Events Pre-1600 1339 – The Milanese army and the St. George's (San Giorgio) Mercenaries of Lodrisio Visconti clash in the Battle of Parabiago; Visconti is defeated. 1472 – Orkney and Shetland are pawned by Norway to Scotland in lieu of a dowry for Margaret of Denmark. 1521 – Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León sets out from San Juan, Puerto Rico, for Florida with about 200 prospective colonists. 1547 – Edward VI is crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey. 1553 – Yohannan Sulaqa professes his Catholic belief and is ordained as bishop shortly after; this marks the beginning of the Chaldean Catholic Church.
1601–1900 1685 – René-Robert Cavelier establishes Fort St. Louis at Matagorda Bay thus forming the basis for France's claim to Texas. 1792 – The Postal Service Act, establishing the United States Post Office Department, is signed by United States President George Washington. 1798 – Louis-Alexandre Berthier removes Pope Pius VI from power. 1813 – Manuel Belgrano defeats the royalist army of Pío de Tristán during the Battle of Salta. 1816 – Gioachino Rossini's opera The Barber of Seville premieres at the Teatro Argentina in Rome. 1824 – William Buckland formally announces the name Megalosaurus, the first scientifically validly named non-avian dinosaur species. 1835 – The 1835 Concepción earthquake destroys Concepción, Chile. 1846 – Polish insurgents lead an uprising in Kraków to incite a fight for national independence. 1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Olustee: The largest battle fought in Florida during the war. 1865 – End of the Uruguayan War, with a peace agreement between President Tomás Villalba and rebel leader Venancio Flores, setting the scene for the destructive War of the Triple Alliance. 1872 – The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens in New York City. 1877 – Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake receives its premiere at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. 1894 – 20 February bombings by Désiré Pauwels during the Ère des attentats (1892-1894).
1901–present 1901 – The legislature of Hawaii Territory convenes for the first time. 1905 – The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of Massachusetts's mandatory smallpox vaccination program in Jacobson v. Massachusetts. 1909 – Publication of the Futurist Manifesto in the French journal Le Figaro. 1913 – King O'Malley drives in the first survey peg to mark commencement of work on the construction of Canberra. 1920 – An earthquake kills between 114 and 130 in Georgia and heavily damages the town of Gori. 1931 – The U.S. Congress approves the construction of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge by the state of California. 1931 – An anarchist uprising in Encarnación, Paraguay briefly transforms the city into a revolutionary commune. 1933 – The U.S. Congress approves the Blaine Act to repeal federal Prohibition in the United States, sending the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution to state ratifying conventions for approval.; 1933 – Adolf Hitler secretly meets with German industrialists to arrange for financing of the Nazi Party's upcoming election campaign. 1935 – Caroline Mikkelsen becomes the first woman to set foot in Antarctica. 1939 – Madison Square Garden Nazi rally: The largest ever pro-Nazi rally in United States history is convened in Madison Square Garden, New York City, with 20,000 members and sympathizers of the German American Bund present. 1942 – World War II: Lieutenant Edward O'Hare becomes America's first World War II flying ace. 1943 – World War II: American movie studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor movies. 1943 – The Saturday Evening Post publishes the first of Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms in support of United States President Franklin Roosevelt's 1941 State of the Union address theme of Four Freedoms. 1944 – World War II: The "Big Week" begins with American bomber raids on German aircraft manufacturing centers. 1944 – World War II: The United States takes Eniwetok Atoll. 1952 – Emmett Ashford becomes the first African-American umpire in organized baseball by being authorized to be a substitute umpire in the Southwestern International League. 1956 – The United States Merchant Marine Academy becomes a permanent Service Academy. 1959 – The Avro Arrow program to design and manufacture supersonic jet fighters in Canada is cancelled by the Diefenbaker government amid much political debate. 1962 – Mercury program: While aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth, making three orbits in four hours, 55 minutes. 1965 – Ranger 8 crashes into the Moon after a successful mission of photographing possible landing sites for the Apollo program astronauts. 1968 – The China Academy of Space Technology, China's main arm for the research, development, and creation of space satellites, is established in Beijing. 1971 – The United States Emergency Broadcast System is accidentally activated in an erroneous national alert. 1979 – An earthquake cracks open the Sinila volcanic crater on the Dieng Plateau, releasing poisonous H2S gas and killing 149 villagers in the Indonesian province of Central Java. 1986 – The Soviet Union launches its Mir spacecraft. Remaining in orbit for 15 years, it is occupied for ten of those years. 1988 – The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast votes to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia, triggering the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. 1991 – In the Albanian capital Tirana, a gigantic statue of Albania's long-time leader, Enver Hoxha, is brought down by mobs of angry protesters. 1998 – American figure skater Tara Lipinski, at the age of 15, becomes the youngest Olympic figure skating gold-medalist at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. 2002 – A cooking gas cylinder explodes on board an Egyptian National Railways train in El Ayyat, causing a fire and killing over 370 people. 2003 – During a Great White concert in West Warwick, Rhode Island, a pyrotechnics display sets the Station nightclub ablaze, killing 100 and injuring over 200 others. 2005 – Spain becomes the first country to vote in a referendum on ratification of the proposed Constitution of the European Union, passing it by a substantial margin, but on a low turnout. 2009 – Two Tamil Tigers aircraft packed with C4 explosives en route to the national airforce headquarters are shot down by the Sri Lankan military before reaching their target, in a kamikaze style attack. 2010 – In Madeira Island, Portugal, heavy rain causes floods and mudslides, resulting in at least 43 deaths, in the worst disaster in the history of the archipelago. 2014 – Dozens of Euromaidan anti-government protesters die in Ukraine's capital Kyiv, many reportedly killed by snipers. 2015 – Two trains collide in the Swiss town of Rafz resulting in as many as 49 people injured and Swiss Federal Railways cancelling some services. 2016 – Six people are killed and two injured in multiple shooting incidents in Kalamazoo County, Michigan.
