1865 – Freedman’s Bureau founded for Black Education, 1865
1888 – The Convention of Constantinople signed, guaranteeing free maritime passage through the Suez Canal during war and peace
1934 – Union Pacific tests light-weight high-speed passenger train, Omaha
1939 – Massachusetts Legislature votes to ratify the US Bill of Rights – 147 years late
1986 – Edmonton’s Finnish right wing Jari Kurri scores 2 goals, including the overtime winner, to lead Oilers to a 2-1 win over Philadelphia; Kurri, 100 points for the 4th straight NHL season
1991 – “La Bete” closes at Eugene O’Neill Theater NYC after 24 performances
1996 – Despite Sachin Tendulkar’s masterful 137 in India’s 3 for 272, Sri Lanka wins Cricket World Cup match in Delhi by 6 wickets; Sanath Jayasuriya 79, Hashan Tillakaratne 70no
2000 – Former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet heads home after being told the UK would not extradite him on torture charges
2021 – Six books by Dr. Seuss will cease publication because of racist and insensitive imagery according to Dr. Seuss Enterprises
2023 – UN confirms it will ignore statements made by an Indian guru and now fugitive from the fictional country of the United States of Kailasa, made attending official UN events in Geneva
Category: Historical Events
Historical Events for 1st March 2024
1872 – Yellowstone becomes the world’s 1st national park
1913 – 1First state law requiring bonding of officers and state employees, ND
1941 – Former University of Notre Dame star fullback Elmer Layden is named first Commissioner of the NFL
1953 – After an all-night movie and dinner session with his top advisers, Joseph Stalin suffers a stroke and collapses. He dies four days later.
1966 – Venera 3 becomes 1st man-made object to impact on a planet (Venus)
1991 – 37 year-old Pat Day becomes the 6th jockey in history whose mounts earned $100 million when he rides Wild Sierra to 2nd-place in the 1st race at Oaklawn Park, Arkansas
1992 – “Visit” closes at Criterion Theater NYC after 45 performances
1993 – New expansion NHL team, owned in Anaheim, CA by Disney, receives its name, inspired by the 1992 Disney movie ‘The Mighty Ducks’
2003 – Legendary Mount St. Mary’s basketball head coach Jim Phelan wins final game of 49 year career as Mountaineers win 60-56 over Central Connecticut State; Phelan: 830 wins in NCAA record 1,354 games
2004 – Mohammed Bahr al-Uloum becomes President of Iraq.
Historical Events for 29th February 2024
1868 – 1st British government of Benjamin Disraeli forms
1892 – St. Petersburg, Florida is incorporated
1952 – Ice Dance Championship at Paris France won by Westwood and Demmy of Great Britain
1952 – Ice Pairs Championship at Paris won by Ria Falk and Paul Falk of West Germany
1956 – MLB’s Cleveland Indians franchise is sold for nearly $4m; former player and the team’s general manager Hank Greenberg is part of the new ownership group
1968 – Howard Hanson’s 6th Symphony, premieres
1968 – Beatles’ “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” wins Grammy Award for Album of the Year, the first rock LP to do so
1984 – Swedish center Patrik Sundström scores a goal and adds 6 assists as Vancouver Canucks beat the Penguins 9-5 in Pittsburgh; just the 3rd player in NHL history to record 6 assists in a road game
1988 – New Zealand cricket batsman Mark Greatbatch scores an unbeaten 107 on debut to rescue a draw in 2nd Test v England at Eden Park, Auckland
2004 – 76th Academy Awards: “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,” Sean Penn and Charlize Theron win
Historical Events for 28th February 2024
1700 – Today is followed by March 1 in Sweden, thus creating the Swedish calendar
1759 – Pope Clement XIII allows Bible to be translated into various languages
1942 – World War II: German submarine U-578 torpedoes US Navy destroyer USS Jacob Jones (DD130) off Cape May, New Jersey, killing all but 11 of 113 man crew
1951 – French government of Pleven dissolves
1951 – Senate committee reports of at least 2 major US crime syndicates
1973 – Iraq and Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) reach an agreement on compensation for nationalization
1993 – Iolanda Chen triple jumps world indoor record hop step (14.46m)
1994 – Brady Law, imposing a wait-period to buy a hand gun in the USA, comes into effect
2004 – 24th Golden Raspberry Awards: “Gigli” wins
2013 – The brains of two rats successfully connected so that they share information
Historical Events for 27th February 2024
1925 – Adolf Hitler resurrects NSDAP political party in Munich
1933 – Jean Genet’s play “Intermezzo” premieres in Paris
1940 – Martin Kamen and Sam Ruben discover carbon-14 (radiocarbon dating) at the University of California Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, California
1942 – Battle of Java Sea began: 13 US warships sunk and 2 Japanese
1965 – Hugh Martin and Timothy Gray’s musical “High Spirits”, based on Noel Coward’s “Blithe Spirit”, closes at Alvin Theater, NYC, after 375 performances
1973 – White Sox slugger Dick Allen signs 3 year $750,000 contract
2002 – Godhra train burning, a Muslim mob kills 59 Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya
2019 – Doctors announce world’s second known case of semi-identical twins, a boy and girl from Brisbane, Australia
2019 – Actor Luke Perry (52) suffers a stroke in Los Angeles
2019 – First gun control legislation for 25 years passed by US House of Representatives, with new federal background checks
Historical Events for 26th February 2024
