1547 – King Edward VI of England crowned following the death of his father Henry VIII
1932 – Pierre Laval’s first French government falls
1948 – Czechoslovakia’s non-communist minister resigns
1971 – Bruin Phil Esposito is NHL’s quickest to score 50 goals in a season
1981 – James Sanford equals 50m indoor world record (5.61 sec)
1986 – LA Dodger Orel Hershiser is 1st to win a $1M salary by arbitration
1987 – 37th Berlin International Film Festival: “The Theme” wins the Golden Bear
1988 – Stefka Kostadinova of Bulgaria sets high jumps indoor world record (2.06 m)
1988 – Kelly Hrudy’s 5th Islander shut-out win-Hartford 3-0
1999 – Toronto Maple Leafs play their first NHL home game at Air Canada Centre; Steve Thomas scores overtime winner in a 3-2 victory over the Montreal Canadiens
Category: Historical Events
Historical Events for 19th February 2020
607 – Boniface III begins his reign as Catholic Pope
1945 – 980 Japanese soldiers reportedly killed by crocodiles in 2 days on Ramree Island, Burma
1949 – 1st Bollingen Prize for poetry awarded to Ezra Pound
1952 – American defending champion Dick Button becomes first figure-skater to land a triple jump in competition; performs a triple loop in the Olympic free skate in Oslo; wins gold medal ahead of Austria’s Helmut Seibt
1960 – Protest strike in Poznan, Poland
1972 – The Asama-Sanso hostage standoff begins in Japan.
1977 – Right wing Rod Gilbert scores a goal and adds an assist in a 5-2 defeat at the NY Islanders to become first player in NY Rangers history (11th in NHL) to score 1,000 career points
1977 – France performs nuclear test at Mururoa atoll
1978 – Brigitte Kraus runs world record 1000 m indoor (2:34.8)
1978 – 20th Daytona 500: Bobby Allison takes lead with 11 laps remaining; lowest starting position (33rd) for winner until 2007
Historical Events for 18th February 2020
1828 – More than 100 vessels destroyed in a storm, Gibraltar
1879 – Sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi is awarded a patent for his design for the Statue of Liberty
1899 – San Francisco named as a port of dispatch for Army transports
1918 – Germany renews its offensive against the Russians, making dramatic gains against disorganized and dispirited Russian troops
1928 – USA 2 beats USA 1 by 0.5s for the 5-man bobsleigh gold medal at the St. Moritz Winter Olympics; Germany 2 takes bronze
1951 – 3 City College of NY basketball players admit to accepting bribes
1964 – Muriel Resnik’s “Any Wednesday” premieres in NYC
1965 – The Gambia becomes independent from the United Kingdom
1973 – Belgian Emiel Puttemans runs 3,000m indoor record 7:39.2
1973 – 54-kg octopus measuring 7m across captured in Hood Canal, Washington
Historical Events for 17th February 2020
1598 – Boris Godunov chosen as Tsar of Russia
1772 – 1st Partition of Poland signed in Vienna by Austria, Prussia and Russia
1926 – Avalanche buries 75 in Sap Gulch, Bingham, Utah; 40 die
1946 – Humanistic Covenant forms in Amsterdam
1949 – Chaim Weitzman elected 1st president of Israel
1955 – Mike Souchak sets PGA 72-hole record of 257 (not broken until 2001)
1970 – Robert Marasco’s “Child’s Play” premieres in NYC
1971 – England regains cricket Ashes with a 2-0 series win
1986 – Howard Stern radio show returns to NYC morning radio (WXRK 92.3 FM)
2018 – Russian biathlete Anastasiya Kuzmina wins her 3rd career Olympic gold medal in women’s 12.5k mass start in Pyeongchang; 7.5k sprint champion in Vancouver (2010) and Sochi (2014)
Historical Events for 16th February 2020
1838 – Weenen Massacre: Hundreds of Voortrekkers along the Blaukraans River, Natal are killed by Zulu warriors
1883 – “Ladies Home Journal” begins publishing
1894 – British troops occupy Ilorin, Gold Coast
1916 – The US rejects the right of Germany and Austria-Hungary to sink armed merchant ships
1951 – NYC passes bill prohibiting racism in city-assisted housing
1966 – End of Wally Grout’s Test Cricket career, 187 dismissals as Australian wicketkeeper
1977 – USSR performs nuclear test at Sary Shagan
1978 – 1st Computer Bulletin Board System (Ward and Randy’s CBBS, Chicago)
1989 – Red Sox pitcher Roger Clemens signs $7.5M-3 year contract
1999 – O.J. Simpson’s 1968 Heisman Trophy is sold for $230,000 to help settle a $33.5 million civil judgement against Simpson for the deaths of his ex-wife and her friend
