1776 – 1st volume of Edward Gibbon’s seminal work “The Decline and Fall of Roman Empire” published
1933 – First issue of American news magazine “Newsweek” is published
1940 – Altmark Incident: Crew of the British destroyer “Cossack” board German “Altmark” in Jøssingfjord, Norway, releasing 299 British prisoners after hand-to-hand fighting with bayonets and the last recorded Royal Naval action with cutlass
1956 – Ice Pairs Championship at Garmisch won by Schwarz and Oppelt of AUT
1969 – Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash record an album; it is never released
1976 – Macau adopts constitution (Organic Law of Macau)
1986 – 1st Francophone Summit convenes at Versailles
1996 – Garry Kasparov defeats chess-playing computer Deep Blue 4-2
2012 – The President of Germany, Christian Wulff, resigns over a corruption scandal
2013 – 5 people are killed and 11 are injured after a gas explosion destroyed an apartment complex in Frenštát pod Radhoštěm, Czech Republic
Category: Historical Events
Historical Events for 16th February 2024
1646 – Battle of Great Torrington, Devon – the last major battle of the first English Civil War
1804 – US Navy Lt Stephen Decatur raids Tripoli Harbor and burns Navy frigate “Philadelphia” after it is seized by pirates
1824 – Athenaeum club founded in London
1892 – Opera “Werther” by Jules Massenet premieres in Vienna
1951 – San Francisco City Hall dome fire
1966 – France performs underground nuclear test at Ecker, Algeria
1975 – 17th Daytona 500: Benny Parsons wins after Cale Yarborough sends race leader David Pearson spinning on the backstretch; Parsons avoids the accident and takes the victory
1984 – 3-time men’s figure skating world champion Scott Hamilton of the US wins the gold medal at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics from Brian Orser of Canada and Jozef Sabovčík of Czechoslovakia
1992 – Ethiopia finds the remains of former Emperor Haile Selassie on the grounds of the Imperial Palace, under the private lavatory of dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, who overthrew the Emperor
2016 – China announces it will relocate 9,000 people in Guizhou province, before completion of world’s largest telescope (FAST), designed to look for extraterrestrial life
Historical Events for 15th February 2024
1676 – Isaac Newton writes to Robert Hooke “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants” (O.S. 5 Feb)
1848 – Sarah Roberts barred from white school in Boston
1954 – WRDW TV channel 12 in Augusta, GA (CBS) begins broadcasting
1958 – Ice Dance Championship at Paris won by June Markham/Courtney Jones GRB
1972 – Sound recordings are granted U.S. federal copyright protection for the first time.
1972 – Newly-formed NHL franchise New York Islanders hire Bill Torrey as their first General Manager
1996 – NFL coaching maestro Bill Belichick is fired by Cleveland, finishing his Browns coaching career with a record of 36-44
1999 – 7th ESPY Awards: Mark McGwire, Chamique Holdsclaw win
2018 – First known case of transgender woman breastfeeding reported in “Transgender Health Journal” in US
2019 – US President Donald Trump declares a national emergency to divert funds to build a border wall, after signing bipartisan spending agreement to avoid another government shutdown
Historical Events for 14th February 2024
842 – Charles II and Louis the German sign The Oaths of Strasbourg, a pact uniting their armies in fights against their older brother Lothar
1670 – Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I chases Jews out of Vienna
1804 – Jean Victor Marie Moreau, French general who plotted to overthrow Napoleon in the Pichegru Conspiracy, arrested, and exiled to the United States
1918 – Harold R. Atteridge and Sigmund Romberg’s musical “Sinbad”, starring Al Jolson, opens at the Winter Garden Theatre, NYC; runs for 164 performances
1945 – Peru, Paraguay, Chile and Ecuador joins UN
1949 – 1st session of Knesset (Jerusalem Israel)
1956 – Verhoeven, Nauta and De King/Wijnhout win Dutch 11 city skate
1959 – $3.6 million heroin seizure in NYC
1984 – Canadian speed skater Gaétan Boucher takes out the 1,000m gold medal at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics; also wins 1,500m; narrowly beats Soviet skater Sergey Khlebnikov in both events
1989 – World’s 1st satellite Skyphone opens
Historical Events for 13th February 2024
1349 – Jews are expelled from Burgdorf, Switzerland, accused of spreading the Bubonic Plague
1899 – -1°F (-18°C) New Orleans, La
1929 – Cruiser Act, USA, approves the construction of 19 new cruisers and an aircraft carrier
1940 – Bradman scores 209* in 161 minutes for South Aust at the WACA
1965 – US male Figure Skating championship won by Gary Visconti
1979 – Formation of Guardian Angels crime fighters in New York City
1994 – Inna Lassovskaya jumps world record 14.9m
1995 – West Indies beat NZ by innings and 332, Courtney Walsh 13-55
2014 – Polish cross country skier Justyna Kowalczyk follows her Vancouver (2010) Olympic women’s 30k classical title with a gold medal in the 10k classical in Sochi
