- 374 9th recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet
- 600 Pope Gregory the Great decrees saying "God bless You" is the correct response to a sneeze
French Embassy to the Mongols
1249 Andrew of Longjumeau is dispatched by Louis IX of France as his ambassador to meet with the Khan of the Mongols
- 1349 Jews are expelled from Burgdorf, Switzerland, accused of spreading the Bubonic Plague
- 1512 Battle at Valeggio: French troops beat Venetianen
Cum Ex Apostolatus Officio
1559 Pope Paul IV calls for deposition of sovereigns supporting heresy
Triennial Act
1641 English king Charles I accepts Triennial Act requiring that Parliament meet for at least a fifty-day session once every three years
- 1646 Battle of Great Torrington, Devon - the last major battle of the first English Civil War
- 1659 First known cheque written (£400), now on display at Westminster Abbey
- 1666 Netherlands & Brandenburg sign treaty
- 1677 Earl of Shaftesbury arrested and confined in the Tower of London
Historic Publication
1741 Benjamin Franklin begins publishing "The General Magazine and Historical Chronicle for all the British Plantations in America"
PM Spencer Compton
1742 Spencer Compton becomes Prime Minister of Great Britain (First Lord of the Treasury)
- 1751 First publication of Thomas Gray's poem "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"
- 1760 Native American hostages killed in Fort Prince George, South Carolina
Messier Presents his List
1771 French astronomer Charles Messier presents his original list of 45 M-objects to French Academy
- 1777 French astronomer Charles Messier adds M53 to his catalog (globular cluster in Coma Berenice)
- 1804 US Navy Lt Stephen Decatur raids Tripoli Harbor & burns Navy frigate "Philadelphia" after it is seized by pirates
- 1824 Athenaeum Club is founded in London as a private members' club
- 1838 Kentucky passes law permitting women to attend school under conditions
- 1838 Weenen Massacre: Hundreds of Voortrekkers along the Blaukraans River, Natal are killed by Zulu warriors
Shackleton Ice Shelf
1840 American Charles Wilkes discovers the Shackleton Ice Shelf in Antarctica
- 1846 Battle of Sobraon ends 1st Sikh War in India
- 1852 Studebaker Brothers wagon company established - precursor of the automobile manufacturer
- 1857 Gallaudet College (National Deaf Mute college) forms in Washington, D.C.
- 1859 The French Government passes a law to set the A-note above middle C to a frequency of 435 Hz, in an attempt to standardize the pitch
- 1860 Dutch Rochussen/Van Bosse government resigns
1861 Abraham Lincoln stops his train at Westfield on his way to Washington to thank 11-year-old Grace Bedell in person for her advice to grow a beard to gain more votes [1]
Battle of Fort Donelson
1862 Fort Donelson is captured by General Ulysses S. Grant following the surrender of around 12,000 Confederate soldiers
- 1864 Battle of Mobile, Alabama - operations by Union Army
- 1866 Spencer Compton Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington becomes the British Secretary of State for War
- 1868 Benevolent & Protective Order of Elks forms (NY)
- 1868 Benevolent & Protective Order of Elks organizes in New York City
- 1880 American Society of Mechanical Engineers forms (NYC)
- 1883 "Ladies Home Journal" begins publishing in the US
- 1887 Dutch writer Multatuli writes his last text
- 1887 First newspaper convention held in Rochester, NY
- 1894 British troops occupy Ilorin, Gold Coast
The Yellow Kid
1896 First US newspaper comic strip, Richard Felton Outcault's "The Yellow Kid," is published in William Randolph Hearst’s "New York Journal" [1]
