- 1049 Bruno, Count of Egisheim-Dagsburg, is crowned Pope Leo IX
Investiture Controversy
1111 King Henry V, King of Germany and Italy, arrives in Rome for his coronation as Holy Roman Emperor, but Pope Paschal II refuses to crown him until April owing to the Investiture Controversy
- 1130 Pope Innocent II is elected
- 1429 Battle of the Herrings fought during Hundred Years' War when French and Scottish troops unsuccessfully attack English convoy (carrying barrels of herrings) near Rouvray
- 1502 Muslims in Granada forced to convert to Catholicism
Vasco Da Gama's Second Voyage
1502 Vasco da Gama sets sail from Lisbon, Portugal, on his second voyage to India
Westminster Jousting Tournament
1511 King Henry VIII issues challenge, beginning a jousting tournament to celebrate the birth of his son Henry. Recorded in Roll of Honour manuscript which depicts trumpeter John Blanke, only identifiable black person in Tudor England. [1]
- 1541 Santiago, Chile, founded (or Feb 24)
Execution of Jane Grey
1554 Queen of England for nine days, Lady Jane Grey aged about 17 is executed for treason under Mary I at the Tower of London
- 1577 Spanish land guardian Don Juan of Habsburg signs the "Eternal Edict"
- 1700 Great Northern War begins in Northern Europe between Denmark–Norway, Saxony, Russia, and the Swedish Empire
- 1719 The Onderlinge van 1719 u.a., the oldest existing life insurance company in the Netherlands is founded
- 1733 Georgia founded by James Oglethorpe at site of Savannah
- 1762 British fleet occupies Martinique
- 1763 John Casteret appointed British minister of foreign affairs
King Gustav III
1771 Gustav III becomes the King of Sweden after the death of predecessor Adolf Frederick
- 1772 Yves-Joseph de Kerguelen-Trémarec of France discovers the uninhabited Kerguelen Archipelago in the sub-Antarctic ocean
Third Voyage of James Cook
1777 Captain James Cook arrives at Queen Charlotte Sound, New Zealand, aboard HMS Resolution, on his 3rd trip to the Pacific
- 1793 First US Fugitive Slave Law passes, requiring the return of escaped slaves
- 1795 First US state university opens, the University of North Carolina, in Chapel Hill
God Save Emperor Francis
1797 Joseph Haydn's song "Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser" (God Save Emperor Francis) premieres in Vienna
- 1818 Chile gains independence from Spain
- 1821 Mercantile Library of City of NY opens
- 1825 Creek Indian treaty is signed as tribal chiefs agree to turn over all their land in Georgia to the government and migrate west by September 1, 1826
- 1832 Ecuador annexes Galapagos Islands
- 1839 Aroostoock (or "Pork & Beans) War: Boundary dispute between Maine & New Brunswick
- 1840 Housatonic Railroad opens, running from Bridgeport, Connecticut, north to the Massachusetts state line
- 1848 Choreographer Jules Perrot's ballet "Faust" to music by Giacomo Panizza and Michael Andrew Costa, premieres at La Scala Teatro in Milan, Kingdom of Lombardy
- 1850 Original Washington's farewell address manuscript sells for $2,300
- 1851 Edward Hargraves and three other men discover gold at Ophir, New South Wales, beginning Australia's first gold rush [1]
- 1855 Michigan State University established
- 1861 State troops seize US munitions in Napoleon, Arkansas, during the US Civil War
- 1865 Henry Highland Garnet becomes the first African American minister to preach to the US House of Representatives, he talks about the end of slavery
- 1870 Official proclamation sets April 15 as last day of grace for US silver coins to circulate in Canada
- 1870 Utah becomes the second territory in the United States to pass a law allowing women the vote, after Wyoming in 1869
- 1873 US Congress passes the Coinage Act of 1873, abolishing bimetallism and placing the country on the gold standard
Honolulu Courthouse Riot
1874 150 US troops land in Honolulu to protect King David Kalākaua during the Honolulu Courthouse riot