Births
Pre-1600 1358 – Eleanor of Aragon, queen of John I of Castile (died 1382) 1469 – Thomas Cajetan, Italian philosopher (died 1534) 1523 – Jan Blahoslav, Czech writer (died 1571) 1549 – Francesco Maria II della Rovere, last Duke of Urbino (died 1631) 1552 – Sengoku Hidehisa, Daimyō (died 1614)
1601–1900 1608 – Arthur Capell, 1st Baron Capell of Hadham, English politician (died 1649) 1631 – Thomas Osborne, 1st Duke of Leeds, English politician, Treasurer of the Navy (died 1712) 1633 – Jan de Baen, Dutch painter (died 1702) 1705 – Nicolas Chédeville, French musette player and composer (died 1782) 1726 – William Prescott, American colonel (died 1795) 1744 – William Cornwallis, English admiral and politician (died 1819); ; 1745 – Henry James Pye, English poet and politician (died 1813) 1748 – Luther Martin, American politician (died 1826) 1751 – Johann Heinrich Voss, German poet, translator, and academic (died 1826) 1753 – Louis-Alexandre Berthier, French general and politician, French Minister of Defence (died 1815) 1756 – Angelica Schuyler Church, American socialite, sister-in-law to Alexander Hamilton (died 1814) 1759 – Johann Christian Reil, German physician, physiologist, and anatomist (died 1813) 1774 – Vicente Sebastián Pintado, Spanish cartographer, engineer, military officer and land surveyor of Spanish Louisiana and Spanish West Florida (died 1829)La obra del canario Pintado en la Biblioteca del Congreso (in Spanish: The work of the Canarian Pintado in the Library of Congress). Eric Beerman. 1784 – Judith Montefiore, British linguist, travel writer, philanthropist (died 1862) 1792 – Eliza Courtney, French daughter of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (died 1859) 1794 – William Carleton, Irish author (died 1869) 1802 – Charles Auguste de Bériot, Belgian violinist and composer (died 1870) 1819 – Alfred Escher, Swiss businessman and politician (died 1882) 1839 – Benjamin Waugh, English activist, founded the NSPCC (died 1908) 1844 – Ludwig Boltzmann, Austrian physicist and philosopher (died 1906) 1844 – Joshua Slocum, Canadian sailor and adventurer (died 1909) 1848 – E. H. Harriman, American businessman and philanthropist (died 1909) 1857 – A. P. Lucas, English cricketer (died 1923) 1866 – Carl Westman, Swedish architect, designed the Stockholm Court House and Röhsska Museum (died 1936) 1867 – Louise, Princess Royal of England (died 1931) 1870 – Jay Johnson Morrow, American engineer and politician, 3rd Governor of the Panama Canal Zone (died 1937) 1874 – Mary Garden, Scottish-American soprano and actress (died 1967) 1879 – Hod Stuart, Canadian ice hockey player (died 1907) 1880 – Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen, French author and poet (died 1923) 1882 – Elie Nadelman, Polish-American sculptor (died 1946) 1887 – Vincent Massey, Canadian lawyer and politician, 18th Governor General of Canada (died 1967) 1888 – Georges Bernanos, French soldier and author (died 1948) 1889 – Hulusi Behçet, Turkish dermatologist and physician (died 1948) 1893 – Elizabeth Holloway Marston, American psychologist and author (died 1993) 1895 – Louis Zborowski, English race car driver and engineer (died 1924) 1897 – Ivan Albright, American painter (died 1983) 1898 – Ante Ciliga, Croatian politician, writer and publisher (died 1992) 1899 – Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, American businessman and philanthropist (died 1992)
1901–present 1901 – René Dubos, French-American biologist and author (died 1982) 1901 – Muhammad Naguib, Egyptian general and politician, 1st President of Egypt (died 1984) 1901 – Ramakrishna Ranga Rao of Bobbili, Indian lawyer and politician, 6th Chief Minister of Madras Presidency (died 1978) 1906 – Gale Gordon, American actor (died 1995) 1912 – Pierre Boulle, French soldier and author (died 1994) 1912 – Johnny Checketts, New Zealand flying ace of the Second World War (died 2006) 1913 – Tommy Henrich, American baseball player and sportscaster (died 2009) 1914 – John Charles Daly, South African–American journalist and game show host (died 1991) 1916 – Jean Erdman, American dancer and choreographer (died 2020) 1918 – Leonore Annenberg, American businesswoman and diplomat (died 2009) 1919 – James O'Meara, English soldier and pilot (died 1974) 1920 – Karl Albrecht, German businessman, co-founded Aldi (died 2014) 1921 – Buddy Rogers, American wrestler (died 1992) 1923 – Victor G. Atiyeh, American businessman and politician, 32nd Governor of Oregon (died 2014) 1923 – Forbes Burnham, Guyanese lawyer and politician, 2nd President of Guyana (died 1985) 1923 – Rena Vlahopoulou, Greek actress (died 2004) 1925 – Robert Altman, American director and screenwriter (died 2006) 1925 – Tochinishiki Kiyotaka, Japanese sumo wrestler, the 44th Yokozuna (died 1990) 1926 – Matthew Bucksbaum, American businessman and philanthropist, co-founded General Growth Properties (died 2013) 1926 – Gillian Lynne, English ballerina, choreographer, and director (died 2018) 1926 – Richard Matheson, American author and screenwriter (died 2013)