- 1899 Future England cricket captain Pelham Warner scores an unbeaten 132 on his Test debut in a 32 run win over South Africa in the 1st Test in Johannesburg
- 1899 Knattspyrnufélag Reykjavíkur Iceland's first football club is founded
- 1899 President of France Félix Faure dies in office
- 1900 1st Chinese daily newspaper in US publishes, Chung Sai Yat Po in San Francisco
- 1900 Stanley Cup, Montreal Arena, Westmount, Quebec: Montreal Shamrocks beat Winnipeg Victorias, 5-4 to take challenge series, 3-1
- 1903 -59°F (-51°C), Pokegama Dam, Minnesota (state record)
- 1905 1st US Esperanto club organizes in Boston
- 1909 1st subway car with side doors goes into service (NYC)
- 1909 Serbia mobilizes against Austria-Hungary
- 1912 VSV soccer team forms in Ijmuiden
- 1914 1st airplane flight from LA to SF
- 1915 MLB baseball slugger Frank "Home Run" Baker (28) announces retirement following a contract dispute with Connie Mack. He sits out 1915 season
- 1916 Russian troops conquer the Ottoman Empire city of Erzurum during WWI
Sinking of the Lusitania
1916 The German ambassador in Washington announces that Germany will pay an indemnity for American lives lost on the Lusitania
- 1916 The US rejects the right of Germany and Austria-Hungary to sink armed merchant ships
- 1917 1st synagogue in 425 years opens in Madrid
- 1918 Lithuania declares independence from Russia & Germany (National Day)
- 1923 Allies accept Latvia's occupation of Memel territory
1923 Howard Carter opens the inner burial chamber of Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun's tomb and finds the sarcophagus
- 1925 Rescuers finally reach the body of caver Floyd Collins too late, 18 days after he became trapped in Sand Cave, Kentucky, bringing a tragic end to a story that had captured the nation [1]
Sports History
1926 Suzanne Lenglen defeats US champion Helen Wills in influential tennis match in Cannes, France
Der Zarewitsch
1927 Franz Lehár's operetta "Der Zarewitsch", starring tenor Richard Tauber, premieres at the Deutsches Künstlertheater in Berlin, Germany
- 1927 US restores diplomatic relations with Turkey
Murder of Interest
1929 In mysterious murder suicide Ned Doheny Jr., son of oil magnate Edward L. Doheny, dies along with secretary Hugh Plunkett at Greystone Mansion, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles
- 1929 KID-AM in Idaho Falls ID begins radio transmissions
- 1931 Extreme right wing politician Pehr Evind Svinhufvud becomes President of Finland
- 1932 1st patent for a tree issued to James Markham for a peach tree
- 1933 Catholic newspaper Germania warns against Nazis and communists
- 1933 England cricket team regains the Ashes against Australia, thanks to "bodyline" tactics
- 1934 Austrian Civil War ends with the defeat of the Social Democrats and the Republican Schutzbund
- 1934 Commission of Government is sworn in as form of direct rule for the Dominion of Newfoundland
- 1936 IV Winter Olympic Games close in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany
- 1936 Spanish Frente Popular (People's Front) wins elections
- 1937 DuPont Corp patents nylon, developed by employee Wallace Carothers
Event of Interest
1937 Jean Anouilh's "Le Voyageur Sans Baggage" premieres in Paris
- 1938 US Federal Crop Insurance program authorized
- 1940 British search plane finds German supply ship Altmark, used to accommodate allied sailors from vessels sunk by the Graf Spee off Norway
- 1942 Bangka Island massacre: Japanese soldiers machine-gun 22 Australian Army nurses and 60 Australian and British soldiers and crew members from two sunken ships. Only one nurse and two soldiers survive.