364 – Valentinian I is proclaimed Roman Emperor
1851 – 13th Grand National: Terry Abbott wins aboard Irish stallion Abd-El-Kader at 7/1; first dual winner and first to win back-to-back
1870 – Beach Pneumatic Transit – 1st attempt to demonstrate a subway in New York opens (pneumatic powered)
1881 – PandO’s SS Ceylon begins world’s 1st round-the-world pleasure cruise from Liverpool
1893 – Norwegian Einar Halvorsen skates world record 500m (48 sec)
1941 – Utrecht and Zaandam strike against raid on Jews
1965 – West Germany ceases military aid to Tanzania
1972 – Ireland-Wales Five Nations Rugby match scheduled for Lansdowne Road, Dublin is cancelled because of escalating political situation; Championship not completed for first time since World War II
1982 – Test Cricket debut of batsman Martin Crowe, playing for New Zealand v Australia in Wellington, run out for 9
1989 – California court throws out most of Margo Adams’s $12 million breach-of-contract suit against Red Sox third baseman Wade Boggs
Historical Events for 25th February 2024
1907 – US proclaims protectorate over Dominican Republic
1944 – Alexander Gretchaninov’s “Missa Oecumenica” (Ecumenical Mass) premieres in Boston with Serge Koussevitzky conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra; the composer wrote the work in memory of the conductor’s wife Natalie (1880-1942)
1956 – Nikita Khrushchev denounces Joseph Stalin at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
1971 – Northern Ireland Prime Minister James Chichester-Clark holds a meeting with Catholic Cardinal of Ireland William Conway, the first such meeting between men holding these offices since 1921
1980 – Coup ousts PM Henck Arron of Suriname
1981 – US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1981 – NY Islanders give up their most goals (11) vs Calgary Flames
1988 – Bruce Springsteen’s “Tunnel of Love” Tour begins in Worcester, Massachusetts
1990 – On a BBC taped interview, rock star Stevie Nicks breaks down, saying that she will never have children and no man can stand her for long
1996 – “Father” closes at Criterion Theater NYC after 52 performances
Historical Events for 24th February 2024
1797 – Colonel William Tate and his force of 1,000-1,500 soldiers surrender after the Last Invasion of Britain (according to legend, to Welsh women in tall black hats, mistaken for elite guards regiment)
1949 – Israel and Egypt sign an armistice agreement
1968 – Gary Unger begins NHL consecutive game record of 914 games
1970 – 29 Swiss Army officers die in avalanche (Reckingen, Switzerland)
1982 – Boston Celtics begin an 18 NBA game winning streak
1991 – English-Yiddish musical revue “Those Were The Days” closes at Edison Theater, NYC, after 126 performances
2013 – 55th Daytona 500: Jimmie Johnson wins 2nd Great American Race; Danica Patrick first female to start from pole position; also best-ever finish by a woman at Daytona (8th)
2018 – Japanese speed skater Nana Takagi wins her 2nd gold medal of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in the women’s mass start event; also member Japan’s successful pursuit team
2019 – 91st Academy Awards: Best Picture “Green Book”, Best Director Alfonso Cuarón, Best Actor Rami Malek, Best Actress Olivia Colman
2020 – Scientists identify the first animal that doesn’t need oxygen to breathe – a tiny parasite living in salmon tissue, reported in journal PNAS
Historical Events for 23rd February 2024
1660 – Charles XI becomes king of Sweden
1934 – Coronation of King Leopold III of Belgium
1947 – US General Eisenhower opens drive to raise $170M in aid for European Jews
1967 – Noam Chomsky’s anti-Vietnam war essay “The Responsibility of Intellectuals” is published by the New York Review of Books
1969 – 11th Daytona 500: LeeRoy Yarbrough driving for Junior Johnson, catches Charlie Glotzbach on final lap to win; first Daytona 500 won on a last lap pass
1980 – Olympic giant slalom champion Hanni Wenzel of Liechtenstein wins the women’s slalom, her second gold medal of the Lake Placid Winter Games
1986 – Despite losing, Boston Red Sox Wade Boggs gets largest arbitration in MLB history, $1.35M
2001 – 32nd NAACP Image Awards: “Remember the Titans” wins Outstanding Motion Picture
2012 – A series of bomb attacks across 12 Iraqi cities kills 60 and injures 200
2013 – 51 people are killed and 62 are injured in conflict between rival tribes in Darfur, Sudan
Historical Events for 22nd February 2024
1415 – English King Henry V lays the foundation stone for Syon Abbey for nuns of the Bridgettine Order. Became one of the wealthiest abbeys in England.
1633 – St. Peter’s Baldachin, the cathedral’s sculptural centerpiece, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini is inaugurated by Pope Urban VIII in Rome
1922 – London issues a unilateral declaration of Egyptian independence
1935 – Airplanes are no longer permitted to fly over the White House
1941 – German assault on El Agheila Libya
1945 – British troops take Ramree Island, Burma
1956 – 1st English soccer match at Kunstlicht: Portsmouth vs Newcastle United
1989 – UK physicist Stephen Hawking calls the proposed missile defense system known as Star Wars a “deliberate fraud”
1998 – Petr Svoboda scores the winner as the Czech Republic claims its first ever Olympic ice hockey gold medal with a 1-0 victory over Russia in Nagano, Japan
2014 – Snowboard Olympic parallel special slalom event debuts and is run for the only time at the Sochi Winter Games; Russian Vic Wild and Julia Dujmovits of Canada win unique gold medals