- 1877 First news dispatch by telephone between Boston and Salem, Massachusetts
- 1877 US railroad builders strike against wage reduction
- 1878 Harvard player Frederick Thayer patents baseball catcher's mask (pat # 200,358)
- 1879 First artificial ice rink in North America at Madison Square Garden, NYC
- 1879 News about British loss at Battle of Isandlwana to Zulu attack (Anglo-Zulu War) reaches London
- 1880 US National Croquet League organizes in Philadelphia
- 1882 Social-Democratic Union forms in Amsterdam
- 1885 Carl Peters founds German East-Africa Society
- 1886 2nd British Conservative government of Marquess of Salisbury forms in alliance with Liberal Unionist Party
The Lady from the Sea
1889 Henrik Ibsen's play "Fruen fra havet" (The Lady from the Sea) premieres in Oslo
- 1894 Anarchist Émile Henry hurls a bomb into Paris's Cafe Terminus, killing one and wounding 20
- 1899 -47°F (-44°C), Camp Clarke, Nebraska (state record)
- 1899 1st 2-man team 6-day bicycle race in US begins, Madison Square Garden, NYC
- 1901 Dutch Penitentiary children's law proclaimed
- 1908 Anna Jeanes bequeaths $1,000,000 to Swarthmore to become all female
- 1908 NY to Paris auto race (via Alaska & Siberia) begins in NYC George Schuster wins after 88 days behind the wheel
- 1909 American James Clark runs world record marathon (2:46:52.6) in NYC
- 1909 Netherlands' SDAP suspends Marxist Tribune group (Gorter & Wijnkoop)
Polonia
1909 Symphony in B minor "Polonia", by Polish composer Ignacy Jan Paderewski has its public premiere with the Boston Symphony Orchestra
1912 China adopts the Gregorian calendar
Abdication of the Last Qing Emperor
1912 The last Qing Emperor of China, Puyi (age 6), abdicates after losing the support of the Chinese people and thus the "mandate of heaven"
The Squaw Man
1914 "The Squaw Man," the first feature-length film shot in Hollywood, directed by Cecil B. DeMille and Oscar Apfel, is released in the US
Lincoln Memorial Dedicated
1914 Dedication ceremony for the about to be constructed Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Hitler Receives Iron Cross
1915 Adolf Hitler receives the relatively common Iron Cross second class for bravery in World War I
- 1915 World War I: Kaiser Wilhelm approves the strategic bombing of London's docks
- 1917 1st edition of Joseph Patterson and Sidney Smith's strip "The Gumps"
- 1920 -Apr 26] 14,000 Rotterdam/Amsterdam harbor workers strike
- 1920 NL votes 6-2 for a single baseball commissioner, AL votes 6-2 to keep group commission
- 1921 Soviet troops invade Georgia
Rhapsody In Blue
1924 George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" premieres at the influential concert "Experiment in Modern Music" held by Paul Whiteman and his orchestra at Aeolian Hall, NYC [1]
- 1924 George Kaufman's "Beggar on Horseback" premieres in NYC
- 1925 1st federal arbitration law approved by Congress
- 1925 E. Thieffry departs with Handley Page for the Belgian Congo
- 1925 Estonia passes Law on Cultural Self-Government for National Minorities, allowing a unique degree of autonomy to ethnic and religious groups of 3,000 or more
- 1926 Barendrecht soccer team forms
- 1927 British expeditionary army lands in Shanghai
- 1929 Karst Leemburg wins Dutch 11 cities skate (11:30)
- 1931 Vatican Radio begins broadcasting with the callsign HVJ
- 1932 Communist Party of Holland forms Unemployed Combat Committees
- 1932 Karl Schäfer of Austria wins the first of 2 consecutive men’s figure skating Olympic gold medals at the Lake Placid Winter Games in the United States
Olympic Gold
1932 Sonja Henie of Norway wins her 2nd of 3 consecutive Olympic gold medals in women’s figure skating at the Lake Placid Winter Games; beats Austria’s Fritzi Burger into 2nd place for 2nd straight Games
