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.