February 29 in History

February 29 is the 60th day of the Gregorian calendar in such a year, with 306 days remaining until the end of that year.

February 29, known as a leap day in the Gregorian calendar.

• 1916 – In South Carolina, the minimum working age for factory, mill, and mine workers is raised from twelve to fourteen years old.
• 1940 – For her role as Mammy in the film Gone with the Wind, Hattie McDaniel became the first African American to win an Academy Award.
• 1940 – In a ceremony held in Berkeley, California, due to WWII, physicist Ernest Lawrence received the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics from Sweden’s Consul General.
• 1972 – Hank Aaron became the first player in the history of major league baseball to sign a $200,000 contract.
• 1988 – South African archbishop Desmond Tutu was arrested with 100 other clergymen during a five-day anti-apartheid demonstration in Cape Town.

February 28 in History

February 28 is the 59th day of the year. There are 307 days remaining until the end of the year.

• 1784 – John Wesley chartered the Methodist Church.
• 1787 – The charter establishing the institution now known as the University of Pittsburgh was granted.
• 1827 – The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad became the first railroad in United States offering commercial transportation of both people and freight.
• 1849 – Regular steamboat service from the west to the east coast began with the arrival of the SS California in San Francisco Bay, four months and twenty-two days after leaving New York Harbor.
• 1854 – The Republican Party of the United States was organized in Ripon, Wisconsin.
• 1883 – The first vaudeville theater opened in Boston, Massachusetts.
• 1885 – AT&T was incorporated in New York as the subsidiary of American Bell Telephone.
• 1893 – The USS Indiana, the lead ship of her class and the first battleship in the US Navy comparable to foreign battleships, was launched.
• 1897 – Queen Ranavalona III, the last monarch of Madagascar, was deposed by a French military force.
• 1922 – The United Kingdom ended its protectorate over Egypt.
• 1935 – Wallace Carothers, a scientist at DuPont, invented nylon. 
• 1939 – The erroneous word "dord” was discovered in the Webster’s New International Dictionary (2nd edition).
• 1940 – Basketball was televised for the first time from Madison Square Garden in New York City.
• 1953 – James D. Watson and Francis Crick announced to friends that they have determined the chemical structure of DNA. The formal announcement took place on April 25 following publication in April's issue of the scientific journal Nature.
• 1954 – The first color television sets, using the NTSC standard, were offered for sale to the general public.
• 1993 – Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents raided the Branch Davidian church in Waco, Texas with a warrant to arrest the group's leader. Four BATF agents and five Davidians die in the initial raid, starting a 51-day standoff.
• 1995 – Denver International Airport officially opened in Denver, Colorado.
• 2004 – Over 1 million Taiwanese participated in the 228 Hand-in-Hand Rally form a 310 mile-long human chain to commemorate the 228 Incident in 1947.

February 27 in History

February 27 is the 58th day of the year. There are 308 days remaining until the end of the year.

• 425 – The University of Constantinople was founded by Emperor Theodosius II at the urging of his wife Aelia Eudocia.
• 1700 – The island of New Britain in Papua New Guinea was discovered.
• 1797 – The Bank of England issued the first one-pound and two-pound notes.
• 1801 – Pursuant to the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801, Washington, D.C. was placed under the jurisdiction of the US Congress.
• 1812 – Lord Byron gave his first address as a member of the House of Lords, in defense of Luddite violence against industrialism.
• 1860 –  Abraham Lincoln gave his Cooper Union speech in New York City.
• 1864 – The first Union prisoners arrived at the Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia.
• 1900 – The British Labour Party was founded.
• 1922 – A challenge to the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution, allowing women the right to vote, was rebuffed by the Supreme Court in Leser v. Garnett.
• 1939 – The US Supreme Court ruled that sit-down strikes violate property owners' rights and are therefore illegal.
• 1951 – The 22nd Amendment to the US Constitution, limiting Presidents to two terms, was ratified.
• 1964 – The Italian government asked for help to keep the Leaning Tower of Pisa from falling over.
• 1973 – The American Indian Movement occupied Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
• 1974 – People magazine was published for the first time.
• 1986 – The US Senate allowed its debates to be televised on a trial basis.

February 26 in History

February 26 is the 57th day of the year. There are 309 days remaining until the end of the year.