- 1932 World champion French husband and wife team Pierrre and Andrée Brunet win their 2nd consecutive Olympic pairs figure skating gold medal at the Lake Placid Games
- 1933 German vice-chancellor von Papen demands Catholic aid for Nazis
- 1934 Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss government bans Social Democrat party
- 1934 Export-Import Bank of the United States forms
- 1934 France hit by a general strike against fascists & royalists
- 1934 The four-day February Uprising, sometimes called the Austrian Civil War, begins
Radar Demonstrated
1935 First secret demonstration of radio signals detecting aircraft by Robert Watson-Watt and Arnold Wilkins at Daventry, England
- 1935 Great airship, USS Macon lost in a storm off Point Sur, California with the loss of two lives, with 64 people saved
- 1937 Cleveland (now Los Angeles) Rams granted an NFL franchise
- 1938 3rd British Empire Games close in Sydney, Australia
- 1938 Austrian chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg visits Adolf Hitler in Berchtesgaden
- 1941 First injection of penicillin into a patient by British physician Charles Fletcher at Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, England
- 1941 Jewish Council for Amsterdam forms under Ascher and Cohen
- 1941 Occupation Police arrest "Jewish Foursome"
- 1942 German battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen escape from Brest to Germany in a dash up the English Channel
- 1944 Wendell Wilkie enters the race to be the Republican nominee for US President
- 1945 SF selected for site of UN Conference
- 1945 Tornado strikes Montgomery, Alabama, with estimated Fujita scale of F3 intensity, kills 26, destroys about 100 houses, two warehouses, and a freight train;
- 1945 Tornado strikes near York and Livingston, Alabama, with estimated Fujita scale of F4 intensity, kills 11 people
- 1947 Daytime fireball and meteorite fall seen in eastern Siberia
The New Look
1947 French fashion designer Christian Dior presents his first influential collection, named the "New Look"
- 1947 Record 100.5-kg sailfish caught by C. W. Stewart, near the Galapagos Islands
- 1948 1st Lt Nancy Leftenant becomes 1st African American in army nursing corps
- 1949 Team Canada beats Denmark 47-0 in hockey
- 1950 Senator Joe McCarthy claims to have list of 205 communist government employees
- 1953 USSR breaks relations with Israel
- 1954 The UK government establishes an organisation to control atomic energy in the country under The Atomic Energy Authority Bill
- 1955 McGuire Sisters' "Sincerely" single goes to No. 1 and stays No. 1 for 10 weeks
- 1955 President Eisenhower sends 1st US advisors to South Vietnam
- 1955 Soviets decides space center to be built in Baikonur, Kazakhstan
- 1955 WTVY TV channel 4 in Dothan, AL (CBS) begins broadcasting
- 1957 Researchers announce Borazan (harder than diamonds) been developed
Sports History
1958 Boston Celtic Bill Russell grabs 41 rebounds to beat Syracuse Nationals, 119-101
- 1958 General Miguel Ydegoras Fuentes elected President of Guatemala
- 1959 The Lincoln Memorial design on the U.S. penny goes into circulation. It replaces the "sheaves of wheat" design
- 1960 Chinese army kills 12 Indian soldiers
- 1961 Boston Celtic Bill Russell grabs 40 rebounds to beat Philadelphia Warriors, 136-125
- 1961 USSR launches Venera 1 toward Venus
- 1962 Bus boycott starts in Macon, Georgia
Event of Interest
1963 Argentina requests the extradition of ex-president Juan Perón
- 1964 Fighting breaks out between Turks and Greeks over dispute islands in Cyprus and 16 are killed; the UN responds the following month by sending a peacekeeping force
- 1964 The Beatles first NYC concerts, two shows at Carnegie Hall
- 1965 KHFI (now KBVO) TV channel 42 in Austin, TX (NBC) begins broadcasting
- 1965 Nuclear test at Pacific Ocean
- 1967 Dutch speed skater Kees Verkerk becomes All-Around World Champion
- 1967 Pirate Radio Free Harlem (NYC) begins transmitting
