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February 1: Imbolc / Saint Brigid's Day in Ireland; National Freedom Day in the United States; Black History Month begins in the United States;

• 1411 – The First Peace of Thorn was signed, ending the Polish–Lithuanian–Teutonic War.
• 1662 – Sino-Dutch conflicts: After besieging Fort Zeelandia for nine months, Ming loyalist Zheng Chenggong secured the Dutch East India Company's surrender and the end of their rule in Taiwan.
• 1896 – Giacomo Puccini's opera La bohème premiered at the Teatro Regio in Turin, Italy, eventually becoming one of the most frequently performed operas internationally.
• 1960 – Civil rights movement: Four African-American students staged the first of more than five months of sit-ins at an F. W. Woolworth lunch counter (pictured) in Greensboro, North Carolina, to protest the company's policy of racial segregation.
• 2021 – The Burmese military staged a coup d'état that deposed the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, sparking nationwide protests and a civil war.

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February 2

• 1033 – An assembly at the Abbey of Payerne crowned Conrad II (pictured) king of Burgundy.
• 1725 – J. S. Bach led the first performance of his chorale cantata Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin, BWV 125, based on Luther's paraphrase of the Nunc dimittis.
• 1848 – Mexican–American War: During the American occupation of Mexico City, diplomats signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the war and had Mexico cede 1.36 million square kilometres (530,000 sq mi) of territory and the United States pay US$15 million.
• 1913 – New York City's Grand Central Terminal, the world's largest train station by number of platforms, opened immediately after midnight.
• 1972 – The Troubles: Protestors burned the British Embassy in Ireland following the massacre of 14 civilians in Derry by British forces.

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February 3: Feast day of Saint Laurence of Canterbury (Western Christianity); Four Chaplains' Day in the United States (1943)

• 1047 – Emperor Henry III declared Drogo of Hauteville to be count of all Apulian and Calabrian Normans.
• 1862 – Moldavia and Wallachia formally united, creating the Romanian United Principalities.
• 1870 – Reconstruction era: The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, formally prohibiting race-based disenfranchisement in the United States.
• 1930 – The Communist Party of Indochina, the Communist Party of Annam and the Communist League of Indochina merged to form the Communist Party of Vietnam.
• 1995 – In mission STS-63, astronaut Eileen Collins (pictured) became the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle.

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February 4: Lichun begins in East Asia (2026); World Cancer Day; National Girls and Women in Sports Day in the United States; Rosa Parks Day in some parts of the United States

• 1488 – Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias landed in Mossel Bay, becoming the first European known to have sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and the southern tip of Africa.
• 1555 – Marian Restoration: Because he opposed Catholicism, John Rogers was burned at the stake (pictured) as the first English Protestant executed for heresy under the reign of Mary I.
• 1945 – World War II: American forces liberated the Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila, the largest enemy-civilian internment camp run by the Empire of Japan in the Philippines.
• 1999 – The Philippine-flagged freighter New Carissa ran aground near Coos Bay, Oregon, causing one of the worst oil spills in the state's history.

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February 5: Constitution Day in Mexico (1917)

• AD 62 – Pompeii was severely damaged by a strong earthquake, which may have been a precursor to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that destroyed the town 17 years later.
• 1597 – As part of enforcing Toyotomi Hideyoshi's ban on Christianity in Japan, twenty-six Catholics, a mix of European missionaries and Japanese converts, were executed (depicted) near Nagasaki by crucifixion and impalement.
• 1861 – In a speech before the U.S. Congress, Representative John Edward Bouligny refused to join his fellow Louisiana congressmen in heeding the state's secession convention and resigning.
• 1967 – Cultural Revolution: The January Storm revolt in Shanghai reached its apogee as Maoist rebels proclaimed the establishment of the Shanghai People's Commune, a move the previously supportive Mao Zedong criticized.
• 2000 – Second Chechen War: As the Battle of Grozny came to a close, Russian forces summarily executed at least 60 civilians in Grozny's Novye Aldi suburb.

