This day in history

[Richard Frost]

9th February

1234 Mongol army takes the Jin city of Caizhou, last holdout of Jin Emperor Ai-Tsung, who commits suicide rather than be captured

1267 Synod of Breslau orders Jews of Silesia to wear special caps

1287 Massive storm across south-east England hits Cinque Ports realines the coastline, New Romney port now a mile inland

1540 The first recorded race meet in England (Roodee Fields, Chester)

1554 Battle at London: Sir Thomas Wyatt defeated and his rebellion against Queen Mary crushed

1555 Bishop of Gloucester John Hooper is burned at the stake for heresy

1574 Louis of Nassau ends siege of Maastricht

1742 Sir Robert Walpole, often referred to as the first British Prime Minister, ennobled as 1st Earl of Orford

1744 Battle at Toulon (French/Spanish vs English fleet of Adm Matthews)

1775 British Parliament declares Massachusetts colony in rebellion

1807 The Grand Sanhedrin (Jewish high court) is convened by Napoleon Bonaparte to give legal sanction to the principles in the Assembly of Notables

1897 Invasion of Benin City by British Expedition force, the city is burnt and looted, marks the end of Nigerian Kingdom of Benin formed in the 11th century

1906 Natal proclaims state of siege in Zulu uprising

1913 Beginning of the Ten Tragic Days in Mexico City, with revolts leading to 3,000 deaths

1916 Britain's military service act enforced (conscription)

1922 World War Foreign Debt Commission is established by Congress to settle the problem of Allied war and postwar loans

1929 USSR, Estonia, Latvia, Poland & Romania sign Litvinov's Pact, providing for renunciation of war among its signatories

1941 Nazi collaborators destroy pro-Jewish café Alcazar Amsterdam (Alcazar refused to hang "No Entry for Jews" signs in front of cafe)

1961 The Beatles first gig at Liverpool's Cavern Club; they would play there nearly 300 times over the next two years

1962 Jamaica signs agreement to become independent

1966 UK Government announces construction of a nuclear reactor on the North coast of Scotland

1971 5 men are killed near a BBC transmitter on Brougher Mountain, County Tyrone, in a landmine attack carried out by the Irish Republican Army

1971 Apollo 14 returns to Earth

1971 Quake in San Fernando Valley kills 64 & causes over $½B damage

1972 British government declares state of emergency after month-long coal miners' strike

1972 William Craig, who had been Northern Ireland Minister for Home Affairs, launches 'Ulster Vanguard' as an umbrella movement for the right-ring of Unionism

1975 Soyuz 17 returns to Earth

1986 Tomb of Tutanchamon's treasurer Maya found in Egypt

2001 American submarine USS Greeneville accidentally strikes and sinks the Ehime-Maru, a Japanese training vessel operated by the Uwajima Fishery High School; nine the Ehime-Maru's crew members were killed, including four high school students.

2013 5 people are killed after Cessna plane crashes on a Brussels runway

2014 Australian National University scientists discover the oldest known star at 13.6 billion years old

2014 Protests erupt in Sarajevo and other cities in Bosnia-Herzegovina; the unemployment rate remains at 40% (57% for youth)

2016 Two German passenger trains collide near Bad Aibling, Bavaria, killing 10 and seriously injuring 18

2020 Deaths from COVID-19 virus overtake those of Sars (2003) with 813 deaths worldwide, with more than 34,800 known infections

2020 Fastest supersonic New York to London journey made by British Airways Boeing 747-436 in four hours and 56 minutes, speeds of 1,327 km/h / 825 mph due to Storm Ciara

2020 Solar Orbiter probe attached to an Atlas rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral

2020 Storm Ciara makes landfall in northern Scotland bringing widespread wind and flooding to northern Europe resulting in 18 deaths

2020 Suspected militants attack and kill at least 30 people, many while sleeping in their cars in Auno, north-eastern Nigeria, kidnapping women and children

2021 United Arab Emirates is the fifth entity to successfully orbit a probe around Mars, as probe Hope begins to study the planet's atmosphere.