Music History
1967 Promotional films (music videos) for the Beatles' forthcoming single "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields" debut on the Ed Sullivan Show in the US
- 1968 Dutch speed skater Ans Schut wins women's 3,000m event at Grenoble Winter Olympics; first 10 finishers beat previous Olympic record set in Squaw Valley (1960)
- 1968 Frenchman Jean Claude-Killy follows his win in the downhill with victory in giant slalom at Grenoble Winter Olympics; clean sweeps 3 alpine skiing events with success in the slalom
- 1970 Anthony Shaffer's "Sleuth" premieres in NYC
- 1973 1st US POWs in North Vietnam released; 116 of 456 flown to Philippines
- 1974 Heads of state of Algeria, Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia discuss oil strategy in view of the progress in Arab-Israeli disengagement
- 1976 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
- 1977 Festac '77, the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, finishes in Lagos, Nigeria
- 1977 Toronto Maple Leafs shutout Washington Capitals 10-0
- 1979 Kosmos 1076, the first Soviet oceanographic satellite, launches
- 1980 NY Islanders 2nd scoreless tie, vs Winnipeg Jets
- 1981 Admiral Bobby R Inman, USN, becomes deputy director of CIA
- 1981 Arbitrator Goetz declares Boston Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk a free agent
- 1981 Cape Verde amends its constitution
- 1981 Pete Squires of Yonkers, New York, sets record for running 1575 steps up to 86th floor of Empire State Building, in 10 minutes 59 seconds
- 1982 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
NHL Record
1982 Wayne Gretzky scores his 153rd point of the season, breaking the NHL record
- 1984 12 years after winning the doubles in Sapporo (1972), Italian Paul Hildgarten wins the men's luge singles at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics
- 1984 East German luger Steffi Martin wins the first of 2 consecutive women's singles gold medals at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics; also wins in Calgary (1988)
- 1984 Finnish cross-country skier Marja-Liisa Hämäläinen wins the 5k gold medal at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics; 2nd of 3 individual medal sweep, also winning 10k and 20k events
- 1984 William Grant Still's Symphony No. 3 ("The Sunday Symphony"), composed in 1958, receives premiere performance, by the North Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Carlton Woodsi
- 1987 Survivors of a black man murdered by KKK members awarded $7 M damages
1988 US Navy frigate USS Yorktown bumped by Russian frigate Bezzavetny in the Black Sea in dispute over right of innocent passage
- 1989 Five Pakistani Muslim rioters are killed while protesting Salman Rushdie's novel "The Satanic Verses"
Event of Interest
1989 Loyalist paramilitary group kill Pat Finucane, a Belfast lawyer who represented republican hunger striker Bobby Sands, while he is having dinner with family
- 1989 Thursday's Child sets sailing record, NY-Cape Horn-SF, 80 d 20 h
- 1989 Wayne Gretzky sets 2 records, his 45th hat trick & 10th 40+ goal season
- 1991 Iceland recognizes Lithuania's independence
- 1991 North and South Korea form a joint team for a table tennis competition
Groundhog Day
1993 Comedy film "Groundhog Day" opens across the US starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, directed by Harold Ramis
1994 "The Scream" by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1893 pastel version) is stolen in Oslo
- 1994 20th century premiere of 6 restored Haydn sonatas takes place in Boston
- 1994 Inna Lassovskaya jumps world record 14.90m
- 1994 Model Anna Nicole Smith hospitalized for drug overdose
- 1994 XVII Winter Olympic Games opens in Lillehammer, Norway
- 1995 Dieter Baumann runs European record 3k indoor (7:37.51)
- 1995 Jeff Rouse swims world record 50m backstroke (24.37 sec)
