rhapsody in Blue premiered at Aeolian Hall in New York.
1994 – Edvard Munch's painting The Scream (pictured) was stolen from the National Gallery of Norway.
2003 – Protesters in La Paz and the Bolivian government brokered a deal to end two days of rioting against a proposed salary tax.

Ethan Allen (d. 1789)
Charles Darwin (b. 1809)
Bill Russell (b. 1934)
Anna Anderson (d. 1984)

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February 13: Carnival begins in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2026)

Coso artifact

1660 – The four-year-old Charles XI became King of Sweden upon his father's death.
1891 – Frances Coles was killed in the last of eleven unsolved murders of women that took place in or near the impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London.
1961 – Geode prospectors near Olancha, California, discovered what they claimed to be a 500,000-year-old rock with a 1920s-era spark plug encased within (pictured).
2017 – Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, was assassinated using VX nerve agent in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Muhammad ibn Ra'iq (d. 942)
Isabella d'Este (d. 1539)
Dorothy Bliss (b. 1916)
Wanda Perdelwitz (b. 1984)

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February 14: Valentine's Day

Detail from Pale Blue Dot

1655 – Arauco War: The Mapuche carried out a series of coordinated attacks against Spanish settlements and forts in colonial Chile, beginning a ten-year period of warfare.
1779 – Native Hawaiians killed the English explorer Captain James Cook as he attempted to kidnap Kalaniʻōpuʻu, the ruling chief of the island of Hawaii.
1990 – The NASA space probe Voyager 1 took Pale Blue Dot (detail pictured), a photograph of Earth from a record distance of 40.5 astronomical units (6.06 billion km; 3.76 billion mi).
2005 – The online video platform YouTube was founded by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim.
2007 – The first of several bombings in Zahedan, Iran, killed 18 members of the Revolutionary Guards.

Valentin Friedland (b. 1490)
Eleanora Atherton (b. 1782)
Nadezhda Krupskaya (b. 1869)
Vito Genovese (d. 1969)

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February 15: National Flag of Canada Day; Statehood Day in Serbia; Susan B. Anthony Day in some parts of the United States

Don Dunstan

438 – The Codex Theodosianus, a compilation of the laws of the Roman Empire, was published.
1763 – Prussia, Saxony and the Habsburg monarchy signed the Treaty of Hubertusburg, ending the Third Silesian War.
1940 – The official premiere of Paul Creston's Saxophone Sonata took place at the Carnegie Chamber Hall, with saxophonist Cecil Leeson, who commissioned the work, and Creston on piano.
1979 – Don Dunstan (pictured) resigned as Premier of South Australia, ending a decade of sweeping social liberalisation.
2018 – Following nationwide protests, Hailemariam Desalegn announced his resignation as prime minister of Ethiopia, remaining in post as a caretaker until he was succeeded by Abiy Ahmed.

Gisela of Swabia (d. 1043)
Matt Groening (b. 1954)
Mo Tae-bum (b. 1989)
Dawa Dem (d. 2018)

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February 16: 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)

Act of Independence of Lithuania

1249 – King Louis IX dispatched André de Longjumeau as the French ambassador to the Mongol Empire.
1918 – The Council of Lithuania signed the Act of Independence (pictured), proclaiming the restoration of an independent Lithuania.
1922 – A landslide in Byblos revealed a sarcophagus in an underground tomb that was later discovered to be part of a large Bronze Age necropolis.
1996 – Eleven people died in a train collision in Silver Spring, Maryland, leading to the creation of comprehensive U.S. federal rules for the design of passenger cars.

Richard of Dover (d. 1184)
Coluccio Salutati (b. 1331)
Michael Holding (b. 1954)
Elizabeth Olsen (b. 1989)

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

Helicopter stolen in the 1974 White House incident

1859 – Cochinchina campaign: French Navy forces captured the Citadel of Saigon, defended by 1,000 Vietnamese soldiers of the Nguyễn dynasty.
1904 – Italian composer Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly premiered at La Scala in Milan to poor reviews, forcing him to revise the opera.
1964 – Gabonese military officers overthrew President Léon M'ba, but French forces, honouring a 1960 treaty, forcibly reinstated him two days later.
1974 – A U.S. Army soldier stole a Bell UH-1 helicopter (pictured) and landed it on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C.
2011 – Arab Spring: Bahraini security forces killed four protesters in a pre-dawn raid at the Pearl Roundabout in Manama, while the "Day of Rage" took place in Libya with nationwide protests against Muammar Gaddafi's government.

