History by month
February
29 days of history. Every date is an entry point to the events, births, and moments that shaped our world.
February 1
1968 South Vietnamese police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan executes captured Viet Cong offic
February 2
1943 German forces never regained the initiative in the East after this brutal five-m
February 3
1959 A plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa claims the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Val
February 4
1789 Washington accepted a $25,000 annual salary only after Congress urged him to do
February 5
1917 Congress overrode President Wilson's veto to enact the Immigration Act of 1917,
February 6
1899 Spain officially surrendered its colonial empire in the Americas and the Pacific
February 7
1990 The Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party formally surrenders its mono
February 8
1587 Elizabeth I signed the execution warrant for Mary, Queen of Scots, removing a ri
February 9
1950 Senator Joseph McCarthy publicly accused the U.S. Department of State of harbori
February 10
1763 Great Britain, France, and Spain signed the Treaty of Paris to end the Seven Yea
February 11
1990 F.W. de Klerk unconditionally released Nelson Mandela from Victor Verster Prison
February 12
1818 Bernardo O'Higgins signs the Chilean Declaration of Independence near Concepción
February 13
1633 Galileo published Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems in 1632, only
February 14
1929 Five men stood against a garage wall as gunmen disguised as police officers open
February 15
1898 An explosion obliterated the forward third of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor, ki
February 16
1918 The Council of Lithuania unanimously adopted the Act of Independence, formally d
February 17
1865 Confederate troops ignited the flames of Columbia while retreating from advancin
February 18
1861 Jefferson Davis accepted the presidency in Montgomery, Alabama, solidifying a se
February 19
1942 Executive Order 9066 authorized military commanders to exclude all people of Jap
February 20
1962 John Glenn completed three orbits around Earth in four hours and 55 minutes aboa
February 21
1965 A shouted insult and sudden gunfire silenced Malcolm X mid-speech at Manhattan's
February 22
1924 Calvin Coolidge stepped up to a microphone in the White House and became the fir
February 23
1455 Johannes Gutenberg's workshop in Mainz unleashed the first Western book printed
February 24
1803 The Supreme Court declared an act of Congress unconstitutional in Marbury v. Mad
February 25
1870 Hiram Rhodes Revels took his oath as a Republican from Mississippi, shattering t
February 26
1991 Saddam Hussein orders Iraqi troops to retreat from Kuwait after a devastating co
February 27
1922 The Supreme Court shot down a direct challenge to the Nineteenth Amendment in Le
February 28
1953 James Watson and Francis Crick unveiled a double-helix model of DNA based on Ros
February 29
1504 Christopher Columbus threatened to summon divine wrath by predicting a lunar ecl