- 1995 PRI loses and PAN wins Mexican regional elections
- 1995 Sun Cayun pole vaults indoor female world record (4.13m)
- 1995 Susan Auch skates female world record 500m (38.94 sec)
Murder of Interest
1997 Fred Goldman says he will settle for a signed murder confession from O.J. Simpson in lieu of his $20.5 million judgement
- 1998 "Freak" opens at Cort Theater NYC
- 1998 250-car Italy pile-up due to fog, 4 die & 50 hurt
- 1998 Dallas Cowboys sign Chan Gailey as their 4th head coach
Event of Interest
1998 Intel unveils its first graphics chip, the i740
- 1998 US District Judge Thomas F. Hogan declares the line-item veto law unconstitutional
Music Concert
1999 Ringo Starr's fifth All-Starr Band debuts in concert; members include: Todd Rundgren, Jack Bruce, Gary Brooker, Simon Kirke, and Timmy Cappello
- 1999 Scientists warn about harmful impacts on health of genetically modified (GM) food
1999 US President Bill Clinton is acquitted by the Senate in his impeachment trial
- 2001 "Ain't Nothing 'bout You" single released by Brooks & Dunn
- 2001 NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft lands in the saddle region of 433 Eros, becoming the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid
- 2002 An Iran Air Tupolev Tu-154 crashes prior to landing in Khorramabad, Iran, killing 119
United Nations
2002 Trial of former President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milošević begins at the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague; he dies four years later before its conclusion
- 2002 US Secretary of Energy makes the decision that Yucca Mountain is suitable to be the United States' nuclear waste repository
Event of Interest
2004 San Francisco begins issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in response to a directive from Mayor Gavin Newsom
- 2006 A powerful winter storm blankets the Northeastern United States dumping 1 to 2 feet of snow from Washington, D.C. up to Boston, Massachusetts. The storm dumped a record 26.9 inches of snow in New York City.
- 2007 A gunman opens fire in a mall in Salt Lake City, killing five people in the Trolley Square shooting
Coach Schottenheimer Fired
2007 Marty Schottenheimer is abruptly fired as head coach of the San Diego Chargers due to lack of playoff success and a strained relationship with ownership
- 2009 Colgan Air Flight 3407 crashes near Buffalo, New York, killing 50 people
- 2010 XXI Winter Olympic Games open in Vancouver, Canada
2012 54th Grammy Awards: "Rolling In The Deep" by Adele;, Bon Iver win
- 2012 Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow is re-elected President of Turkmenistan with 97% of the vote
- 2012 Zambia defeat Ivory Coast 8-7 on penalties in the Africa Cup of Nations
Sports History
2013 At a ceremony in Philadelphia, the NFL pays tribute to the life of the late Steve Sabol and his many contributions to the league
- 2013 North Korea allegedly conducts its third nuclear test, claiming it is a nuclear device that can be weaponized
Event of Interest
2014 Former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin is found guilty on corruption charges and sentenced to ten years in prison
- 2014 German Nordic combined skier Eric Frenzel wins the 1st of 3 career Olympic gold medals in Individual normal hill/10 km event in Sochi; wins event again Pyeongchang and long hill 4 x 5k relay
- 2014 Intel entrepreneur and co-founder of the X-PRIZE Foundation, Peter Diamandis, claims that 50% of US jobs are under threat of being mechanized within 10 years
- 2014 Switzerland’s Dominique Gisin and Tina Maze of Slovenia tie for gold in the women’s downhill event at 1:41.57s at the Sochi Winter Games; first-ever dead-heat in Olympic alpine skiing
- 2014 Tatyana Volosozhar and Maksim Trankov win the Olympic gold in pairs figure skating
- 2016 Britain's Ordnance Survey, using NASA data posts map of Mars on Flickr
