February 26 in History

Napoleon escaped from exile on Elba with a thousand soldiers and marched north through France, rallying the army to his side as regiment after regiment defected from the restored Bourbon monarchy. His extraordinary return to power launched the Hundred Days, a final gamble that ended in defeat at Waterloo and permanent exile on the remote island of Saint Helena.

Ptolemy needed a zero point for his astronomical tables. He chose February 26, 747 BC — the first day of King Nabonassar's reign in Babylon. Not because Nabonassar was important. He wasn't. But the Babylonians kept meticulous records of lunar eclipses from that date forward, and those records survived. Ptolemy could cross-reference them with Greek observations. That synchronization gave historians their first reliable anchor for dating ancient events. Every "in 500 BC" you've ever read traces back to Babylonian priests watching the moon 2,770 years ago.

Solomon had the throne. Géza had the people. By 1074, Hungary was split between the legitimate king and his cousin who controlled two-thirds of the country. They met at Kemej with armies. Solomon won decisively. But here's the thing about winning battles when you've already lost the kingdom: Géza retreated, regrouped, and three years later took the throne anyway. Solomon fled to the German border and spent the rest of his life trying to get back what he'd won at Kemej. He died in exile. Victory doesn't mean much if nobody follows you home.

The siege of Kaifeng killed more people than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Conservative estimates: 600,000 dead, mostly from starvation and disease. The Mongols had surrounded the city for months. People ate tree bark, then leather, then each other. When the walls finally fell in 1233, the Mongols found almost nobody left to kill. The Jin dynasty had held northern China for over a century. It ended not with a battle but with mass starvation.

Charles of Anjou's French army crushed King Manfred of Sicily at the Battle of Benevento, killing Manfred on the field and ending the Hohenstaufen dynasty's grip on southern Italy. Pope Clement IV crowned Charles king of Sicily and Naples, shifting the Mediterranean power balance from the Holy Roman Empire to France and the papacy for a generation.

Denmark lost half its kingdom in a single afternoon. The Treaty of Roskilde, signed February 26, 1658, handed Sweden everything it wanted: Scania, Blekinge, Halland, Bohuslän — the entire southern tip of what's now Sweden. Denmark had been crushed in less than three years. The Swedish army had marched across frozen straits that winter. Nobody thought ice could support 10,000 men and artillery. King Frederick III signed to avoid losing everything. Sweden became the dominant Baltic power overnight. But the Swedes got greedy. They invaded again eight months later, broke the treaty, and triggered a war that bankrupted them. Denmark got nothing back, but Sweden never recovered its strength.

The British East India Company's factory on Balambangan Island lasted exactly four years. They'd set it up in 1771 off the coast of Borneo, convinced it would become the next Singapore. Instead, in 1775, Moro pirates from the Sulu Sultanate sailed in and burned it to the ground. They killed most of the garrison and took the survivors as slaves. The Company abandoned the island entirely. They wouldn't try again in the region for another 50 years. Britain's first attempt at controlling Southeast Asian trade routes ended with an empty island and a lesson about underestimating local power.

Alfred Beach built a subway under Broadway without telling the city. He'd applied for a permit to construct a pneumatic mail tube. He built a passenger train instead. Three hundred feet of tunnel, one elegant wooden car, pushed by a giant fan. It seated 22 people. The waiting room had a fountain, a fish tank, and a grand piano. Four hundred thousand New Yorkers paid 25 cents each to ride it in the first year. Boss Tweed, who controlled surface transit, blocked every expansion permit. The tunnel sat unused for seven years. Workers rediscovered it in 1912, digging for the real subway.

Japan forced Korea to sign the Treaty of Ganghwa after sailing warships into Korean waters and staging a fake battle to provoke conflict. Korea had been closed to foreign trade for two centuries. The treaty gave Japanese citizens immunity from Korean law, opened three ports, and severed Korea's tributary relationship with China. Korea got nothing in return. The terms were modeled on the unequal treaties Western powers had imposed on Japan two decades earlier. Japan was doing to Korea exactly what had been done to them. Within 35 years, Japan would annex Korea entirely. The treaty wasn't negotiation. It was rehearsal.

George Lohmann took eight wickets in a single Test innings at the Sydney Cricket Ground in 1887. First time anyone had done it. He was 21 years old, bowling for England against Australia. His figures: 8 for 35 in 36.3 overs. The Australians were all out for 119. England won by 13 runs. Lohmann would go on to finish his career with the best bowling average in Test history—10.75 runs per wicket. Nobody who's played more than 20 Tests has come close. The record that made him famous lasted exactly two years. His career average? Still untouched after 130 years.

Kinemacolor worked by filming through red and green filters at 32 frames per second — twice the normal speed. Then projecting through the same filters, fast enough that your brain blended them into full color. Except it didn't quite work. Actors who moved quickly left red and green ghosts trailing behind them. The system died by 1914. But for five years, audiences paid double to watch dancers shimmer and flags wave in something close to the colors they'd only imagined on screen.

The first jazz record wasn't made by a Black band. It was five white guys from New Orleans who couldn't even spell the genre right — they called it "jass." The Original Dixieland Jass Band walked into Victor's New York studio on February 26, 1917, and cut "Livery Stable Blues." It sold a million copies. Meanwhile, the Black musicians who actually invented jazz — Buddy Bolden, Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver — couldn't get recording contracts. Some never recorded at all. So the sound that defined American music entered history through the wrong door, and we've been arguing about credit ever since.