• 1815 – Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from Elba.
• 1863 – US President Abraham Lincoln signed the National Currency Act into law.
• 1870 – In New York City, the first demonstration of a pneumatic subway opened to the public.
• 1909 - Kinemacolor, the first successful color motion picture process, was first shown to the general public at the Palace Theatre in London.
• 1917 – The Original Dixieland Jass Band recorded the first jazz record for the Victor Talking Machine Company in New Jersey.
• 1919 – President Woodrow Wilson signed an act of the US Congress establishing most of the Grand Canyon as a US National Park. 
• 1920 – The first German Expressionist film and early horror movie, “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” premièred in Berlin.
• 1929 – President Calvin Coolidge signed an Executive Order establishing the 96,000 acre Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.
• 1971 – UN Secretary General U Thant signed a UN proclamation of the vernal equinox as Earth Day.
• 1980 – Egypt and Israel establish full diplomatic relations.
• 1993 – In New York City, a truck bomb parked below the North Tower of the World Trade Center explodes, killing six and injuring over a thousand.
• 1995 – The United Kingdom’s oldest investment banking institute, Barings Bank, collapsed after a securities broker, Nick Leeson, lost $1.4 billion by speculating on the Singapore International Monetary Exchange using futures contracts.

February 25 in History

February 25 is the 56th day of the year. There are 310 days remaining until the end of the year.

• 1570 – Pope Pius V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I of England.
• 1793 – President George Washington held the first Cabinet meeting as President of the US. 
• 1836 – Samuel Colt was granted a US patent for the Colt revolver.
• 1841 – Pierre-Auguste Renoir, French painter, was born. He died in 1919
• 1866 – CA miners discovered the Calaveras Skull, indicated that man, mastodons, and elephants co-existed. The human skull was later proven to be a hoax.
• 1870 – Hiram Revels, from MS, was sworn into the US Senate becoming the first African American to sit in Congress.
• 1901 – J.P. Morgan incorporated the United States Steel Corporation. 
• 1919 – Oregon became the 1st state to impose a gasoline tax.
• 1925 – Glacier Bay National Monument was established in Alaska.
• 1928 – Charles Jenkins Laboratories of Washington, DC became the first holder of a television license from the Federal Radio Commission.
• 1933 – The USS Ranger was launched. It is the first US Navy ship to be built solely as an aircraft carrier.
• 1941 – In occupied Amsterdam, a general strike was declared in response to increasing anti-Jewish measures by the Nazis.
• 1951 – The first Pan American Games were held in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 1975 – Elijah Muhammad, American Black Muslim leader, died. He was born in 1897.
• 1983 – Tennessee Williams, American playwright, died. He was born in 1911.
• 1986 – Corazon Aquino became the Philippines first woman president.

February 24 in History

February 24 is the 55th day of the year. There are 311 days remaining until the end of the year.

• 1582 – Pope Gregory XIII announced the Gregorian calendar.
• 1607 – L’Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi, one of the first works recognized as an opera premièred.
• 1711 – Handel’s Rinaldo, the first Italian opera written for the London stage, premiered.
• 1803 – In Marbury v. Madison, the US Supreme Court established the principle of judicial review.
• 1839 – William Otis received a patent for the steam shovel.
• 1863 – Arizona is organized as a US territory.
• 1868 – The first parade to have floats was staged at Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Louisiana.
• 1868 – Andrew Johnson became the first US President to be impeached  by the US House of Representatives.
• 1877 – Ettie Rout, New Zealand war hero, was born. She died in 1936.
• 1896 – The Tootsie Roll was invented in Chicago. It was the first penny candy to be individually wrapped.
• 1909 – The Hudson Motor Car Company was founded. 
• 1917 – The US ambassador to the United Kingdom was given the Zimmermann Telegram, in which Germany pledged to ensure the return of  New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona to Mexico if Mexico declared war on the United States.
• 1920 – The Nazi Party was founded.
• 1970 – National Public Radio was founded in the United States.
• 1980 – The US Olympic hockey team defeated Finland 4-2 to win the gold medal.
• 1981 – Buckingham Palace announced the engagement of The Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer.
• 1983 – The US Congress released a report that condemned the practice of Japanese internment during World War II.
• 2008 – Fidel Castro retired as the President of Cuba after nearly 50 years.
• 2011 – The final launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery.

February 23 in History

February 23 is the 54th day of the year There are 312 days remaining until the end of the year.