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February 6: Sámi National Day (1917); Waitangi Day in New Zealand (1840)

• 590 – Vistahm and Vinduyih deposed their brother-in-law Hormizd IV, King of Kings of the Sasanian Empire.
• 1579 – Domingo de Salazar, a Spanish Dominican friar, was appointed the first bishop of Manila.
• 1865 – Finland established its modern system of secular municipalities, separate from church parishes.
• 1922 – Representatives from France, Italy, Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom signed the Washington Naval Treaty (pictured), agreeing to limits on naval construction in the hopes of preventing an arms race.
• 1987 – Mary Gaudron became the first woman to be appointed a justice of the High Court of Australia.

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February 7: Independence Day in Grenada (1974)

• 1365 – Albert, King of Sweden, granted a town charter to Ulvila, the third-oldest city in Finland.
• 1813 – Napoleonic Wars: Two evenly matched frigates, the French Aréthuse and the British Amelia, battled to a stalemate (depicted) at the Îles de Los off the Guinean coast.
• 1865 – The trustees of Seattle enacted an ordinance that expelled Native Americans from the newly incorporated town.
• 1900 – Second Boer War: British troops made a third unsuccessful attempt to lift the siege of Ladysmith in the Battle of Vaal Krantz.
• 2014 – Researchers announced the discovery of the Happisburgh footprints in Norfolk, England, the oldest known hominid footprints outside Africa, at more than 800,000 years old.

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February 8: Feast day of Saint Josephine Bakhita (Catholicism); Military Foundation Day in North Korea (1948)

• 421 – Honorius declared Constantius III to be his co-emperor of the Western Roman Empire.
• 1250 – Seventh Crusade: The Ayyubid Sultanate of Egypt defeated and captured King Louis IX of France at the Battle of Fariskur.
• 1575 – William of Orange founded Leiden University, the oldest university in the Netherlands.
• 1960 – The official groundbreaking of the Walk of Fame took place in Hollywood, Los Angeles, in California.
• 1968 – Law enforcement officers in Orangeburg, South Carolina (pictured), fired into a crowd of college students who were protesting segregation, killing three and injuring twenty-seven others.

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February 9: Feast day of Saint Apollonia (in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy)

• 1825 – After no candidate received a majority of electoral votes in the previous year's presidential election, the United States House of Representatives chose John Quincy Adams (pictured) as president in a contingent election.
• 1945 – World War II: Allied aircraft unsuccessfully attacked a German destroyer in Førde Fjord, Norway.
• 1950 – U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy accused 205 employees of the State Department of being communists, sparking a period of strong anti-communist sentiment known as McCarthyism.
• 1975 – The spacecraft and crew of the Soviet Soyuz 17 mission returned to earth after 29 days in orbit at the Salyut 4 station.
• 2020 – Japanese figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu won the Four Continents Championships to become the only man to complete a Super Slam.

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February 10: Feast day of Saint Scholastica (Christianity); Little New Year in northern China (2026); National Memorial Day of the Exiles and Foibe in Italy

• 1355 – A tavern dispute between students of the University of Oxford and townspeople in Oxford became a riot that left about 90 people dead.
• 1919 – The Inter-Allied Women's Conference (delegates pictured) opened as a counterpart to the Paris Peace Conference, marking the first time that women were allowed formal participation in an international treaty negotiation.
• 1939 – Spanish Civil War: The Nationalists concluded their conquest of Catalonia and sealed the border with France.
• 2009 – The satellites Iridium 33 and Kosmos 2251 destroyed each other in the first accidental hypervelocity collision between two intact satellites in low Earth orbit.

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February 11: Little New Year in southern China (2026); National Foundation Day in Japan

• 1826 – London University, later University College London (pictured), was founded as the first secular university in England.
• 1851 – As part of celebrations marking the separation of Victoria from New South Wales, the inaugural first-class cricket match in Australia began at the Launceston Racecourse in Tasmania.
• 1976 – The Frente de Liberación Homosexual made their final public appearance, shortly before the group's dissolution due to political repression after the Argentine coup d'état.
• 2001 – The computer worm Anna Kournikova, which would affect millions of users worldwide, was released by a 20-year-old Dutch student.

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February 12: Lincoln's Birthday in some parts of the United States; Red Hand Day

• 1691 – A papal conclave convened to select a new pope after the death of Pope Alexander VIII.
• 1924 – George Gershwin's composition Rhapsody in Blue premiered at Aeolian Hall in New York.
• 1994 – Edvard Munch's painting The Scream (pictured) was stolen from the National Gallery of Norway.
• 2003 – Protesters in La Paz and the Bolivian government brokered a deal to end two days of rioting against a proposed salary tax.

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February 13: Carnival begins in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2026)

• 1660 – The four-year-old Charles XI became King of Sweden upon his father's death.
• 1891 – Frances Coles was killed in the last of eleven unsolved murders of women that took place in or near the impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London.
• 1961 – Geode prospectors near Olancha, California, discovered what they claimed to be a 500,000-year-old rock with a 1920s-era spark plug encased within (pictured).
• 2017 – Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, was assassinated using VX nerve agent in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

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February 14: Valentine's Day

• 1655 – Arauco War: The Mapuche carried out a series of coordinated attacks against Spanish settlements and forts in colonial Chile, beginning a ten-year period of warfare.
• 1779 – Native Hawaiians killed the English explorer Captain James Cook as he attempted to kidnap Kalaniʻōpuʻu, the ruling chief of the island of Hawaii.
• 1990 – The NASA space probe Voyager 1 took Pale Blue Dot (detail pictured), a photograph of Earth from a record distance of 40.5 astronomical units (6.06 billion km; 3.76 billion mi).
• 2005 – The online video platform YouTube was founded by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim.
• 2007 – The first of several bombings in Zahedan, Iran, killed 18 members of the Revolutionary Guards.

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February 15: National Flag of Canada Day; Statehood Day in Serbia; Susan B. Anthony Day in some parts of the United States

• 438 – The Codex Theodosianus, a compilation of the laws of the Roman Empire, was published.
• 1763 – Prussia, Saxony and the Habsburg monarchy signed the Treaty of Hubertusburg, ending the Third Silesian War.
• 1940 – The official premiere of Paul Creston's Saxophone Sonata took place at the Carnegie Chamber Hall, with saxophonist Cecil Leeson, who commissioned the work, and Creston on piano.
• 1979 – Don Dunstan (pictured) resigned as Premier of South Australia, ending a decade of sweeping social liberalisation.
• 2018 – Following nationwide protests, Hailemariam Desalegn announced his resignation as prime minister of Ethiopia, remaining in post as a caretaker until he was succeeded by Abiy Ahmed.

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February 16: Chinese New Year's Eve (2026); Day of the Shining Star in North Korea; Presidents' Day in the United States (2026); Elizabeth Peratrovich Day in Alaska; Daisy Gatson Bates Day in Arkansas (2026)

• 1249 – King Louis IX dispatched André de Longjumeau as the French ambassador to the Mongol Empire.
• 1918 – The Council of Lithuania signed the Act of Independence (pictured), proclaiming the restoration of an independent Lithuania.
• 1922 – A landslide in Byblos revealed a sarcophagus in an underground tomb that was later discovered to be part of a large Bronze Age necropolis.
• 1996 – Eleven people died in a train collision in Silver Spring, Maryland, leading to the creation of comprehensive U.S. federal rules for the design of passenger cars.

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February 17: Chinese New Year (2026); Korean New Year (2026); Tết (Vietnam, 2026)

• 1859 – Cochinchina campaign: French Navy forces captured the Citadel of Saigon, defended by 1,000 Vietnamese soldiers of the Nguyễn dynasty.
• 1904 – Italian composer Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly premiered at La Scala in Milan to poor reviews, forcing him to revise the opera.
• 1964 – Gabonese military officers overthrew President Léon M'ba, but French forces, honouring a 1960 treaty, forcibly reinstated him two days later.
• 1974 – A U.S. Army soldier stole a Bell UH-1 helicopter (pictured) and landed it on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C.
• 2011 – Arab Spring: Bahraini security forces killed four protesters in a pre-dawn raid at the Pearl Roundabout in Manama, while the "Day of Rage" took place in Libya with nationwide protests against Muammar Gaddafi's government.

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February 18: First day of Ramadan (2026); Tibetan New Year begins (2026)

• 3102 BCE – According to Hindu scriptures, Kali Yuga, the last of the four stages that the world goes through as part of the cycle of yugas, began.
• 1814 – War of the Sixth Coalition: French troops led by Napoleon forced the Army of Bohemia to retreat after it advanced dangerously close to Paris.
• 1977 – The Xinjiang 61st Regiment Farm fire started during Chinese New Year when a firecracker ignited the wreaths of late Mao Zedong, killing 694 personnel.
• 2014 – A series of violent events (pictured) involving protesters, riot police, and unknown shooters began in Kyiv that culminated in the ousting of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych five days later.

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February 19:

• 1811 – Peninsular War: Outnumbered French forces under Édouard Mortier routed and nearly destroyed Spanish troops at the Battle of the Gebora near Badajoz, Spain.
• 1903 – A blockade against Venezuela (depicted), caused by President Cipriano Castro's refusal to pay foreign debts, was lifted.
• 1942 – World War II: U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the forcible relocation of over 112,000 Japanese Americans to internment camps.
• 1948 – The Southeast Asian Youth Conference, which is believed to have inspired armed communist rebellions in different Asian countries, opened in Calcutta, India.

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February 20: Day of the Heavenly Hundred Heroes in Ukraine (2014)

• 1685 – The French colonization of Texas began with the landing of colonists led by Robert de La Salle near Matagorda Bay.
• 1959 – Canadian prime minister John Diefenbaker cancelled the Avro CF-105 Arrow (pictured) interceptor-aircraft program amid much political debate.
• 1970 – Wat Phra Dhammakaya, one of the largest Buddhist temples in Thailand, was founded in Pathum Thani.
• 1998 – At the age of 15, American figure skater Tara Lipinski became the then-youngest winner of an Olympic gold medal in the history of the Winter Olympic Games.

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February 21

• 1746 – Jacobite rising of 1745: The siege of Inverness ended with British forces surrendering to the Jacobite army.
• 1862 – American Civil War: The Confederate Army began an attempt to gain control of the Southwest with a major victory in the Battle of Valverde.
• 1952 – A number of student protesters demanding the establishment of Bengali as an official language were killed by police in Dhaka, East Pakistan.
• 1965 – American Black nationalist Malcolm X (pictured) was assassinated while giving a speech in New York City's Audubon Ballroom.
• 1973 – After accidentally straying into Israeli-occupied airspace, Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 was shot down by two fighter aircraft, killing 108 of the 113 people on board.

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February 22

• 1371 – Robert II became King of Scots as the first monarch of the House of Stewart.
• 1959 – Lee Petty won the first edition of the Daytona 500, a NASCAR auto race at the Daytona International Speedway (pictured) in Florida.
• 1974 – Samuel Byck attempted to hijack an aircraft at Baltimore/Washington International Airport with the intention of crashing it into the White House to assassinate U.S. president Richard Nixon, but he was stopped by police.
• 2019 – A group broke into the North Korean embassy in Madrid, Spain, and stole several mobile telephones and digital storage devices.

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February 23: The Emperor's Birthday in Japan (1960)

• 1725 – J. S. Bach first performed his Shepherd Cantata for the birthday of Christian, Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels (pictured).
• 1854 – The Orange River Convention was signed in Bloemfontein, with the United Kingdom agreeing to recognise the independence of the Orange Free State in present-day South Africa.
• 1886 – American inventor Charles Martin Hall discovered an inexpensive method of producing aluminium.
• 1987 – SN 1987A, the first supernova that modern astronomers were able to study in great detail, was observed from Earth occurring in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
• 2021 – Riots in four Ecuadorian prisons, caused by gang rivalries, resulted in the deaths of 79 inmates.

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February 24: Independence Day in Estonia (1918)

• 1711 – George Frideric Handel's Rinaldo, the first Italian-language opera written specifically for the London stage, premiered.
• 1809 – Napoleonic Wars: The British invasion of Martinique ended with the unconditional surrender of French admiral Louis Thomas Villaret de Joyeuse (pictured), beginning a five-year occupation of the island.
• 1979 – Uganda–Tanzania War: Ugandan government forces fled Masaka as the Tanzania People's Defence Force bombarded and captured the town.
• 1989 – United Airlines Flight 811 experienced uncontrolled decompression after leaving Honolulu International Airport, Hawaii, blowing seats out of the aircraft and killing nine passengers.

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February 25: Soviet Occupation Day in Georgia (1921); National Day in Kuwait (1961); Beginning of the Nineteen-Day Fast (Baháʼí Faith, 2024)

• 1843 – Royal Navy captain Lord George Paulet began a five-month occupation of the Hawaiian Islands.
• 1933 – USS Ranger (pictured), the United States Navy's first purpose-built aircraft carrier, was launched.
• 1951 – After being postponed due to World War II, the inaugural Pan American Games opened in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 1994 – Israeli physician Baruch Goldstein opened fire on Palestinian Muslims praying at the mosque in Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs, killing 29 people and wounding 125 others.
• 2009 – At their headquarters in Pilkhana, members of the Bangladesh Rifles began a mutiny that resulted in 82 deaths.

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February 26

• 747 BC – According to Ptolemy, the reign of the Babylonian king Nabonassar (name in Akkadian pictured) began, marking a new era characterized by the systematic maintenance of chronologically precise historical records.
• 1914 – RMS Britannic, the third and largest Olympic-class ocean liner of the White Star Line after RMS Olympic and RMS Titanic, was launched at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast.
• 1979 – The Superliner railcar entered revenue service with Amtrak.
• 1995 – Barings Bank, the oldest merchant bank in London, was declared insolvent after its head derivatives trader in Singapore, Nick Leeson, lost £827 million while making unauthorised trades on futures contracts.
• 2014 – Former editor-in-chief of Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao Kevin Lau was stabbed, prompting concerns and protests about media freedom.

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February 27: Feast day of Saint Gregory of Narek (Catholicism)

• 1776 – American Revolutionary War: A Patriot victory at the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge resulted in the arrests of 850 Loyalists over the following days.
• 1814 – Peninsular War: In the south of France, Spanish, British and Portuguese soldiers under the command of the Marquess of Wellington defeated French soldiers in the Battle of Orthez, causing the French to retreat east.
• 1988 – The Armenian community of Sumgait in Azerbaijan was the target of a violent pogrom (memorial pictured).
• 1996 – The multimedia franchise Pokémon was launched with the release of the video games Pocket Monsters Red and Green.

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February 28: Kalevala Day in Finland; Peace Memorial Day in Taiwan

• 202 BC – Rebel leader Liu Bang declared himself Emperor Gaozu of Han after overthrowing the Qin dynasty, the first imperial dynasty of China.
• 1897 – Ranavalona III (pictured), the last sovereign ruler of the Kingdom of Madagascar, was deposed by French military forces.
• 1928 – Indian physicist C. V. Raman and his colleagues discovered what is now known as Raman scattering, for which he later became the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize in Physics.
• 1975 – A London Underground train failed to stop at the terminal Moorgate station, crashing and causing the deaths of 43 people.
• 2002 – During a period of religious violence in Gujarat, India, mobs of Hindus attacked Muslims in Naroda Patiya and in Chamanpura, resulting in 166 deaths.

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February 29

• 1704 – Queen Anne's War: French and Native American forces raided the English settlement of Deerfield, Massachusetts, killing more than 50 colonists.
• 1944 – World War II: The Admiralty Islands campaign began when American forces assaulted Los Negros Island, the third largest of the Admiralty Islands.
• 1960 – The deadliest earthquake in Moroccan history (damaged building pictured) struck the city of Agadir, killing at least 12,000 people.
• 2004 – Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overthrown following popular rebel uprising.
• 2012 – Construction of Tokyo Skytree, the world's tallest tower and third-tallest structure, was completed.

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