- 1942 German submarines attack Aruba oil refinery
- 1943 -32°F (-36°C), Falls Village, Connecticut (state record)
- 1943 Sign on Munich facade: "Out with Hitler! Long live freedom!" done by "White Rose" student anti-Nazi resistance group, caught on 2/18, beheaded on 2/22
- 1943 Withdrawing Afrika Korps reaches Mareth-line in North Africa
- 1943 World War II: The USSR reconquers Kharkov
- 1945 US forces land on Corregidor, complete conquest on March 3
- 1945 Venezuela declares war on Nazi Germany
- 1945 WWII: US Navy 5th Fleet aircraft carriers and planes begin two-day bombardment of airfields and aircraft plants near Tokyo, Japan; over 500 hundred Japanese aircraft are destroyed
- 1946 1st commercially designed helicopter tested, Bridgeport, Connecticut
- 1948 1st newsreel telecast, "20th Century Fox-Movietone News," shown on NBC
- 1948 Miranda, famous moon of Uranus, photographed for 1st time
- 1950 Longest-running prime-time game show, "What's My Line" begins on CBS
- 1950 Writers fail to elect anyone to Baseball's Hall of Fame
- 1951 NYC passes bill prohibiting racism in city-assisted housing
- 1951 San Francisco City Hall dome fire
- 1952 Ian Craig makes NSW cricket debut aged 16 years 249 days (NSW record)
- 1952 United States goes 1-2 in the 500m speed skating at the Olso Winter Olympics with Ken Henry taking gold ahead of teammate Don McDermott; Norwegian Hjalmar Anderson dominates remaining 3 speed skating events
Sports History
1953 Ted Williams safely crash-lands his damaged Panther jet, later awarded the Air medal
- 1954 WNEM TV channel 5 in Bay City, MI (NBC) begins broadcasting
- 1957 The "Toddlers' Truce", a controversial television close down between 6 and 7 pm, abolished in the United Kingdom
- 1959 Leonard Spigelgass' "Majority of One" premieres in NYC
- 1960 US nuclear submarine USS Triton set off on underwater round-world trip
- 1961 China uses its 1st nuclear reactor
- 1961 NASA's Explorer 9 is the first spacecraft placed in orbit by an all-solid rocket and the first spacecraft successfully launched into orbit from Wallops Island in Virginia
- 1962 "La Jetée", French film directed by Chris Marker, starring Hélène Chatelain, Davos Hanich and Jacques Ledoux, is released
- 1963 1st round-trip swim of Strait of Messina, Italy (Mary Revell of US)
- 1963 C & A Building in Amsterdam burns down
NBA Record
1963 North Carolina forward Billy Cunningham grabs a record 27 rebounds in a game vs Clemson
1963 Philosopher Hannah Arendt's controversial account of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann is first published in "The New Yorker"
- 1963 The Beatles top British rock charts with "Please, Please Me"
1964 Second appearance of the Beatles on "The Ed Sullivan Show", live from Deauville Hotel in Miami, Florida; broadcast draws about 70 million television viewers
- 1965 Pegasus 1 launched to detect micro-meteors
- 1966 Australian cricket batsman Bob Cowper makes a patient 307 (727 mins, 20 x 4s) in drawn 5th Test v England in Melbourne
- 1966 France performs underground nuclear test at Ecker, Algeria
- 1968 Italy completes the bobsleigh double at the Grenoble Winter Olympics with victory in the 4-man; Eugenio Monti and Luciano de Paolis double up for gold winning 2-man earlier
- 1968 US 1st 911 phone system goes into service in Haleyville, Alabama
Andrei Rublev
1969 "Andrei Rublev", Russian film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, starring Anatoly Solonitsyn and Ivan Lapikov, premieres in Moscow after a limited release in 1966
- 1969 Detroit Red Wings' captain Alex Delvecchio picks up an assist in a 6-2 defeat at Minnesota to become the 3rd player in NHL history to score 1,000 career points
Boxing Title Fight
1970 Joe Frazier (26) TKOs Jimmy Ellis (29) in 5 rounds for undisputed heavyweight boxing title, at Madison Square Garden, NYC
- 1972 German mass murderers "Three of Breda" freed
- 1972 Test Cricket debut of Lawrence Rowe WI v NZ Kingston, 214 & 100
NBA Record
1972 Wilt Chamberlain of the Los Angeles Lakers becomes first player in NBA history to reach the career 30,000 point mark during a 110-109 loss to the Phoenix Suns
Sports History
1973 West Indies v Australia at Kingston, 1st time since 1955 without Garfield Sobers
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