• 632 – The Last Sermon (Khutbah, Khutbatul Wada’) of the prophet Muhammad.
• 1455 – The Gutenberg Bible, the first Western book printed with movable type, was published.
• 1836 – The Battle of the Alamo began in San Antonio, Texas.
• 1861 – President-elect Abraham Lincoln secretly arrived in Washington, DC, after thwarting an assassination plot in Baltimore, Maryland.
• 1883 – Alabama became the first US state to enact an antitrust law.
• 1886 – Charles Martin Hall produced the first samples of man-made aluminum, after several years of intensive work. He was assisted in this project by his older sister Julia Brainerd Hall.
• 1898 – Emile Zola was imprisoned in France after publishing J’accuse, a letter accusing the French government of anti-Semitism and wrongfully imprisoning Captain Alfred Dreyfus. 
• 1903 – Cuba leased Guantanamo Bay to the United States "in perpetuity.”
• 1905 – Chicago attorney Paul Harris and three other businessmen met for lunch to form the Rotary Club, the world's first service club.
• 1927 – The Federal Radio Commission (later renamed the Federal Communications Commission) began to regulate the use of radio frequencies in the US.
• 1941 – Plutonium was first produced and isolated by Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg. 
• 1942 – Japanese submarines fired artillery shells at the California coastline near Santa Barbara.
• 1947 – The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) was founded.
• 1954 – The first mass inoculation of children against polio with the Salk vaccine began in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
• 1983 – The US Environmental Protection Agency announced its intent to buy out and evacuate the dioxin-contaminated community of Times Beach, Missouri.

February 22 in History

February 22 is the 53rd day of the year. There are 313 days remaining until the end of the year.

• 1632 – Galileo’s “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems” was published.
• 1732 – George Washington, first President of the US, was born. He died in 1799.
• 1819 – Spain sold Florida to the US for five million US dollars.
• 1853 – Washington University in St. Louis was founded as Eliot Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri.
• 1855 – Pennsylvania State University was founded in State College, Pennsylvania as the Farmers’ High School of Pennsylvania.
• 1856 – The Republican Party opened its first national meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
• 1879 – In Utica, New York, Frank Woolworth opened the first of his Woolworth stores.
• 1889 – North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Washington were admitted to the US.
• 1924 – Calvin Coolidge became the 1st US President to deliver a radio address from the White House.
• 1997 – In Roslin, Scotland, scientists announced that an adult sheep named Dolly had been successfully cloned.

February 21 in History

February 21 is the 52nd day of the year. There are 314 days remaining until the end of the year.

February 21 is International Mother Language Day (UNESCO)

• 1804 – The first self-propelling steam locomotive made its debut in Wales.
• 1842 – John Greenough was granted the first United States patent for the sewing machine.
• 1848 – Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published the Communist Manifesto.
• 1874 – The Oakland Daily Tribune published its first newspaper.
• 1878 – The first telephone book was issued in New Haven, Connecticut. 
• 1885 – The newly completed Washington Monument was dedicated.
• 1918  – The last Carolina Parakeet died in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo.
• 1925  – The New Yorker published its first issue. 
• 1947 – In New York City, Edwin Land demonstrated the first "instant camera,” the Polaroid Land Camera. 
• 1952 – The British government, under Winston Churchill, abolished identity cards in the United Kingdom to "set the people free.”
• 1953 – Francis Crick and James D. Watson discovered the structure of the DNA molecule. 
• 1965 – Malcolm X was assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City by members of the Nation of Islam.
• 1972 – US President Richard Nixon visited the People’s Republic of China to normalize Sino-American relations.
• 1974 – The last Israeli soldiers leave the west bank of the Suez Canal pursuant to a truce with Egypt.
• 1995 – Steve Fossett became the first person to make a solo flight across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon.
• 2004 – The first European political party, the European Greens, was established in Rome.

February 20 in History

February 20 is the 51st day of the year. There are 315 days remaining until the end of the year. 

