February 16 in History

Twenty men in a rented hall in Vilnius signed a document declaring Lithuania an independent democratic republic on February 16, 1918, while German troops still occupied every inch of Lithuanian territory. The Act of Independence was an audacious act of political will by the Council of Lithuania, asserting sovereignty over a nation that had not governed itself since the Russian Empire absorbed it in 1795 — 123 years of erasure undone in a single page. Lithuania had once been a major European power. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania, at its peak in the 15th century, stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. But the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was partitioned out of existence in the late 18th century, and Lithuania spent the next century under Russian imperial rule, enduring forced Russification, a ban on Lithuanian-language publications in the Latin alphabet, and the suppression of national institutions. World War I created the opening. Germany occupied Lithuania in 1915, and as the Russian Empire collapsed, Lithuanian leaders organized a national conference in Vilnius in September 1917. The conference elected the Council of Lithuania (Taryba) and authorized it to pursue independence. Germany initially tried to make Lithuania a satellite state, proposing a "perpetual alliance" with the German Empire. The Taryba rejected the arrangement and on February 16, 1918, declared unconditional independence with no ties to any other state. The declaration was more aspiration than reality. German forces remained until November 1918, and the new republic immediately faced invasions from Soviet Russia, Bermontians, and Poland, which seized Vilnius in 1920. Lithuania survived by fighting on multiple fronts simultaneously, establishing its capital in Kaunas, and building democratic institutions from scratch. The republic lasted until Soviet annexation in 1940. When Lithuania declared independence again in 1990, becoming the first Soviet republic to break away, it dated its sovereignty to that February day in 1918 — treating the Soviet period as an illegal occupation, not a legitimate change of government.

Howard Carter pried open a sealed doorway in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings on February 16, 1923, and peered into a burial chamber that had been untouched for 3,245 years. Inside sat the largest intact collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts ever discovered, including a nest of four gilded shrines surrounding the stone sarcophagus of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, who had died at approximately 19 years old around 1323 BC. The discovery made Carter the most famous archaeologist in the world and Tutankhamun the most recognized pharaoh in history. Carter had been searching the Valley of the Kings for years, funded by Lord Carnarvon, a wealthy English aristocrat. By 1922, Carnarvon was ready to stop financing what appeared to be a fruitless excavation. Carter persuaded him to fund one final season. On November 4, 1922, a water boy stumbled on a stone step buried in the sand. Twelve days of digging revealed a sealed doorway bearing Tutankhamun’s cartouche. Carter sent Carnarvon a now-famous telegram: "At last have made wonderful discovery in Valley." The tomb contained four chambers packed with over 5,000 objects: golden chariots, ceremonial weapons, furniture, clothing, food, wine, and jewelry. The burial chamber, opened on February 16 before a small audience of officials and dignitaries, held the stone sarcophagus containing three nested coffins. The innermost coffin was solid gold, weighing 110 kilograms, and held the mummy of the king wearing the iconic gold death mask that became the universal symbol of ancient Egypt. The discovery triggered a global sensation. "Egyptomania" swept the Western world, influencing art, architecture, fashion, and film. Lord Carnarvon died from an infected mosquito bite less than two months after the opening, spawning tabloid stories about the "Curse of the Pharaohs" that persist to this day. Carter spent the next decade cataloging the contents. A minor pharaoh who ruled for less than ten years and accomplished little of note became, through the accident of an intact tomb, the most famous king in the history of civilization.

The molecule that replaced silk, revolutionized warfare, and launched the modern plastics industry was invented by a man who would not live to see any of it. Wallace Carothers, a brilliant organic chemist plagued by severe depression, synthesized the first nylon polymer at DuPont’s research laboratory and received the patent on February 16, 1937. He killed himself with a cyanide capsule in a Philadelphia hotel room fourteen months later, at the age of 41. DuPont hired Carothers from Harvard in 1928, giving him something almost unheard of in corporate research: freedom to pursue basic science without immediate commercial pressure. Carothers was interested in polymerization — how small molecules could be linked into long chains. His team produced neoprene synthetic rubber in 1931, already a commercial success, but Carothers kept pushing. In 1935, his researchers synthesized polyamide 6,6 by combining adipic acid and hexamethylene diamine. The resulting fiber could be drawn into strong, elastic threads that resisted abrasion and moisture. They called it "fiber 66." DuPont called it nylon. DuPont introduced nylon stockings at the 1939 World’s Fair. When they went on general sale on May 15, 1940, four million pairs sold in four days. Women who had been paying premium prices for silk stockings that snagged and ran could suddenly buy hosiery that lasted. Then Pearl Harbor redirected all nylon production to the military. Parachutes, tire cords, ropes, tents, ponchos, and flak vests consumed every pound DuPont could produce. Nylon parachutes alone saved thousands of lives. After the war, nylon returned to the consumer market and became the foundation of the synthetic fiber industry. It made possible everything from toothbrush bristles to carpet to guitar strings. DuPont’s nylon revenue exceeded $25 billion over the life of the patent, making it one of the most commercially successful inventions in history. The material that defined the modern consumer economy was created by a man so consumed by despair that he carried his own poison in his pocket.