- 2016 Fiji becomes the first country to ratify the UN climate deal (signed Paris, December 2015)
Papal Visit
2016 Pope Francis begins his visit to Mexico, arriving at “Benito Juarez” International Airport in Mexico City
- 2016 Pope Francis meets Patriarch Kirill in Havana in the first meeting between the heads of the Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches in nearly 1,000 years
- 2016 Student leader Kanhaiya Kumar is arrested on “anti-nationalism” charges by Indian police at an anniversary event of the death of Afzal Guru, at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University
- 2017 59th Grammy Awards: Adele wins Best Song "Hello" and Best Album "25"
- 2017 Emergency spillway at Oroville Dam, California threatens to collapse, 180,00 residents ordered to evacuate
- 2017 North Korea conducts a solid fuel ballistic missile test from Banghyon air base
- 2018 American snowboarder Jamie Anderson retains her Olympic slopestyle title (Sochi 2014) at the Pyeongchang Winter Games, comfortably ahead of Canada's Laurie Blouin
- 2018 Dutch speed skater Ireen Wüst becomes first Winter Olympian to win an individual gold medal in 4 straight Games with victory in the 1,500m at Pyeongchang; first speed skater to win 10 Olympic medals
- 2018 French biathlete Martin Fourcade wins men's 12.5k pursuit gold medal at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics; also wins 15k mass start gold
- 2018 German biathlete Laura Dahlmeier wins her 2nd gold medal of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in the women's 10k pursuit; also wins 7.5k sprint gold
- 2018 Oxfam deputy director resigns over charity's failure to deal with sexual misconduct allegations in Haiti and Chad
Event of Interest
2018 Portait paintings of Barack Obama by Kehinde Wiley and Michelle Obama by Amy Sherald are unveiled at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery
- 2018 Tropical cyclone Gita strikes Tonga as a category four cyclone causing widespread damage
- 2019 24 hour general strike in Belgium forces all fights to be cancelled and schools shut
- 2019 Australian government loses historic vote on own bill with amendment to allow offshore sick refugees access to healthcare, first loss in 78 years
- 2019 Hotel fire in New Delhi, India, kills 17
- 2019 NASA data shows the world has become 5% greener since the early 2000s, mostly due to tree planting in China and intensive farming in India
- 2019 Rare black panthers are spotted for the first time in nearly 100 years in Laikipia County, Kenya
- 2019 Republic of Macedonia officially changes it name to the Republic of North Macedonia to end long dispute with Greece
- 2019 Trial of 12 Catalonia independence leaders begins in Madrid
- 2019 US national debt tops 22 trillion for the first time according to US Treasury
- 2019 Vulcan Inc. announces the rediscovery near the Solomon Islands of World War II aircraft carrier USS Hornet, which sank in 1942 with the loss of 140 lives.
- 2021 Tokyo Olympics Chief Yoshiro Mori resigns after his comments that talkative women made meetings “drag on too long”
- 2022 French forces say they have killed 40 fighters in air attacks in Burkina Faso linked to deadly attacks on Benin border [1]
- 2023 India opens the first part of what will be its longest expressway linking Mumbai with New Delhi over 1,386-kilometer (861 mile) [1]
Rihanna Performs at Super Bowl
2023 Rihanna performs half-time at the Super Bowl, in her first live performance in six years in Glendale, Arizona [1]
2023 Super Bowl LVII, State Farm Stadium, Glendale, Arizona: Kansas City Chiefs beat Philadelphia Eagles, 38-35; MVP: Patrick Mahomes, KC, QB
- 2024 Oldest known 11,000 Stone Age megastructure, used for hunting, revealed submerged in Bay of Mecklenburg, off the German coast [1]
- 2025 Tulsi Gabbard confirmed as Director of National Intelligence by the US Senate [1]