2021 WHO team investigating origin of COVID-19 in Wuhan say it is "extremely unlikely" that it leaked from a local research lab

2022 Nearly four million bottles of beer destroyed in large crackdown on alcohol in northern Nigerian state of Kano, where alcohol prohibited under Sharia law

[Richard Frost]

60 St Paul thought to have been shipwrecked on Malta

1098 Crusaders defeat Prince Redwan of Aleppo at Antioch

1355 The St. Scholastica's Day riot breaks out in Oxford, England, leaving 62 scholars and perhaps 30 locals dead in two days

1525 Albert of Prussia pledges a personal oath to Sigismund I the Old and is invested with the duchy for himself and his heirs

1535 12 nude anabaptists run through Amsterdam streets

1716 Scottish pretender to the throne James III Edward returns to France

1720 Edmond Halley appointed as the second Astronomer Royal at the Greenwich Observatory

1746 The Pelham brothers resign from the British government, but resume office when King George II backs down.

1763 Treaty of Paris ends French-Indian War, surrendering Canada to Britain

1774 Andrew Becker demonstrates diving suit

1778 Voltaire returns to Paris to great acclaim after an absence of 28 years

1837 Russian poet Alexander Pushkin is fatally injured in a duel with French officer Georges-Charles de Heeckeren d'Anthès

1842 Moreton Bay Penal Colony abolished and opened for free settlement (modern city of Brisbane, Australia)

1846 British defeat Sikhs in battle of Sobraon, India

1859 General Horsford defeats Begum of Oude and Nana Sahib in Indian Mutiny

1906 British battleship HMS Dreadnought launches after only 100 days, renders all other capital ships obsolete with its revolutionary design

1914 In accordance with the understanding reached by General J.C. Smuts and Mahatma Gandhi, 60 passive resistance prisoners released from Pietermaritzburg Prison; 40 passive resisters released in Durban, 8 in Newcastle, 11 in Port Elizabeth

1915 US President Woodrow Wilson protests to Britain on the use of US flags on British merchant ships to deceive the Germans

1915 US President Woodrow Wilson warns Germany that the US will hold it 'to a strict accountability' for 'property endangered or lives lost'

1916 Military conscription begins in Britain

1918 Leon Trotsky declares that Russia is leaving World War I

1933 Adolf Hitler proclaims end of Marxism

1934 1st Jewish immigrant ship to break the English blockade in Palestine


1940 "Tom & Jerry" cartoon created by William Hanna & Joseph Barbera debut by MGM

1943 British 8th Army sweeps through North Africa to Tunisia

1947 WWII peace treaties signed

1955 The US Navy evacuate 1000s from Tachen Islands in the Pacific

1964 Australian destroyer HMAS Voyager sinks after colliding with aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne, killing 82

1970 Dry powder avalanche moving at 120 mph smashes into youth hostel at Val d'Isere, France, killing 40 Belgian, French, & German youths

1972 BBC bans "Give Ireland Back to the Irish" by Wings

1972 Two British soldiers are killed in a land mine attack near Cullyhanna, County Armagh; an IRA member is shot dead during an exchange of gunfire with RUC officers

1975 The Provisional Irish Republican Army agrees to a truce and ceasefire with the British government and the Northern Ireland Office; Seven "incident centres" are established in nationalist areas to monitor the ceasefire

1977 Bomb explosion in Moscow metro

1987 Philippine troops murder 17 civilians in Lupao Massacre

1990 South African President F. W. de Klerk announces Nelson Mandela will be freed on February 11th

1996 A bomb explodes in Docklands area of London, ending the 17-month ceasefire; James McArdle is eventually found guilty and jailed for 25 years

2005 His Royal Highness Charles, Prince of Wales announces engagement to Camilla Parker Bowles

2013 36 people are killed and 39 are injured in a stampede at a train station in Allahabad, India

2013 5 people are killed by a falling lifeboat from the cruise ship Thomson Majesty in the Canary islands

2016 Venezuelan government orders more than 100 malls to close early to save electricity, due to drought caused by El Niño

2019 Insect populations are collapsing worldwide threatening a“catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems” according to a global review saying 40% declining, 30% endangered

2019 Mine collapse at an illegal gold mine in north-eastern Liberia traps about 40 people underground

2020 More than 30 bushfires put out by heaviest rainfall for 30 years in New South Wales, Australia, helping end one of the worst bushfire seasons ever, 46 million acres burnt, over 1 billion animals killed, 34 people dead

2021 17,000 year old conch shell discovered to be oldest known wind instrument, after being reassessed by archaeologists, originally found in Marsoulas cave, Pyrenees

2021 Astronomers confirm the planetoid named Farfarout as the most distant orbiting the Sun, almost four times more distant than Pluto

[Richard Frost]

660 BC Traditional date for the foundation of Japan by Emperor Jimmu

55 Tiberius Claudius Caesar Britannicus, heir to the Roman Emperorship, dies under mysterious circumstances in Rome. This clears the way for Nero to become Emperor.