- 1975 Washington Capitals 1st NHL shutout, beating KC Scouts 3-0
- 1977 USSR performs nuclear test at Sary Shagan
- 1978 1st Computer Bulletin Board System (Ward & Randy's CBBS, Chicago)
- 1979 Los Angeles premiere of Paul Schrader's allegedly fact based film "Hardcore"
- 1979 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk
Olympic Gold
1980 American speed skater Eric Heiden wins 5,000m in Olympic record 7:02.29; second of record 5 gold medal sweep of events at Lake Placid
- 1980 Continuous traffic jam extends 176 km north of Lyons, France
- 1982 Agatha Barbara elected as 1st female president of Malta
- 1982 Assembled STS-3 vehicle moves from Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center (Florida) to launch pad
- 1983 The Ash Wednesday bushfires in Victoria and South Australia claim the lives of 75 people in one of Australia's worst ever fires
Olympic Gold
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
- 1984 Bill Johnson becomes first American to win an Olympic downhill skiing gold at the Sarajevo Games; beats Swiss Peter Müller by 0.27s
- 1984 Canadian speed skater Gaétan Boucher takes out the 1,500m at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics, his second gold medal of the Games; also wins the 1,000m
- 1984 NJ Devils 1st OT goal, Jan Ludvig beats Hartford Whalers 6-5
- 1984 Swedish cross country skier Gunde Svan takes his 2nd gold medal of the Sarajevo Winter Olympics in the 4 x 10k relay; also wins 15k gold
- 1984 Swedish cross country skier Thomas Wassberg wins 2nd career gold medal in 4 x 10k relay at Sarajevo Winter Olympics; 2nd of 4 career gold; 15k Lake Placid (1980), 50k Sarajevo, relay Calgary (1988)
- 1985 Largest NBA crowd to date, 43,816, sees Philadelphia at Detroit
- 1985 Lebanese political and military organization Hezbollah founded
Sports History
1985 Livingston Bramble defeats Ray Mancini to win WBA lightweight championship, in Buffalo, New York
- 1985 NJ Devils score their fastest hat trick in 42 seconds
1986 28th Daytona 500: Geoff Bodine wins on fuel mileage after Dale Earnhardt forced to pit for gas with 3 laps to go, then blows engine leaving the pits
- 1986 Dutch speed skater Hein Vergeer becomes World Allround champion for the second time
- 1986 French air force bombs Ouadi Doum airport in Chad
- 1986 Karlstad skates world record 10 km (14:12.14)
Election of Interest
1986 Mário Soares from the Socialist Party is elected the 1st civilian President of Portugal
- 1988 First documented combat action by US military advisors in El Salvador
- 1989 Egypt, Iraq, Jordan & North Yemen form common market
- 1989 William Hayden becomes Governor-General of Australia
- 1991 Dutch PPR, Political Party Radicals, disbands
Event of Interest
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
- 1992 Former silver Goodyear blimps are now painted yellow & blue
- 1993 Sandra Völker swims world record 50m backstroke (28.33 sec)
- 1993 Western Australia's and Australia's first woman Premier, Carmen Lawrence, is voted out of office
- 1994 6.5 earthquake strikes South East Sumatra, kills 200
- 1994 Johann Olav Koss skates world record 1500m (1:51.29)
- 1994 Premier Alfonso Bustamente ends government in Peru
- 1996 Gary Kirsten scores 188* for South Africa v UAE at Rawalpindi
1997 39th Daytona 500: Hendrick Motorsports posts a 1-2-3 finish with Jeff Gordon winning the race, ahead of Terry Labonte and Ricky Craven
- 1998 Tellabs Inc acquires Coherent Communications Systems for $670 million
- 1999 Kurdish rebels take over Greek and Kenyan embassies across Europe and hold hostages after the two countries helped Turkey arrest one of their rebel leaders, Abdullah Öcalan [1]
Sports History
1999 O.J. Simpson's 1968 Heisman Trophy is sold for $230,000 to help settle a $33.5 million civil judgement against Simpson for the deaths of his ex-wife and her friend
- 2001 Mathieu Schneider of the Los Angeles Kings becomes the first defenseman in history to score a goal against all 30 NHL teams as LA beats Minnesota, 4-0
- 2003 45th Daytona 500: Michael Waltrip wins for the second time in 3 years; race ends after 109 laps when rain pours on the track
- 2004 The Pittsburgh Penguins lose their 12th consecutive home game, a NHL record