Joseph Favre (b. 1849; d. 1903)
María de las Mercedes Barbudo (d. 1849)
Don Tallon (b. 1916)
Hung Liu (b. 1948)

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

Protesters during the Revolution of Dignity

3102 BCE – According to Hindu scriptures, Kali Yuga, the last of the four stages that the world goes through as part of the cycle of yugas, began.
1814 – War of the Sixth Coalition: French troops led by Napoleon forced the Army of Bohemia to retreat after it advanced dangerously close to Paris.
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.
2014 – A series of violent events (pictured) involving protesters, riot police, and unknown shooters began in Kyiv that culminated in the ousting of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych five days later.

Angilbert (d. 814)
Per Brahe the Younger (b. 1602)
Ōyama Sutematsu (d. 1919)
DK (b. 1997)

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February 19:

A depiction of the Venezuelan crisis of 1902–1903

1811 – Peninsular War: Outnumbered French forces under Édouard Mortier routed and nearly destroyed Spanish troops at the Battle of the Gebora near Badajoz, Spain.
1903 – A blockade against Venezuela (depicted), caused by President Cipriano Castro's refusal to pay foreign debts, was lifted.
1942 – World War II: U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the forcible relocation of over 112,000 Japanese Americans to internment camps.
1948 – The Southeast Asian Youth Conference, which is believed to have inspired armed communist rebellions in different Asian countries, opened in Calcutta, India.

Nicolaus Copernicus (b. 1473)
Choekyi Gyaltsen, 10th Panchen Lama (b. 1938)
Jennifer Doudna (b. 1964)
Harper Lee (d. 2016)

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

Avro CF-105 Arrow

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.

Wulfric of Haselbury (d. 1154)
Elizabeth Holloway Marston (b. 1893)
Gail Kim (b. 1977)
Tōru Takemitsu (d. 1996)

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February 21

Malcolm X

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.

Gaius Caesar (d. AD 4)
Léo Delibes (b. 1836)
Incas (parakeet) (d. 1918)
Elliot Page (b. 1987)

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February 22

Daytona International Speedway

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.

Peder Syv (b. 1631)
James Russell Lowell (b. 1819)
Clarence 13X (b. 1928)
Bronwyn Oliver (b. 1959)

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

Christian, Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels

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.

al-Zafir (b. 1133)
Allan MacLeod Cormack (b. 1924)
Edward Elgar (d. 1934)
Shiena Nishizawa (b. 1997)

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February 24: Independence Day in Estonia (1918)

Louis Thomas Villaret de Joyeuse

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.

Æthelberht of Kent (d. 616)
Judah Folkman (b. 1933)
Nina Simonovich-Efimova (d. 1948)
Leo Ornstein (d. 2002)

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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)

USS Ranger

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.

Emma Catherine Embury (b. 1806)
Elizabeth Gertrude Britton (d. 1934)
Divya Bharti (b. 1974)
Don Bradman (d. 2001)

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February 26

Nabonassar's name in Akkadian

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.

Fatima bint al-Ahmar (d. 1349)
Archibald Campbell, 9th Earl of Argyll (b. 1629)
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (b. 1954)
Jennie Smillie Robertson (d. 1981)

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

Memorial to the victims of the Sumgait pogrom

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.

Robert of Melun (d. 1167)
Alice Hamilton (b. 1869)
Ganesh Vasudev Mavalankar (d. 1956)
Leah Poulton (b. 1984)

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

Ranavalona III of Madagascar

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.

Cornelius Gemma (b. 1535)
Alfred von Schlieffen (b. 1833)
Charles Bassett and Elliot See (d. 1966)
Koesbini (d. 1991)

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February 29

A damaged building from the 1960 Agadir earthquake

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.

Oswald of Worcester (d. 992)
Kamil Tolon (b. 1912)
Oswaldo Payá (b. 1952)
Carmel Busuttil (b. 1964)

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Selected anniversaries / On this day archive

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