385 Siricius, bishop of Tarragona, elected as Bishop of Rome; first to style himself Pope

1543 Battle at Wayna Daga: Ethiopian and Portuguese troops beat Muslim army

1543 Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and English King Henry VIII sign anti-French covenant

1806 William Grenville becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom following the death of William Pitt the Younger

1808 Anthracite coal 1st burned as fuel, experimentally, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania

1809 Robert Fulton patents steamboat

1826 University College London founded; known until 1836 as London University

1852 First British public female toilet opens (Bedford Street, London)

1858 First vision of the Virgin Mary to 14-year-old Bernadette of Lourdes, France

1878 1st weekly weather report published in UK

1895 -17°F (-27.2°C) in Braemar, Grampian (UK record)

1902 Police beat up universal suffrage demonstrators in Brussels

1907 Passenger ship Larchmont sinks by Block Island, off Rhode Island, 322 die

1916 Emma Goldman arrested for lecturing on birth control

1929 Vatican City, the world's smallest country, is made an enclave of Rome

1956 British diplomats Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean deny working as spies for Soviet Russia after reappearing in the Soviet Union after going missing 5 years earlier

1970 Japan becomes 4th nation to put a satellite (Osumi) in orbit

1975 Margaret Thatcher defeats Edward Heath for leadership of the British Conservative Party

1978 China lifts a ban on works of Aristotle, William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens

1984 10th NASA Space Shuttle Mission (41B): Challenger 4 returns to Earth

1990 Nelson Mandela released after 27 years imprisonment in South Africa

1993 President Clinton selects Janet Reno to be first female US Attorney General

1995 Space shuttle STS-63 (Discovery 19), lands

1997 STS 82 (Discovery 22) launches

2007 A national referendum in Portugal legalises non-therapeutic abortion when requested by the woman during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy.

2013 18 coal miners are killed in an explosion in the Komi region, Russia

2013 Pope Benedict XVI announces his resignation from February 28, the first pope to resign since 1415

2014 11 people are killed after a grenade was tossed into a movie theatre in Peshawar, Pakistan

2014 77 people are killed after a military transport plane crashes in Algeria

2014 Peace talks resume in Geneva as leaders attempt to bring an end to the civil war in Syria

2016 Discover of gravitational waves (through collision of two black holes) announced by physicists from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (Ligo)

2016 Riot between rival drug cartels at a prison in Monterrey, Mexico, leaves 52 dead

2018 Russian airliner crashes south-east of Moscow, killing all 71 on board

2019 Artificial Intelligence system meant to assist diagnosis in the future, pitted against physicians in test to diagnose 600,000 patients in results published in "Nature Medicine", A.I. won, just

2021 California's COVID-19 death toll overtakes New York's, reaching 45,496 amid first sign of falling infection numbers (Johns Hopkins)

2021 UK Kent COVID-19 strain set "to sweep the world" and become the dominant strain globally according to UK scientist Sharon Peacock after strain detected in over 50 countries (later named Alpha)

2021 US President Joe Biden rescinds the national emergency order used by Donald Trump to fund the border wall with Mexico

2021 World's second oldest person French nun Sister André' celebrates her 117th birthday after surviving COVID-19 in Toulon

2022 Australia lists the koala as endangered for the first time in Queensland, New South Wales and ACT after a steep decline in numbers

[macliam]

February 11

1922 - The Clones affray, an infamous event that is rarely recorded. After the 1921 truce in the Anglo-Irish war, which implemented the partition of Ireland, nineteen uniformed and armed ‘A’ Specials of the Ulster Constabulary (USC) led by Sergeant William Dougherty made their way from Belfast to Enniskillen, via a provocative route that crossed the new "border" and arrived at Clones station in the Free State, days after the town had been evacuated by British forces. The local IRA commander attempted to stop the train leaving, but was shot dead from within the train. A firefight broke out and four of the Specials were killed, including Dougherty, with another eight wounded before they surrendered.