- 2005 2004-05 NHL season is cancelled by Commissioner Gary Bettman; first time a North American professional sports league has called off a season due to labor dispute
- 2005 Kyoto Protocol comes into force following its ratification by Russia, committing industrialized nations to limit and reduce greenhouse gas emissions
The Apprentice UK
2005 The UK version of "The Apprentice" with British business magnate Alan Sugar premieres on the BBC
- 2006 The last Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) is decommissioned by the United States Army
- 2013 84 people are killed and 190 are injured after a market bombing in Hazara Town, Pakistan
Film & TV History
2013 Angelina Jolie undergoes a preventive double mastectomy after learning she had an 87% risk of developing breast cancer due to a defective BRCA1 gene
- 2013 Anthony Carmona is elected President of Trinidad and Tobago
Sports History
2013 Lionel Messi scores his 14th consecutive goal in La Liga and his 300th goal in 365 appearances for Barcelona
- 2014 American Bode Miller (36) becomes the oldest medalist in Olympic alpine skiing history when he ties for bronze in the super-G in Sochi
- 2014 Netherlands sweeps the medals in the women's 1,500m speed skating at the Sochi Winter Olympics; Jorien ter Mors wins gold ahead of teammates Ireen Wüst and Lotte van Beek
- 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
- 2016 Former French President Nicholas Sarkozy is placed under investigation for campaign funds
- 2017 Car bomb in Bayaa, Baghdad kills at least 48, Islamic State claims responsibility. 3rd attack in 3 days
- 2017 Suicide attack on shrine of Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, Sehwan, Pakistan kills 72, Islamic State claims responsibility
- 2018 More than 100,00 orangutans killed in Borneo since 1999 according to study published in "Current Biology"
- 2018 National state of emergency declared in Ethiopia in wake of anti-government protests
- 2018 Sochi (2014) Olympic downhill champion Matthias Mayer of Austria wins the super-G gold medal at the Pyeongchang Winter Games
- 2018 Swiss cross country skier Dario Cologna wins 4th career Olympic gold medal in the 15k freestyle in Pyeongchang; wins event in Vancouver (2010), and 15k classical & 30k skiathlon in Sochi (2014)
- 2019 India's new high-speed train the Vande Bharat Express breaks down on its first return trip on Delhi to Varanasi route
- 2019 Needing 78 for an unlikely victory, Sri Lanka's Kusal Perera 153no and Vishwa Fernando 6no put on a record 10th wicket stand for a 1 wicket win vs South Africa in the 1st cricket Test in Durban
Event of Interest
2019 Pope Francis defrocks ex-cardinal and archbishop of Washington Theodore McCarrick for sexually abusing minors and adults. First Cardinal to be removed for sexual abuse.
- 2020 'Ghost ship' cargo vessel MV Alta washed up on the Irish coast near Ballycotton by Storm Dennis, after drifting across the Atlantic from Bermuda
- 2020 America evacuates 400 citizens from COVID-19-infected cruise ship Diamond Princess quarantined in Yokohama port, Japan
- 2021 Athens and parts of Greece covered in unusual heavy snowfall
- 2021 US Winter storm continues with Dallas recording its lowest temperature in 70 years minus-2 degrees Fahrenheit
- 2022 Johannes Høsflot Klæbo teams with Erik Valnes to win the men's team sprint for Norway and clinch the cross country freestyle sprint double at the Beijing Winter Olympics
- 2023 WWII: US Naval History and Heritage Command confirms identity of the wreck USS Albacore, a submarine lost in 1944, discovered by University of Tokyo sonar team in 2022 off of Hokkaidō, Japan
- 2024 Alabama Supreme Court rules frozen embryos can be considered children as part of a wrongful death case where frozen embryos were accidentally destroyed at a clinic [1]
Trump Fined $354m
2024 Donald Trump and Trump Organization ordered to pay $354 million in fines in NY civil fraud case - one of the largest corporate sanctions in NY history [1]
- 2025 67th Daytona 500: William Byron becomes first back-to-back winner since Denny Hamlin in 2019-20 after escaping the chaos that knocked out the bulk of contenders in 2 late-race accidents
- 2025 Saturday Night Live celebrates 50 years with a special show “SNL50: The Anniversary Special” with celebrity guests and returning cast members [1]