• 1685 – Rene-Robert Cavelier established Fort St. Louis at Matagorda Bay thus forming the basis for France’s claim to Texas.
• 1792 – The United States Post Office Department was created.
• 1872 – In New York City, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened.
• 1873 – The University of California opened its first medical school in San Francisco.
• 1877 – Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake premièred at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.
• 1901 – The legislature of  Hawaii Territory convened for the first time.
• 1931 – Congress approved the construction of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge by the state of California.
• 1933 – The Congress of the US proposed the 21st Amendment to US Constitution ending prohibition.
• 1935 – Caroline Mikkelsen became the first woman to set foot in Antarctica.
• 1942 – Lieutenant Edward O’Hara became America's first World War II flying ace.
• 1943 – American movie studio executives agreed to allow the Office of War Information to censor films.
• 1943 – The Saturday Evening Post published the first of Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms in support of US President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union address theme of Four Freedoms.
• 1952 – Emmett Ashford became the first African-American umpire in organized baseball.
• 1962 – While on Friendship 7, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth.
• 1998 – American figure skater Tara Lipinski became the youngest gold-medalist at the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. 

February 19 in History

February 19 is the 50th day of the year. There are 316 days remaining until the end of the year.

• 1674 - A provision of the Treaty of Westminster transferred the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam to England, and it was renamed New York.
• 1807 – In Alabama, former US Vice President Aaron Burr was arrested for treason.
• 1846 – In Austin, Texas, the newly formed Texas state government was officially installed. 
• 1847 – The first group of rescuers reached the Donner Party, which had become snow bound in the Sierra Nevada mountains in November. There were only seven survivors from the original 87 members of the wagon train, and they had resorted to cannibalism to stay alive.
• 1859 – The defense of temporary insanity was successfully used in the United States for the first time.
• 1861 – Serfdom was abolished in Russia.
• 1963 – The publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique reawakened the feminist movement in the United States.
• 2002 – NASA’s Mars Odyssey space probe began mapping the surface of Mars using a thermal emission imaging system.

February 18 in History

February 18 is the 49th day of the year. There are 316 days remaining until the end of the year.

• 1841 – The first ongoing filibuster in the United States Senate began and lasted until March 11th.
• 1878 – John Tunstall was murdered by outlaw Jesse Evans, sparking the Lincoln County War in Lincoln County, New Mexico. 
• 1885 – Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was first published.
• 1901 – Winston Churchill made his first speech in the House of Commons.
• 1911 – The first official flight with air mail took place in Allahabad, British India, when Henri Pequet, a 23-year-old pilot, delivered 6,500 letters to Naini, about 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) away.
• 1913 – Pedro Lascurain became President of Mexico for 45 minutes - the shortest term to date of any person as president of any country
• 1930 – Elm Farm Ollie became the first cow to fly in a fixed-wing aircraft and also the first cow to be milked in an aircraft.
• 1946 – Sailors of the Royal Indian Navy mutinied in Mumbai harbour, from where it would spread throughout British India and involved 78 ships, 20 shore establishments, and 20,000 sailors
• 1954 – The first Church of Scientology was established in Los Angeles, California.
• 1970 – The Chicago Seven were found not guilty of conspiring to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
• 1972 – The California Supreme Court invalidated the state's death penalty in the case of People v. Anderson, and commutes the sentences of all death row inmates to life imprisonment.
• 1978 – The first Ironman Triathlon competition took place on the island of Oahu, Hawaii.
• 1979 – Snow fell in the Sahara Desert in southern Algeria for the only time in recorded history.
• 2001 – Seven-time NASCAR champion Dale Earnhardt died in an crash at the Daytona 500.

February 17 in History

February 17 is the 48th day of the year. There are 318 days remaining until the end of the year.

• 1621 – Myles Standish was appointed as first commander of Plymouth Colony.
• 1801 – An electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr was resolved when Jefferson was elected, by the United States House of Representatives, President of the United States and Burr became Vice President.
• 1864 – The H. L. Hunley became the first submarine to engage and sink a warship, the USS Housatonic.
• 1904 – Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini premièred at Teatro alla Scala (La Scala Opera House) in Milan, Italy.
• 1933 – Newsweek magazine was published for the first time.
• 1933 – The Blaine Act ended Prohibition in the United States.
• 1968 – In Springfield, Massachusetts, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame opened.
• 1972 – Sales of the Volkswagen Beetle exceeded those of the Ford Model-T.

February 16 in History

February 16 is the 47th day of the year. There are 319 days remaining until the end of the year.