James Craig, the Unionist PM, then demanded permission to send 5,000 troops over the border to rescue the loyalists and occupy Free State territory, but Churchill refused the request outright. The USC men were eventually swapped for 3 IRA men sentenced to death in Derry. However, the humiliation of the loyalist force resulted in sectarian rioting in Belfast and the deaths of 31 people between 13 and 15 February, including a bomb being thrown into a Catholic schoolyard, killing 6 children and the mob killing of 19 year-old catholic, James Rice, whose hands were tied behind his back before he was shot several times and mutilated.

[Richard Frost]

12th February

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 Investiture Controversy

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

1502 Vasco da Gama sets sail from Lisbon, Portugal, on his second voyage to India

1528 Treaty of Dordrecht between emperor & ecclesiastical power

1541 Santiago, Chile, founded (or Feb 24)

1554 Queen of England for nine days, Lady Jane Grey is executed for treason

1577 Spanish land guardian Don Juan of Habsburg signs "Eternal Edict"

1700 The Great Northern War begins in Northern Europe between Denmark–Norway, Saxony and Russia and the Swedish Empire.

1762 British fleet occupies Martinique

1763 John Casteret appointed British minister of foreign affairs

1772 Yves de Kerguelen of France discovers Kerguelen Archipelago, India

1777 Captain James Cook arrives at Queen Charlotte Sound, New Zealand, aboard Resolution, on his 3rd trip to Pacific Ocean

1818 Chile gains independence from Spain

1851 Edward Hargraves and three other men discover gold at Ophir, New South Wales, beginning Australia's first gold rush

1879 News about British loss at Battle of Isandlwana to Zulu attack (Anglo-Zulu War) reaches London

1886 2nd British Conservative government of Marquess of Salisbury forms in alliance with Liberal Unionist Party

1894 Anarchist Émile Henry hurls a bomb into Paris's Cafe Terminus, killing one and wounding 20

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"

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

1921 Winston Churchill becomes British Minister of Colonies

1927 British expeditionary army lands in Shanghai

1934 France hit by a general strike against fascists & royalists

1935 Great airship, USS Macon, crashes into Pacific Ocean

1941 First injection of penicillin into a patient by British physician Charles Fletcher at Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford

1947 French fashion designer Christian Dior presents his first influential collection, named the "New Look"

1949 Panic in Quito, Ecuador, after "War of the Worlds" played on radio

1950 Albert Einstein warns against hydrogen bomb

1954 The UK government establishes an organisation to control atomic energy in the country under The Atomic Energy Authority Bill

1964 Fighting breaks out between Turks and Greeks over disputed islands in Cyprus and 16 are killed; the UN responds the following month by sending a peacekeeping force

1988 US Navy frigate USS Yorktown bumped by Russian frigate Bezzavetny in the Black Sea in dispute over right of innocent passage

1989 5 Pakistani Muslim rioters killed protesting "Satanic Verses" novel

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 250-car Italy pile-up due to fog, 4 die & 50 hurt

2001 NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft touchdown 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

2002 The trial of former President of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milošević begins at the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague. He eventually dies four years later before its conclusion.

2004 The city of San Francisco, California begins issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in response to a directive from Mayor Gavin Newsom.

2013 North Korea allegedly conducts its third nuclear test,

2016 Britain's Ordnance Survey, using NASA data posts map of Mars on Flickr

2017 North Korea conducts a solid fuel ballistic missile test from Banghyon air base

2018 Oxfam deputy director resigns over charity's failure to deal with sexual misconduct allegations in Haiti and Chad

2019 24 hour general strike in Belgium forces all fights to be cancelled and schools shut

2019 Mexican drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán found guilty of all 10 federal crimes against him in New York after 200 hours of testimony

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 WWII aircraft carrier USS Hornet, which sank in 1942 with loss of 140 sailors re-discovery announced by Vulcan Inc. near the Solomon Islands

2022 French forces say they have killed 40 fighters in air attacks in Burkina Faso linked to deadly attacks on Benin border

[Richard Frost]