Six weeks after his guerrilla army rolled into Havana in olive drab fatigues, Fidel Castro became Prime Minister of Cuba on February 16, 1959, beginning a 49-year hold on power that would outlast ten American presidents, survive the Bay of Pigs invasion, a nuclear crisis, an economic embargo, and the collapse of his Soviet patron. No leader in the Western Hemisphere has ever exercised such absolute authority for so long. Castro’s revolution began in failure. His first attack, on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba on July 26, 1953, was a disaster that killed most of his fighters and landed Castro in prison. Released in 1955, he fled to Mexico, recruited Argentine doctor Ernesto "Che" Guevara, and returned to Cuba in December 1956 with 82 men on a leaky yacht called the Granma. The landing was another catastrophe — the army was waiting, and only a dozen revolutionaries escaped into the Sierra Maestra mountains. From that remnant, Castro built a guerrilla force that exploited Fulgencio Batista’s corruption, American ambivalence, and rural Cuban resentment. Batista’s army, demoralized and poorly led despite American weapons, crumbled in late 1958. Batista fled on New Year’s Day 1959, and Castro entered Havana on January 8 to delirious crowds. He initially appointed Manuel Urrutia as president, but real power was never in doubt. On February 16, Castro assumed the premiership and began consolidating control. Within two years, Castro had nationalized American-owned businesses, eliminated political opposition, and aligned Cuba with the Soviet Union, bringing the Cold War to America’s doorstep. The Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 only strengthened his position. The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 nearly destroyed the world. The American trade embargo, imposed in 1962, lasted into the 21st century. A lawyer who started a revolution with twelve survivors in a mountain range created the only communist state in the Western Hemisphere and held it for half a century through sheer force of will.

British sailors from HMS Cossack boarded the German supply ship Altmark in Norwegian territorial waters on February 16, 1940, and liberated 299 British merchant seamen held captive below decks. The Altmark had been serving as a supply vessel for the pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee, which had been sinking Allied merchant ships in the South Atlantic before being cornered and scuttled in Montevideo the previous December. The prisoners had been transferred to the Altmark and were being transported back to Germany through Norwegian waters, which Norway, as a neutral nation, was obligated to inspect. Norwegian naval authorities boarded the Altmark twice and claimed to have found no prisoners, despite the men being hidden in holds and fuel tanks. First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill ordered the Royal Navy to intercept regardless of Norwegian neutrality. Captain Philip Vian of HMS Cossack pursued the Altmark into Jossingfjord, rammed alongside, and led a boarding party armed with cutlasses and rifles. The British sailors reportedly shouted "The Navy's here!" as they broke open the hatches. Seven German sailors were killed in the fight. The freed prisoners were taken to Leith, Scotland, to a jubilant reception. The incident infuriated Adolf Hitler, who used the violation of Norwegian neutrality to justify the German invasion of Norway two months later, an operation that dramatically expanded the scope of the war in Scandinavia and gave Germany control of Norwegian ports for the rest of the conflict.

A nuclear submarine slipped beneath the surface near New London, Connecticut, on February 16, 1960, and did not come up for air until it had circled the entire planet. The USS Triton, commanded by Captain Edward L. Beach Jr., completed the first submerged circumnavigation of the globe in 84 days, traveling 41,500 miles along the route Ferdinand Magellan had sailed on the surface 440 years earlier. The Cold War’s most dramatic demonstration of submarine capability was kept completely secret until it was over. The Triton was the largest submarine in the US Navy, 447 feet long with two nuclear reactors — the only American submarine ever built with dual reactors. Captain Beach, a decorated World War II submarine veteran and bestselling author, received his orders directly from the Pentagon: circumnavigate the globe submerged, proving that American nuclear submarines could operate anywhere in the world’s oceans indefinitely without surfacing. The voyage, code-named Operation Sandblast, followed Magellan’s route through the Atlantic, around the Cape of Good Hope (Magellan went around South America, but Beach was directed south of Africa), across the Indian Ocean, through the Pacific, and home. The Triton encountered no mechanical failures that forced surfacing, though Beach brought the ship to periscope depth several times for navigation fixes and once to transfer a sick sailor to another vessel. The crew of 183 men lived and worked entirely underwater for nearly three months. The timing was deliberate. President Eisenhower wanted a spectacular American achievement to counter Soviet space successes, and he announced the circumnavigation on May 10, 1960 — the day before the U-2 spy plane incident embarrassed the administration. Beach received the Legion of Merit from Eisenhower personally. The Triton proved that nuclear submarines had made the world’s oceans transparent to American naval power, a strategic reality that remains the foundation of nuclear deterrence today.