• 1852 – Studebaker Brothers Wagon Company, precursor of the automobile manufacturer, was established
• 1868 – In NYC, the Jolly Corks organization was renamed the  Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.
• 1923 – Howard Carter unsealed the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun.
• 1937 – Wallace H. Carothers received a United States patent for nylon.
• 1957 – The Toddlers’ Truce resulted in a controversial television shut down between 6.00 pm and 7.00 pm (so young children could be put to bed before the evening schedule began) was abolished in the United Kingdom.
• 1959 – Fidel Castro became Premier of Cuba.
• 1960 – The U.S. Navy submarine USS Triton began Operation Sandblast, setting sail from New London, Connecticut, to begin the first submerged circumnavigation of the globe.
• 1961 – The DuSable Museum of African American History was chartered.
• 1968 – In Haleyville, Alabama, the first 9-1-1 emergency telephone system went into service.
• 1978 – The first computer bulletin board system (CBBS in Chicago, Illinois) was created.
• 1985 – Hezbollah, a Shi’a Muslim militant group and political party based in Lebanon, was founded.
• 2005 – The National Hockey League canceled the entire regular season, becoming the first major sports league in North America to do so over a labor dispute.
• 2006 – The last Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) was decommissioned by the US Army.

February 15 in History

February 15 is the 46th day of the year. There are 320 days remaining until the end of the year.

• 1113 – The Knights Hospitallers was established by Pope Paschal II.
• 1764 – The city of St. Louis, Missouri was established.
• 1820 – Susan B. Anthony, American suffragist, was born. She died in 1906. 
• 1845 – Elihu Root, American statesman & Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was born. He died in 1937.
• 1879 – President Rutherford Hayes signed a bill allowing women attorneys to argue cases before the US Supreme Court.
• 1898 – The USS Maine exploded and sank in Havana Harbor, killing more than 260.
• 1906 – The British Labour Party was organized.
• 1949 – Excavations began at Cave 1 of the Qumran caves, where the first seven Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.
• 1971  – On Decimal Day, the United Kingdom decimalised the pound sterling.
• 1972 – Sound recordings were granted United States’ federal copyright protection for the first time.
• 2001 – First draft of the complete Human Genome was published in the scientific journal Nature.
• 2005 – You Tube was launched in the United States.
• 2010 – Jeanne M. Holm, the first female 1-star general in the USAF and was the first female two-star general in any service branch of the United States, died. She was born in 1921. 

February 14 in History

February 14 is the 45th day of the year. There are 321 days remaining until the end of the year. 

• 1349 – Approximately 2,000 Jews were burned to death or forcibly removed from the city of Strasbourg by mobs.
• 1778 – The US flag was formally recognized by a foreign naval vessel for the first time.
• 1803 – Chief Justice John Marshall declared any act of Congress that conflicts with the Constitution is void.
• 1819 – Christopher Sholes, American inventor of the QWERTY keyboard, was born. He died in 1890.
• 1849 – In New York City, James Polk became the first serving President of the US to have his photograph taken.
• 1852 – Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, the first hospital providing in-patient beds specifically for children, was founded in London.
• 1855 – Texas was linked by telegraph to the rest of the United States, with the completion of a connection between New Orleans and Marshall, Texas.
• 1859 – Oregon was admitted as the 33rd US state.
• 1859 – George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., American engineer and inventor of the Ferris wheel, was born. He died in 1896.
• 1870 - Esther Hobart Morris became the first woman Justice of the Peace in America.
• 1876 – Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray applied for a patent for the telephone.
• 1899 – Voting machines were approved by the US Congress for use in federal elections.
• 1912 – Arizona was admitted as the 48th US state.
• 1920 – The League of Women Voters was founded in Chicago, Illinois.
• 1924 – The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company changed its name to International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).
• 1946 – The Bank of England was nationalized.
• 1949 – The Knesset (Israeli parliament) convened for the first time.
• 1962 – First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy took TV viewers on a tour of the White House.
• 2000 – The first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid occurred when the NEAR Shoemaker entered orbit around asteroid 433 Eros.

February 13 in History

February 13 is the 44th day of the year. There are 322 days remaining until the end of the year.