1258 Baghdad, then a city of 1 million, falls to the Mongols as the Abbasid Caliphate is destroyed, tens of thousands slaughtered, ending the Islamic Golden Age

1349 Jews are expelled from Burgdorf, Switzerland

1502 Nicolás de Ovando y Cáceres, new Governor of the Indies sets sail for the Indies with fleet of 30 ships, largest-ever fleet to the New World

1578 Tycho Brahe first sketches "Tychonic system" of solar system

1601 1st British East India Company voyage departs from London, lead by John Lancaster

1633 Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome for trial before Inquisition for professing belief that earth revolves around the Sun

1668 Treaty of Lisbon: Spain recognizes Portugal

1689 Parliament of England adopts the Bill of Rights which establishes the rights of parliament and places limits on the crown

1692 Glencoe Massacre: about 38 MacDonalds killed early in the morning by rival Campbell clan members, allegedly for not promptly pledging allegiance to the new king, William of Orange

1777 Marquis de Sade arrested without charge, imprisoned in Vincennes fortress

1832 First appearance of cholera in London

1895 Moving picture projector patented

1907 English suffragettes storm British Parliament & 60 women are arrested

1916 Albert Einstein presents Karl Schwarzschild’'s solution to his equations for a (then theoretical) black hole to the Prussian Academy of Sciences

1917 Dutch exotic dancer Mata Hari is arrested in Paris on suspicion that she is a German spy

1920 League of Nations recognizes perpetual neutrality of Switzerland, allowing Switzerland to rejoin the League

1934 Austrian Dollfuss government bans socialist party

1934 The Soviet steamship Cheliuskin sinks in the Arctic Ocean.

1935 Bruno Hauptmann found guilty of kidnap & murder of Lindbergh infant. He proclaimed his innocence to the end.

1941 Nazi leaders attack Dutch Jewish Council

1942 Hitler's Operation Sealion, the invasion of England, is cancelled

1945 Allied planes begin bombing Dresden, Germany; a firestorm results and over 22,000 die

1955 Israel acquires 4 of 7 Dead Sea scrolls

1960 France becomes the 4th nuclear nation by exploding the 70 kilo-ton "Gerboise Bleue" atomic bomb in the French Algerian Sahara desert

1961 Soviet Union fires a rocket from Sputnik V to Venus

1970 Man-eating tiger is reported to have killed 48, 80 km from New Delhi

1985 Polish police arrests 7 Solidarity leaders

1991 Syria tells Germany they are ready to recognize Israel

1991 US air raid on the Amiriyah shelter in Baghdad kills more than 408 civilians

1994 Ship disaster near Ranong Thailand, kills 200

1996 British boy band Take That officially announce that they are disbanding, prompting UK government to set up counselling phone lines

2000 The last original "Peanuts" comic strip appears in newspapers one day after Charles M. Schulz dies

2001 An earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter Scale hits El Salvador, killing at least 400.

2004 The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics discovers the universe's largest known diamond, white dwarf star BPM 37093.

2008 Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd makes an historic apology to Indigenous Australians, especially to the Stolen Generations who suffered forced child removal and assimilation

2013 10 civilians, including 3 children, are killed by a NATO airstrike in the Kunar Province, Afghanistan

2013 16 Muslim insurgents are killed in an attack on a Narathiwat military base, Thailand

2013 Sir Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, says he believes "a recovery is in sight" after fears raised about a triple dip recession

2018 Israeli Police report recommends Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be prosecuted on bribery, fraud and breach-of-trust charges

2018 South Africa declares a three-year drought a National Disaster, though pushes Cap Town's "Day Zero" to June 4

2018 South African President Jacob Zuma is ordered to step down by the A.N.C.

2019 Flinders River swells to 37 miles wide (60km) creating its own weather system after intense flooding in Queensland, Australia

2019 Iran marks 40th anniversary of the Islamic revolution with huge street marches and protests against the US

2019 NASA confirms Mars Opportunity rover's mission has ended after 15 years due to a sandstorm damaging its communications

2019 Suicide attack on bus carrying Iranian military's Revolutionary Guard kills 23 in Sistan-Baluchestan province, separatist group Jaish al-Adl claim responsibility

2020 January 2020 was the hottest January in recorded history according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