Historical Events for 15th February 2020
1917 – San Francisco Public Library (Main Branch at Civic center) dedicated
1957 – Andrei A Gromyko succeeds Dmitri Shepilov as Soviet foreign minister
1958 – Men’s Figure Skating Championship in Paris won by David Jenkins USA
1962 – US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1970 – Ard Schenk becomes world champion all-round skater
1972 – President Velasco Ibarra of Ecuador deposed for 4th time
1976 – 18th Daytona 500: David Pearson makes contact with Richard Petty just yards from finish line into a wall and to infield; Petty stalls whilst Pearson re-starts to win
1980 – Soviet cross-country skier Raisa Smetanina claims her 3rd of 4 career Olympic gold medals in the 5k event at Lake Placid; also wins 10k and relay gold (Innsbruck 1976) and relay (Albertville 1992)
1984 – 500,000 Iranian soldiers move into Iraq
1996 – American boxer Tommy Morrison announces he has contracted HIV
Historical Events for 14th February 2020
1872 – 1st US state bird refuge authorized (Lake Merritt, California)
1900 – Date of events in Australian movie “Picnic at Hanging Rock”
1921 – Little Review faces obscenity charges for publishing “Ulysses,” in New York
1936 – US male Figure Skating championship won by Robin Lee
1939 – Victor Fleming replaces George Cukor as director of film “Gone With the Wind”
1940 – British merchant vessel fleet is armed
1943 – German offensive against US troops through de Faid-pass, Tunisia begins, starting the Battle of Sidi Bou Zid
1945 – World War II: Prague is bombed probably due to a mistake in the orientation of the pilots bombing Dresden.
1965 – 7th Daytona 500: Fred Lorenzen wins driving for Holman-Moody; race ends on lap 133 due to persistent rain
1993 – Fire in Linxi department store in Tangshan China, kills 79
Historical Events for 13th February 2020
1917 – Dutch exotic dancer Mata Hari is arrested in Paris on suspicion that she is a German spy
1925 – US Congress makes Surpreme Court appeal more difficult
1929 – Vladimir Mayakofsky’s “Klop” premieres in Moscow
1932 – Finland goes 1-2 in the 50k cross country event at the Lake Placid Winter Olympics; Veli Saarinen wins gold ahead of team mate Väinö Liikkanen
1965 – US male Figure Skating championship won by Gary Visconti
1969 – Mary Hopkin’s Postcard album on Apple is released
1988 – Heike Dreschler long jumps world record indoor (7.37m)
2000 – The last original “Peanuts” comic strip appears in newspapers one day after Charles M. Schulz dies.
2004 – The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics discovers the universe’s largest known diamond, white dwarf star BPM 37093.
2016 – Ninth Republican presidential candidates debate held in Greenville, South Carolina
Historical Events for 12th February 2020
1528 – Treaty of Dordrecht between emperor and ecclesiastical power
1855 – Michigan State University established
1920 – NL votes 6-2 for 1 commissioner AL votes 6-2 to keep group commission
1955 – McGuire Sisters’ “Sincerely” single goes #1 and stays #1 for 10 weeks
1968 – 25th Golden Globes: “In the Heat of the Night”, Rod Steiger, and Edith Evans win
1977 – Toronto Maple Leafs shutout Washington Capitals 10-0
1982 – Wayne Gretzky scores 153rd point of season, breaking NHL record
2002 – US Secretary of Energy makes the decision that Yucca Mountain is suitable to be the United States’ nuclear waste repository
2016 – Britain’s Ordnance Survey, using NASA data posts map of Mars on Flickr
2018 – Oxfam deputy director resigns over charity’s failure to deal with sexual misconduct allegations in Haiti and Chad
Historical Events for 11th February 2020
1543 – Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and English King Henry VIII sign anti-French covenant
1575 – King Frederick of Denmark offers island of Hveen to Tycho Brahe
1935 – 1st US airplane flight with auto slung beneath fuselage, NY
1963 – Beatles tape 10 tracks for their 1st album
1968 – Jeffrey Kramer survives 76-m jump, Washington Bridge, Hudson River New York
1969 – Diana Crump becomes 1st US woman jockey to ride against men, Hialelah
1973 – 1st one-day international for Pakistan and NZ
1985 – Wasim Akram takes 10 wickets in his 2nd Test Cricket, NZ still wins
1991 – UNPO, Unrepresented Nations and People Org forms in The Hague, Netherlands
1994 – Lu Parker, (South Carolina), crowned 43rd Miss USA