• 1633 – Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition.
• 1815 – The Cambridge Union Society, a debating society, was founded.
• 1881 – The feminist newspaper “La Citoyenne” was first published in Paris by activist Hubertine Auclert.
• 1894 – Auguste and Louis Lumiere patented the Cinematographe, a combination movie camera and projector.
• 1914 – In New York City, ASCAP was established, in NYC, to protect copyrighted musical compositions.
• 1920 – The Negro National League was formed in Kansas City.
• 1935 – A jury in Flemington, New Jersey found Bruno Hauptmann was found guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the baby son of Charles Lindbergh.
• 1955 – Israel obtained four of the seven Dead Sea scrolls.
• 1960 – Black college students staged the first Nashville sit-ins at three lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee.
• 1967 – American researchers discovered the Madrid Codices by da Vinci in the National Library of Spain.
• 2004 – The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced the discovery of the universe's largest known diamond, white dwarf star BPM 37093. Astronomers named this star "Lucy" after the Beatles’ song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
• 2000 – The last original Peanuts comic strip appeared in newspapers one day after Charles M. Schulz died.

February 12 in History

February 12 is the 43rd day of the year. There are 323 days remaining until the end of the year.

• 1554 – Lady Jane Grey was beheaded for treason a year after claiming the throne of England for nine days.
• 1733 – Georgia was founded as the 13th colony in America by James Oglethorpe, and Savannah as its first city.
• 1809 – Charles Darwin, English naturalist, was born. He died in 1882.
• 1809 – Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States, was born. He died in 1865.
• 1825 – The Creek ceded the last of their lands in Georgia to the US government by the Treaty of Indian Springs, and migrated west. 
• 1855 – Michigan State University was established.
• 1909 – The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded.
• 1912 – Puyi, the Xuantong Emperor, abdicated the throne. He was the last Emperor of China.
• 1914 – The first stone of the Lincoln Memorial was set in place in Washington, D.C.
• 1974 – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, author and 1970 Nobel Laureate, was exiled from the USSR.
• 1990 – Carmen Lawrence became the first female Premier in Australia when she became Premier of Western Australia.
• 1994 – “The Scream” by Edward Munch was stolen from the National Gallery of Norway by four men. It was recovered in May 1994.
• 1999 – President Bill Clinton was acquitted by the United States Senate in his impeachment trial.
• 2004 – The city of San Francisco, California began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

February 11 in History

February 11 is the 42nd day of the year. There are 324 days remaining until the end of the year.

February 11 is National Inventor’s Day in the United States.

• 1752 – Pennsylvania Hospital, the first hospital in the US, was opened by Benjamin Franklin.
• 1794 – First session of the US Senate was open to the public.
• 1826 – The University of London was founded. 
• 1938 – BBC Television produced the world's first Science Fiction television program.
• 1941 – The first gold record was presented to Glenn Miller for Chattanooga Choo Choo.
• 1953 – President Dwight Eisenhower refuses a clemency appeal for convicted Soviet spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.
• 1973 – The first release of American prisoners of war from Vietnam took place.
• 1978 – The People’s Republic of China lifted a ban on works by  Aristotle, William Shakespeare, and Charles Dickens.
• 1990 – Nelson Mandela was released from prison after 27 years as a political prisoner.
• 2011 – The Egyptian Revolution culminated in the resignation of Hosni Mubarak.

February 10 in History

February 10 is the 41st day of the year. There are 325 days remaining until the end of the year.

• 1840 – Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom married Prince Albert.
• 1863 – The fire extinguisher was patented.
• 1870 – The YWCA was founded in New York City.
• 1923 – Texas Tech University was founded in Lubbock, Texas.
• 1933 – The New York City-based Postal Telegraph Company introduced the first singing telegram.
• 1962 – Gary Powers, captured American U2 spay plane pilot, was exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.
• 1967 – The 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which addresses the presidential succession, was ratified.
• 1989 – Ron Brown was elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee, becoming the first African American to lead a major American political party.
• 1996 – The IBM supercomputer Deep Blue defeated Chess Master Garry Kasparov for the first time.
• 1998 – Voters in Maine repealed a gay rights law passed in 1997, becoming the first US State to abandon such a law.
• 2005 – North Korea announced that it possesses nuclear weapons.

February 9 in History

February 9 is the 40th day of the year. There are 326 days remaining until the end of the year.