2020 Scientists overturn current thought about how planets form - not by violent collision but gentle clumping, through study of Arrokoth in Kepler belt, published in "Science"

2021 Archaeologists announce discovery of oldest known beer factory in Abydos, Egypt, from early Dynastic period 3150 B.C.- 2613 B.C

2021 Mario Draghi, former head of the European Central Bank, is sworn in as Italian Prime Minister ahead of a new coalition government

2022 Canadian police arrest truckers who have protested a vaccine mandate for blocking Ambassador's Bridge, between Detroit and Windsor, for a week at the busiest land border crossing in North America

[Richard Frost]

15th February

399 BC Philosopher Socrates is sentenced to death by the city of Athens for corrupting the minds of the youth of the city and for impiety

438 The Theodosian Code of Roman laws proclaimed in the Eastern Empire (first law reforms since 295)

590 Khosrau II, the last great Sasanian king is crowned King of Persia

1220 Khwarezmian city of Bukhara taken by Genghis Khan's Mongol army after a 12-day siege, with the death of about 30,000 of its citizens

1637 Ferdinand III succeeds Ferdinand II as Holy Roman Emperor

1676 Isaac Newton writes to Robert Hooke “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants”

1677 King Charles II reports anti-French covenant with Netherlands

1763 Austria, Prussia & Saxony sign the Treaty of Hubertusburg, marking the end of the French and Indian War and of the Seven Years' War

1852 Great Ormond St Hospital for Sick Children, London, admits 1st patient

1882 SS Dunedin leaves New Zealand for Britain with the first cargo of frozen meat.

1898 USS Maine sinks in Havana harbor, cause unknown, 258 sailors die

1900 Boer War: Siege of Kimberley broken by British troops under Lieutenant-General John French after a 124 day siege. Kimberley defense led by Cecil Rhodes.

1902 Berlin U-Bahn (Underground railway) opened

1906 British Labour Party founded

1918 US army troop ship torpedoed & sunk by Germany off Ireland

1922 Marconi begins regular broadcasting transmissions from Essex

1924 A deputation for the South African Indian Congress (SAIC) meets with the Minister of the Interior, Sir Patrick Duncan, and presents him with a memorandum setting out their objections concerning the Class Areas Bill

1933 US President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt survives assassination attempt but Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak is mortally wounded, he would die on March 29

1936 Adolf Hitler announces construction of the Volkswagen Beetle (the People's Car, aka the Käfer/Beetle)

1939 German battleship Bismarck was launched

1942 World War II: British ruled Singapore surrenders to the Japanese

1943 Women's camp Tamtui on Ambon (Moluccas) hit by allied air raid

1944 891 British bombers attack Berlin in the largest raid by the RAF against the city

1944 Allies begin attack on Axis held Monte Cassino monastery, Italy

1952 King George VI is buried in St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle

1955 1st pilot plant to produce man-made diamonds announced

1965 John Lennon passes his driving test

1965 Red Maple Leaf Flag becomes the official flag of Canada

1970 Dominican DC-9 crashes into sea at Santo Domingo, kills 102

1970 Nationalists disrupt UN session on Congo

1971 A British soldier dies 7 days after being mortally wounded in an Irish Republican Army attack in North Ireland

1971 After 1,200 years Great Britain abandons pence & shilling system & adopts decimal currency

1982 Ocean Ranger oil-drilling platform lost off Newfoundland, 84 die

1984 500,000 Iranian soldiers move into Iraq

1989 Israel attacks border strip Taba near Egypt

1989 Soviet military occupation of Afghanistan ends as the last Soviet troops cross the Soviet-Afghan border

1991 Freighter with dynamite explodes in Phang Nga Thailand, 120 die

1993 Bombings by mafia drug lords kill 14 in Bogota, Colombia

1995 Population of People's Republic of China hits 1.2 billion

1996 Mortar attack on the US Embassy in Athens, Greece

1998 The Angel of the North, a large-scale steel sculpture 20 m (66 ft) tall by Antony Gormley is installed at Gateshead, northern England

2005 YouTube, Internet site on which videos may be shared and viewed by others, is launched in the United States

2011 Libyan protests begin opposing Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi's rule

2012 Fire at Comayagua prison, Honduras, kills 358

2012 United Kingdom unemployment rate reaches 17 year high of 8.4%

2013 2012 DA14, an asteroid with a 50m diameter, comes within 27,700km of Earth the same day as the Chelyabinsk meteor hits Siberia

