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
2004 Mark Zuckerberg launches Facebook from his Harvard dorm room, instantly creating
February 5
1994 A Mississippi jury finally convicts white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith of as
February 6
1952 Elizabeth II ascended to the throne while hiding in a treehouse at the Treetops
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
1258 Hulagu Khan's forces stormed Baghdad in 1258, slaughtering thousands and extingu
February 11
1990 F.W. de Klerk unconditionally released Nelson Mandela from Victor Verster Prison
February 12
1912 Empress Dowager Longyu signed the Imperial Edict of Abdication on February 12, 1
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
1923 Howard Carter unsealed King Tutankhamun's burial chamber in KV62, revealing a tr
February 17
1600 Giordano Bruno spent seven years in an Inquisition prison before they burned him
February 18
1930 Clyde Tombaugh spots a moving speck on photographic plates from January and iden
February 19
1945 About 30,000 United States Marines stormed ashore at Iwo Jima, triggering a brut
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
1980 The US hockey team that beat the Soviets at Lake Placid was college kids and ama
February 23
1945 Six U.S. Marines and a Navy corpsman hoist the American flag atop Mount Suribach
February 24
1868 The House of Representatives impeaches President Andrew Johnson, setting a dange
February 25
1870 Hiram Rhodes Revels took his oath as a Republican from Mississippi, shattering t
February 26
1995 Nick Leeson's reckless speculation on the Singapore exchange drains $1.4 billion
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