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.