2013 Chelyabinsk meteor breaks up over Chelyabinsk, Russia, injuring over 1,200 people, with 26 to 33 times energy of Hiroshima bomb

2017 The Indian space rocket PSLV-C37 successfully launches 104 satellites in a single flight

2018 Cyril Ramaphosa is sworn in as South African President, replacing Jacob Zuma

2018 First known case of transgender woman breastfeeding reported in "Transgender Health Journal"

2019 A fired employee opens fire at Henry Pratt Company in Aurora, Illinois, killing five and injuring six

2019 US President Donald Trump declares a national emergency to divert funds to build a border wall, after signing bipartisan spending agreement to avoid another government shutdown

2020 Beijing orders people returning to the city after Lunar New Year holiday to self-quarantine for 14 days to prevent spread of Covid-19

2021 Major winter storm in the US stretches from Texas to Maine, over 3 million without power in Texas, goes on to kill 210 people

2021 UK is the first European country to require travellers from COVID 'hotspots' to isolate in quarantine hotels, following other countries such as Australia, NZ and Singapore

2022 Floods and landslides after the heaviest rain in a century in Petrópolis, Brazil, leaves 146 people dead with 191 missing

[Richard Frost]

16th February

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

1249 Andrew of Longjumeau is dispatched by Louis IX of France as his ambassador to meet with the Khan of the Mongols

1486 Maximilian I is elected King of the Romans at Frankfurt

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 1st known cheque written (£400), now on display at Westminster Abbey

1677 Earl of Shaftesbury arrested and confined in the Tower of London

1741 Benjamin Franklin's begins publishing "The General Magazine and Historical Chronicle for all the British Plantations in America"

1742 Spencer Compton becomes Prime Minister of Great Britain (First Lord of the Treasury)

1840 American Charles Wilkes discovers Shackleton Ice Shelf, Antarctica

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

1866 Spencer Compton Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington becomes the British Secretary of State for War

1894 British troops occupy Ilorin, Gold Coast

1916 Russian troops conquer the Ottoman Empire city of Erzurum during WWI

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

1918 Lithuania declares independence from Russia & Germany (National Day)

1923 Howard Carter opens the inner burial chamber of Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun's tomb and finds the sarcophagus

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

1943 British premier Winston Churchill contracts pneumonia

1948 Miranda, famous moon of Uranus, photographed for 1st time

1957 The "Toddlers' Truce", a controversial television close down between 6 and 7 pm, abolished in the United Kingdom

1961 NASA Explorer 9 mission launches satellite for the 1st time from Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Virginia; this was also the 1st all-solid-propellant rocket put into orbit

1963 Beatles top British rock charts with "Please, Please Me"

1963 Philosopher Hannah Arendt's controversial account of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann is first published in "The New Yorker"

1980 Continuous traffic jam extends 176 km north of Lyons, France

1983 The Ash Wednesday bushfires in Victoria and South Australia claim the lives of 75 people in one of Australia's worst ever fires

1985 The founding of Hezbollah.

1986 Mário Soares from the Socialist Party is elected the 1st civilian President of Portugal
Sports History

1989 Egypt, Iraq, Jordan & North Yemen form common market

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

1994 6.5 earthquake strikes South East Sumatra, kills 200

2005 The UK version of "The Apprentice" with British business magnate Alan Sugar premieres on the BBC

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"

2019 India's new high-speed train the Vande Bharat Express breaks down on its first return trip on Delhi to Varanasi route

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

[Richard Frost]

17th February

1461 Wars of the Roses: Second Battle of St Albans - Lancastrian army defeats Yorkists and recaptures King Henry VI

1500 Battle of Hemmingstedt - German peasant army repels ducal army of Schleswig and Holstein

1510 Portuguese admiral Afonso de Albuquerque first conquers the city of Goa, entering it with little conflict

1568 Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II agrees to pay tribute to the Ottoman Empire for peace

1598 Boris Godunov chosen as Tsar of Russia

1600 Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno is burned alive at Campo de' Fiori in Rome, convicted of heresy by the Roman Inquisition

1621 Myles Standish is elected as the first commander of the Plymouth Colony. 1620 to 1691, the first permanent English colony in New England and the second permanent English colony in North America,

1776 1st volume of Edward Gibbon's seminal work "The Decline and Fall of Roman Empire" published

1795 Thomas Seddal harvests 8.3-kg potato from his garden in Chester, England

1814 Battle of Mormant: French Imperial army defeat Russian Austrian forces (War of the Sixth Coalition)

1818 Baron Karl von Drais de Sauerbrun patents "draisine" (early bicycle)

1837 Charles Lyell makes his presidential address to the Geographical Society, London and announces that Richard Owen has concluded from Darwin's fossils that extinct species were related to current species in the same locality

1843 Battle of Miani: Bombay Army of the East India Company led by Charles Napier defeats a Baluch army of Talpur Emirs of Sindh led by Mir Nasir Khan Talpur. Leading to the capture of parts of Sindh, the company's first possession in modern-day Pakistan.

1876 Sardines first canned by Julius Wolff in Eastport, Maine

1880 Alexander II of Russia survives an assassination attempt

1896 Muzzling Order on the London County Council enforced

1902 A general strike in Barcelona and nearby towns leads to government-troop reprisals that leave 40 dead

1926 Avalanche buries 75 in Sap Gulch, Bingham, Utah; 40 die

1938 1st public experimental demonstration of Baird color TV (London)

1940 Altmark Incident: Crew of the British destroyer "Cossack" board German "Altmark" in Jøssingfjord, Norway, releasing 299 British prisoners after hand-to-hand fighting with bayonets and the last recorded Royal Naval action with cutlass

1943 Adolf Hitler visits field marshal Erich von Manstein's headquarters in Zaporozje, Ukraine and stays until the 19th

1943 Dutch churches protest at Seyss-Inquart against persecution of Jews

1947 Dutch RC bishops publish manifest against "godless communism"

1950 Two Long Island Rail Road trains collide head-on, killing 32 near Rockville Centre, Long Island, New York

1957 A fire at a home for the elderly in Warrenton, Missouri kills 72 people.

1972 British Parliament votes to join the European Common Market

1972 Sales of the Volkswagen Beetle model exceed those of Ford Model T

1974 49 die in stampede for seats at soccer match, Cairo, Egypt

1978 11 civilians and 1 RUC officer are killed and 30 wounded by a Provisional Irish Republican Army incendiary bomb at the La Mon Restaurant near Belfast

1979 China invades Vietnam, marking the start of the Sino-Vietnamese War

1980 Derrynaflan Hoard of five priceless 8th/9th century liturgical vessels discovered with metal detectors on Derrynaflan Island, County Tipperary - one of Ireland's most exciting archaeological finds

1985 3rd person to receive an artificial heart (Murray Haydon)

1995 Federal judge allows lawsuit claiming US tobacco makers knew nicotine was addictive & manipulated its levels to keep customers hooked

2003 The London Congestion Charge scheme begins in London, England

2013 5 people are killed and 11 are injured after a gas explosion destroyed an apartment complex in Frenštát pod Radhoštěm, Czech Republic

2016 Car bomb attack on military convoy in Ankara, Turkey, by Kurdish militant eaves 28 dead

2016 Oldest known case of human-Neanderthal sex (100,000 yrs ago) revealed by Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig), 50,000 yr old Neanderthal woman's remains from Altai mountains show traces of Homo Sapiens DNA

2017 Discovery of a new mostly underwater continent Zealandia in the South Pacific announced in research journal "GSA Today"

2019 Protests continue by thousands in streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, against government corruption and inflation

2020 Amazon boss Jeff Bezos pledges $10 billion to help fight climate change

2020 General Motors announces it is retiring the Holden brand in Australasia

2021 South Africa, Africa's worst-affected country begins COVID-19 vaccinations with the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine in Cape Town

2022 28,000 women apply for 30 jobs driving trains after they are advertised for women in Saudi Arabia for the first time

[Richard Frost]

18th February 1930 Pluto is first spotted

Clyde Tombaugh, a 23-year-old astronomer at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, finds 'Planet X' with the help of a blink microscope. The immensely far-off object will be called Pluto, but will be stripped of its planetary status in 2006 and reclassified as merely a "dwarf planet."