• 1775 – The British Parliament declared Massachusetts in rebellion.
• 1825 – When no presidential candidate received a majority of electoral votes in the 1824 election, the United States House of Representatives chose John Quincy Adams to be President of the United States. 
• 1870 – The United States Weather Bureau was established.
• 1885 - The first Japanese government approved immigrants arrived in Hawaii.
• 1889 – President Grover Cleveland signed a bill elevating the United States Department of Agriculture to a Cabinet-level agency.
• 1895 – William Morgan created a game called Mintonette, which became known as volleyball.  
• 1900 – Tennis’ Davis Cup competition was established.
• 1950 – Senator Joseph McCarthy accused the United States Department of State of being filled with Communists.
• 1964 – The Beatles made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. 
• 1965 – The first United States combat troops are sent to South Vietnam.
• 1971 – Satchel Paige became the first Negro League player to be voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
• 1995 – Astronaut Bernard Harris became the first African American to perform a spacewalk.
• 1995 – Astronaut Michael Foale became the first Briton to perform a spacewalk.

February 8 in History

February 8 is the 39th day of the year. There are 327 days remaining until the end of the year.

• 1587 – Mary, Queen of Scots was executed on suspicion of being involved in a plot to murder Queen Elizabeth I.
• 1692 – A doctor in Salem Village, Massachusetts Bay Colony suggested that two girls may be suffering from bewitchment, leading to the Salem witch trials.
• 1865 – Delaware voters rejected the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution and voted to continue slavery.
• 1887 – The Dawes Act authorized the President of the United States to survey Native American tribal land and divide it into allotments for individual Native Americans.
• 1910 – The Boy Scouts of America was incorporated.
• 1918 – The “Stars and Stripes” newspaper was published for the first time.
• 1922 – President Warren G. Harding introduced the first radio in the White House.
• 1924 – The first state execution in a US gas chamber took place in Nevada.
• 1946 – The first portion of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, the first serious challenge to the popularity of the Authorized King James Version, was published.
• 1952 – Elizabeth II was proclaimed Queen of the United Kingdom.
• 1960 – Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom issued an Order-in-Council stating she and her family would be known as the House of Windsor and her descendants would take the name Mountbatten-Windsor.
• 1978 – Proceedings of the US Senate were broadcast on radio for the first time.

February 7 in History

February 7 is the 38th day of the year. There are 328 days remaining until the end of the year.

• 1497 – The bonfire of the vanities, the burning of cosmetics, art, and books, occurred in Florence, Italy by supporters of Girolamo Savonarola.
• 1795 – The 11th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which deals with each state’s sovereign immunity, was ratified.
• 1812 – Charles Dickens, English author, was born. He died in 1870.
• 1885 – Sinclair Lewis, American author & Nobel Laureate, was born. He died in 1951.
• 1906 – Puyi, Emperor of China, was born. He was the last Qing emperor. He died in 1967.
• 1907 – The Mud March was the first large procession organized by the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS).
• 1935 – The classic board game Monopoly was invented.
• 1937 – Elihu Root, American statesman & 1912 Nobel laureate, died. He was born in 1845.
• 1979 – Pluto moved inside Neptune’s orbit for the first time since each was discovered.
• 1984 - Astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart made the first untethered space walk, using the Manned Maneuvering Unit. 

February 6 in History

February 6 is the 37th day of the year. There are 329 days remaining until the end of the year.

February 6 is the United Nations’ International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation.

• 1788 – Massachusetts became the sixth state to ratify the US Constitution.
• 1815 – New Jersey granted the first American railroad charter.
• 1819 – Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles founded Singapore.
• 1820 – The first 86 African American immigrants sponsored by the American Colonization Society started a settlement in present-day Liberia.
• 1843 – The first minstrel show in the US, The Virginia Minstrels, opened in Bowery Amphitheatre in New York City.
• 1895 – Babe Ruth, American baseball player, was born. He died in 1948.
• 1913 – Mary Leakey, British anthropologist who discovered the first skull of a fossil ape, was born. She died in 1996.
• 1918 – British women over the age of 30 get the right to vote.
• 1929 – Colin Murdoch, New Zealand inventor of the tranquilizer gun, was born. He died in 2008.
• 1933 – The 20th Amendment to the US Constitution went into effect establishing the terms of the elected federal offices.
• 1952 – Elizabeth II became the first Queen of the United Kingdom since Queen Victoria.
• 1959 – Jack Kilby of texas Instruments filed the first patent for an integrated circuit.
• 1978 – The Blizzard of 1978, one of the worst storms in New England history, hit with sustained winds of 65 mph and snowfall of 4" an hour.
• 1987 – Justice Mary Gaudron was the first woman appointed to the High Court of Australia.
• 1998 – Washington National Airport was renamed Ronald Reagan National Airport.