2020 – Premier of Tania León’s “Stride” for the New York Philharmonic at the David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center, New York City (2021 Pulitzer Prize for Music)
Historical Events for 12th February 2024
1855 – Michigan State University established
1934 – The four-day February Uprising, sometimes called the Austrian Civil War, begins
1964 – US male Figure Skating championship won by Scott Allen
1964 – US female Figure Skating championship won by Peggy Fleming
1981 – Pete Squires sets record for 1575 steps of Empire State Building, 10m
2012 – Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow is re-elected President of Turkmenistan with 97% of the vote
2013 – North Korea allegedly conducts its third nuclear test, saying it was a nuclear device that could be weaponized
2016 – Fiji becomes the first country to ratify the UN climate deal (signed Paris, December 2015)
2019 – US national debt tops 22 trillion for the first time according to US Treasury
2023 – Super Bowl LVII, State Farm Stadium, Glendale, Arizona: Kansas City Chiefs beat Philadelphia Eagles, 38-35; MVP: Patrick Mahomes, KC, QB
Historical Events for 11th February 2024
1543 – Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and English King Henry VIII sign anti-French covenant
1897 – White Rose Mission opens on East 97th Street, NYC
1929 – Vatican City, the world’s smallest country, is made an enclave of Rome
1945 – 1st gas turbine propeller-driven airplane flight tested, Downey, CA
1948 – John Costello follows Eamon Da Valera as premier of Ireland
1951 – Kwame Nkrumah and his Convention People’s Party wins 1st legislative general election in the Gold Coast (Ghana) in a landslide
1953 – J Styne and Bob Hilliard’s musical “Hazel Flagg” opens at Mark Hellinger Theater NYC for 190 performances
1956 – British diplomats Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean deny working as spies for Soviet Russia after reappearing in the Soviet Union after going missing 5 years earlier
1979 – Iran’s premier Bakhtiar resigns, Ayatollah Khomeini seizes power
1992 – Michael Johnson runs indoor world record 400m (44.97 sec)
Historical Events for 10th February 2024
1763 – Treaty of Paris ends French-Indian War, France surrenders Canada to Great Britain
1842 – Moreton Bay Penal Colony abolished and opened for free settlement (modern city of Brisbane, Australia)
1931 – Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s musical “America’s Sweetheart” premieres on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre, NYC
1934 – Byrd souvenir sheet issued, NYC; 1st unperforated ungummed US stamp
1953 – Ice Pairs Championship at Davos won by Jennifer and John Nicks of GRB
1970 – Dry powder avalanche moving at 120 mph smashes into youth hostel at Val d’Isere, France, killing 40 Belgian, French, and German youths
1989 – Miami Vice’s 100th episode seen on TV
2013 – 55th Grammy Awards: “Somebody That I Used To Know” (Goyte); “We Are Young” (fun); and “Babel” (Mumford and Sons) win
2014 – After winning Vancouver (2010) Olympic moguls title, Canadian freestyle skier Alexandre Bilodeau wins 2nd consecutive Olympic gold medal in Sochi; beats teammate Mikaël Kingsbury
2019 – 61st Grammy Awards: Childish Gambino first rapper to win Best Song and Best Record for “This Is America”; Best Album “Golden Hour” Kacey Musgraves
Historical Events for 9th February 2024
1941 – Nazi collaborators destroy pro-Jewish café Alcazar Amsterdam (Alcazar refused to hang “No Entry for Jews” signs in front of cafe)
1945 – The Battle of the Atlantic: HMS Venturer sinks U-Boat 864 off the coast of Norway
1945 – WAAF-corporal flies along the tail of a Spitfire
1946 – Dutch Labor Party (Dutch Social Democratic Party) forms
1971 – Apollo 14 returns to Earth
1974 – “Daddy What If” by Bobby Bare peaks at #41
1983 – Belgium buys 44 F-16s
1996 – WYNY-FM in NYC changes calls to WKTU-FM
2014 – Slovak biathlete Anastasiya Kuzmina retains her Olympic 7.5k sprint title (Vancouver 2010) at the Sochi Winter Games
2018 – XXIII Olympic Winter Games open in PyeongChang, South Korea
Historical Events for 8th February 2024
1649 – Sobornoye Ulozheniye of 1649: Russia adopts new code of laws, consolidating serfdom (OS 29 Jan)
1750 – Minor earthquake in London
1924 – 1st US coast-to-coast radio hookup: General John Joseph Carty speech in Chicago
1929 – KOY-AM in Phoenix Arizona begins radio transmissions
1936 – German alpine skier Christi Cranz wins the inaugural Olympic women’s combined gold medal at the Garmisch-Partenkirchen Winter Games ahead of teammate Käthe Grasegger
1943 – Red Army recaptures Kursk on the eastern front
1945 – Paul Brown agrees to coach the new American football expansion team in Cleveland, which would later be named the Cleveland Browns after their coach
1975 – Caps only got one shot in a period against Islanders
1990 – “60 Minutes” commentator Andy Rooney suspended by CBS for racial remarks attributed to him by a gay magazine
2009 – 51st Grammy Awards: Best Album “Raising Sand” and Record of the Year “Please Read The Letter”, both by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss win