On this day in History - Feb. 28

• 0364 - Valentinian I is elevated as Roman Emperor.
• 0870 - The Fourth Constantinople Council closed, under Pope Adrian II in the West and Emperor Basil I in the East. The council had condemned iconoclasm, and became the last ecumenical council held in the Eastern Mediterranean area.
• 1066 - Westminster Abbey opens .
• 1326 - Duke Leopold I of Austria dies.
• 1458 - Isabel, Duquesa da Lorena morre.
• 1510 - Juan de la Cosa, dies (b. 1460) Spanish cartographer, conquistador and explorer.
• 1525 - O último imperador azteca, Cuauhtemoc, é torturado e executado pelo conquistador espanhol Hernan Cortes.
• 1533 - Michel de Montaigne was born (d. 1592), French essayist and philosopher.
• 1552 - Joost Bürgi , was born (d. 31 Jan 1632). Swiss/German mathematician who invented logarithms independently of the Scottish mathematician John Napier.
• 1561 - Ambroise Paré published La méthode curative des playes et fractures de la teste humaine ("Treatment method for wounds and fractures of the human head").
• 1594 - O médico de Elizabeth I, Roger Loper, é preso por suposta conspiração para envenenar a Rainha .
• 1609 - Paul Sartorius, composer, dies at 39.
• 1644 - Holandeses abandonam São Luís e a capitania do Maranhão volta ao domínio português .
• 1683 - René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, was born, (d.17 Oct 1757). French scientist active in various fields, and the foremost entomologist of the early 18th century .
• 1700 - February 28 is followed by March 1 in Sweden, thus creating the Swedish calendar.
• 1736 - Por decreto, a Coroa portuguesa, obriga a que o transporte de ouro, diamantes e outras pedras preciosas do Brasil, se faça exclusivamente nos cofres das frotas.
• 1743 - René-Just Haüy was born (d. 1 Jun 1822). French mineralogist who was the founder of the science of crystallography through his discovery of the geometrical law of crystallization.
• 1784 - John Wesley charters the Methodist Church.
• 1797 - Mary Lyon was born , educator (Mt Holyoke) (Hall of Fame).
• 1806 - Forças francesas capturam Barcelona, Espanha.
• 1811 - Comienza el movimiento pro independencia de Uruguay, a orillas del río Asensio.
• 1820 - John Tenniel, was born, illustrator (d. 1914) .
• 1825 - Assinatura de um tratado entre a Grã-Bretanha e a Rússia fixando os limites fronteiriços entre o Canadá e o Alasca, então uma possessão russa.
• 1827 - The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad is incorporated, becoming the first railroad offering commercial transportation of both people and freight.
• 1827- Blondin, was born, French tightrope walker whose spectacular crossings of Niagara Falls (USA/Canada) made him world famous (d. 1897) .
• 1830 - O Visconde de Caramuru, presidente da Bahia (Brasil) é assassinado por um desconhecido.
• 1833 - Alfred von Schlieffen, was born, German field marshal (d. 1913) .
• 1844 - A gun on USS Princeton explodes while the boat is on a Potomac River cruise, killing two United States Cabinet members and several others.
• 1847 - Batalla de Sacramento: los EE.UU. derrotan a México.
• 1849 - Regular steamboat service from the west to the east coast of the United States begins with the arrival of the SS California in San Francisco Bay, 4 months 21 days after leaving New York Harbor.
• 1850 - The University of Utah opens in Salt Lake City, Utah.
• 1854 - The United States Republican Party is organized in Ripon, Wisconsin.
• 1859 - Florian Cajori, was born (d. 14 Aug 1930). Swiss-born U.S. educator and mathematician whose works on the history of mathematics were among the most eminent of his time.
• 1861 - Colorado is organized as a United States territory.
• 1862 - Canon Edwin Sidney Savage, was born, Rector of Hexham Abbey and St Bartholomew the Great (d. 1947) .
• 1869 - Muere Alphonse de Lamartine, poeta y estadista francés.
• 1875 - Sir Goldsworthy Gurney dies (b. 14 Feb 1793). Prolific English inventor who built technically successful steam carriages a half century before the advent of the gasoline-powered automobile.
• 1877 - Henri-Édouard-Prosper Breuil was born (d. 14 Aug 1961). French archaeologist especially noted as an authority on prehistoric cave paintings of Europe and Africa.
• 1878 - Pierre Fatou, was born, French Mathematician, who worked on iteration theory which was later analysed by Benoit Mandelbrot.
• 1882 - Geraldine Farrar, was born, American soprano (d. 1967) .
• 1882 - Nace José Vasconcelos en Oaxaca, Mexico, pensador y político mexicano.
• 1883 - The first vaudeville theater is opened, in Boston, Massachusetts.
• 1885 - The American Telephone and Telegraph Company was incorporated in New York State as the subsidiary of American Bell Telephone. (American Bell would later merge with its subsidiary.)
• 1885 - Batalla de Barranquilla entre los sublevados en Colombia contra el presidente de la República, Rafael Núñez, y los rebeldes.
• 1894 - Ben Hecht, was born, playwright, film writer (d. 1964) .
• 1895 - Guiomar Novaes, was born, Brazil, pianist (Brazilian Order of Merit).
• 1896 - Philip Showalter Hench was born (d. 30 Mar 1965). American physician who was one of the leaders in American rheumatology. He shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1950 for discoveries relating to the hormones of the adrenal cortex, their structure and biological effects (with Edward C. Kendall and Tadeus Reichstein of Switzerland).
• 1900 - The Boer War: The 118-day "Siege of Ladysmith" is lifted.
• 1900 - General Sir Redvers Henry Buller's troops relieve British forces at Ladysmith – they have been under siege by the Boers since 2 November 1899.
• 1900 - Wolfram Hirth, was born, pilot and designer of aircrafts (d. 1959) .
• 1901- Linus Pauling, was born in Portland, Oregon. American chemist who applied quantum mechanics to the study of molecular structures, particularly in connection with chemical bonding The only winner of Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1954 and Peace 1962 (d. 1994) .
• 1903 - Vincente Minnelli, was born in Chicago, Illinois (d. 1986). Film director (American in Paris, Gigi ) .
• 1906 - Bugsy Siegel, was born, gangster (d. 1947) .
• 1909 - Stephen Spender, was born, poet (d. 1995) .
• 1911 - Denis Parsons Burkitt was born (d. died 23 Mar 1993). British surgeon and medical researcher. In the late 1950s, Burkitt began studying a form of lymphoma that affected children in his part of Africa (Burkitt's lymphoma).
• 1915 - Zero Mostel, was born (d. 1977 ). Actor ( Fiddler on the Roof).
• 1915 - Sir Peter Brian Medawar was born (d. 2 Oct 1987) . British zoologist who received (with Sir Macfarlane Burnet) the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1960 for the discovery of acquired immunological tolerance when he found (1953) that adult animals injected with foreign cells early in life accept skin grafts from the original cell donor.
• 1916 - Henry James, dies (b. 1843), US/British writer (The Wings of a Dove).
• 1916 - Audley Bowdler Williamson was born (d. 21 Nov 2004). British inventor and manufacturer of skin-care products who invented Swarfega hand cleaner, a green jelly that mechanics, printers and others use to wash grease, grime, and ink from their hands.
• 1917 - Almafuerte (Pedro Bonifacio Palacios), poeta argentino muere.
• 1917 - Fidel Sánchez Hernández, was born, former president of El Salvador (1967-1972) (d. 2003) .
• 1917 - Muere Pedro Bonifacio Palacios, "Almafuerte", poeta argentino.
• 1917 - Se crean los Soviets en Rusia.
• 1921 - Conflicto armado entre Costa Rica y Panamá.
• 1922 - Egypt is declared a sovereign state by Britain.
• 1922 - Paulo Mendes Campos nascimento de (m. 1991), escritor brasileiro .
• 1924 - U.S. begins intervention in Honduras .
• 1925 - Friedrich Ebert, morte de, primeiro presidente da República de Weimar, Alemanha.
• 1929 - Hayden Fry, was born, college football coach .
• 1929 - Baron Clemens von Pirquet dies (b. 12 May 1874). Austrian physician who originated a skin test for tuberculosis that bears his name, a classic diagnostic test in which tuberculin is applied to a superficial abrasion of the skin of the arm.
• 1930 - Leon Cooper, was born. American physicist and winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize for Physics, along with John Bardeen and John Robert Schrieffer, for his role in developing the BCS (for their initials) theory of superconductivity.
• 1930 - Fallece Juan Aberle, compositor salvadoreño.
• 1931 - Dean Smith was born, NCAA basketball coach .
• 1933- Gleichschaltung: The Reichstag Fire Decree is passed in Germany a day after the Reichstag fire.
• 1935 - Nylon is discovered by Wallace H. Carothers of Dupont.
• 1935 - Muere Fernando Fader, pintor impresionista.
• 1935 - Francisca (Chiquinha) Gonzaga, compositora brasileira, morre.
• 1936 - Italian forces take Mt. Alaji in Abyssinia, avenging the massacre of 1895 .
• 1936 - Charles-Jules-Henri Nicolle dies (b. 21 Sep 1866). French bacteriologist who received the 1928 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his discovery (1909) that typhus is transmitted by the body louse.
• 1936 - Charles Nicolle, médico francés, premio Nobel de Medicina en 1928, muere.
• 1938 - Klaus Staeck, was born, graphic artist.
• 1939 - Erika Pluhar, was born, actress and singer.
• 1939 - Tommy Tune, was born, dancer, choreographer, actor .
• 1939 - Daniel C. Tsui was born. Chinese-born American physicist who (with Horst L. Störmer and Robert B. Laughlin) received the 1998 Nobel Prize for Physics for the discovery and explanation that the electrons in a powerful magnetic field at very low temperatures can form a quantum fluid whose particles have fractional electric charges (fractional quantum).
• 1940 - Mario Andretti, was born , Italian automobile driver (1969 Indianapolis 500).
• 1940 - Basketball is televised for the first time (Fordham University vs. the University of Pittsburgh in Madison Square Garden).
• 1941 - Muere Alfonso XIII, rey de España.
• 1941 - Se funda en Bogotá el Santa Fe Corporación Deportiva.
• 1941 - King Alfonso XIII of Spain dies (b. 1886) .
• 1942 - Karel Doorman, dies, Dutch admiral (b. 1889) .
• 1942 - Brian Jones, was born, musician ("The Rolling Stones") (d. 1969) .
• 1942 - Joe South, was born, musician .
• 1942 - Dino Zoff, was born, Italian legendary football goalkeeper .
• 1945 - Bubba Smith, was born, American football player, actor (Police Academy) .
• 1946 - Robin Cook, was born, British politician .
• 1947 - February 28 Incident: In Taiwan, civil disorder is put down with large loss of civilian lives.
• 1948 - The last British troops left India.
• 1948 - Steven Chu was born. American physicist who (with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William D. Phillips) was awarded the 1997 Nobel Prize for Physics for their independent, pioneering research in cooling and trapping atoms using laser light.
• 1948 - Bud Gartiser sets a new world record after clearing the 50-yard low hurdles in 6.8 seconds.
• 1948 - Mike Figgis, was born, director, writer, composer .
• 1948 - Bernadette Peters, was born, actress, singer .
• 1948 - Mercedes Ruehl, was born, actress .
• 1949 - Es depuesto el presidente de Paraguay, Raimundo Rolón .
• 1951 - Protein structure. In 1951, their theoretical description of the structure of proteins was published by Linus Pauling and Robert Corey in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
• 1952 - End of 8th Winter Olympic Games in Oslo .
• 1952 - William Finn, was born, composer, lyricist .
• 1953 - James D. Watson and Francis Crick announce to friends that they have determined the chemical structure of DNA; formal announcement April 25 following publication in April Nature (pub. April 2).
• 1953 - Eliezer Sukenik dies (b. 12 Aug 1889). Eliezer Lipa Sukenik was a Polish-born Israeli archaeologist who identified the antiquity of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
• 1954 - Jean Bourgain was born. Belgian mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1994 for his work in analysis .
• 1956 - Frigyes Riesz dies ( b. 22 Jan 1880). Hungarian mathematician and pioneer of functional analysis, which has found important applications to mathematical physics.
• 1959 - Maxwell Anderson, dies, playwright, film writer (b. 1888) .
• 1959 - United Arab Republic and Britain agree on a settlement following the Suez crisis .
• 1960 - End of 10th Winter Olympic Games in Squaw Valley, California .
• 1960 - Dorothy Stratten, was born, Canadian actress and Playboy model .
• 1968 - David V Duccini, was born, philosopher .
• 1970 - Lemony Snicket, was born, author of The Series of Unfortunate Events books .
• 1970 - Noureddine Morceli, was born, Algeria, 1500m runner (Olympics-gold-96)
• 1971 - 53rd PGA Championship: Jack Nicklaus shoots a 281 at PGA National FL Jack Nicklaus wins his 2nd golf grand slam .
• 1972 - Sino-American relations: The United States and People's Republic of China sign the Shanghai Communiqué.
• 1973 - Eric Lindros, was born, ice hockey star .
• 1974 - In a futile attempt to appease widespread strikes and army mutinies, Haile Selassie appoints a new premier in Ethiopia.
• 1974 - After seven years, the United States and Egypt re-establish diplomatic relations.
• 1974 - Ethiopian government of Makonnen forms .
• 1975 - A major tube train crash at Moorgate station, London kills 43 people.
• 1976 - 18th Grammy Awards: Love Will Keep Us Together, Natalie Cole wins.
• 1977 - Muere el historiador argentino José Luis Romero.
• 1977 - Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson,dies, actor (b. 1905) .
• 1978 - Marissa Perez, was born, Miss Connecticut Teen USA (1996) .
• 1979 - "The famous Mr. Ed", dies, the talking horse .
• 1979 - Primož Peterka, was born, Slovenian ski jumper .
• 1983 - The final episode of M*A*S*H is broadcast in the USA, becoming the most watched television episode in history, with 106–125 million viewers in the U.S. (estimate varies by source).
• 1983 - El Compact Disc hace su aparición en el mercado.
• 1984 - 26th Grammy Awards: Beat It, Michael Jackson wins 7 including Album of the year for Thriller.
• 1986 - European Economic Community sign "Special Act" for Europe free trade .
• 1986 - Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden, (1969-76, 82-86), is assassinated in Stockholm (b. 1927) .
• 1986 - O Plano Cruzado determina a substituição do Cruzeiro, que perde três zeros.
• 1987 - Michelle Horn, was born, teen actress .
• 1988 - 15th Winter Olympic games close at Calgary, Canada .
• 1989 - El presidente venezolano, Carlos Andrés Pérez, suspende las garantías constitucionales.
• 1989 - Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira, intelectual brasileiro, morre.
• 1990 - Se aprueba en la URSS la propiedad privada de la tierra y su transmisión en herencia.
• 1991 - Muere Guillermo Manuel Ungo, político salvadoreño.
• 1993 - 7th American Comedy Award: Seinfeld wins.
• 1993 - Ruby Keeler, dies, actress, singer, dancer (b. 1910) .
• 1993 - Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents raid the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas with a warrant to arrest cult leader David Koresh. Four BATF agents and five Davidians die in the initial raid, starting a 51-day standoff.
• 1994 - San Lorenzo de Almagro inaugura su estadio, el Nuevo Gasómetro.
• 1994 - O ministro da Fazenda, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, anuncia o plano Real de combate à inflação.
• 1994 - Na Bósnia, então vítima de uma guerra civil entre sérvios e muçulmanos, a Organização do Tratado do Atlântico Norte (OTAN) entrou em combate pela primeira vez desde sua fundação em 1949. Nesse mesmo dia, “caças” americanos derrubaram quatro “jatos” sérvios.
• 1995 - Apertura del Aeropuerto Internacional de Denver, en los Estados Unidos.
• 1995 - UN peacekeeping forces, mainly Bangladeshis and Pakistanis, are withdraw from Somalia ending international involvement in the country.
• 1996 - A Rússia é admitida como membro do Conselho da Europa.
• 1996 - Daniel Chipenda, Angolam politician, dies at 64.
• 1996 - 38th Grammy Awards: Jagged Little Pill, Alanis Morisette wins.
• 1997 - Earthquake in Pakistan, kills 45 .
• 1998 - Dermot Morgan, dies, actor, comedian (b. 1952) .
• 1998 - Kosovo War: Serbian police begin the offensive againt the KLA in Kosovo.
• 2001 - An earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter Scale hits the Nisqually Valley area of Washington. There were no reports of any deaths.
• 2001 - Smarty Jones, winner of the 2004 Kentucky Derby .
• 2002 - Ethnic conflict in India: At least 55 are killed in Ahmadabad, India when Hindus burn Muslim homes.
• 2002 - Helmut Zacharias, dies, German violinist (b. 1920) .
• 2003 - Chris Brasher, dies, athlete .
• 2003 - Fidel Sánchez Hernández, dies, former President of El Salvador .
• 2003 - Roger Michael Needham, dies, professor of cryptography at Cambridge University .
• 2004 - Over 1 million Taiwanese participating in the 228 Hand-in-Hand Rally formed a 500-kilometer (300-mile) long human chain to commemorate the 228 Incident in 1947 .
• 2004 - Daniel J. Boorstin, dies, historian (b. 1914) .
• 2004 - Carmen Laforet, muere, escritora española.