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.
• 1155 - Henry the Young King was born (d. 1183). Son of Henry II of England
• 1261 - Henry III, Duke of Brabant dies
• 1326 - Duke Leopold I of Austria dies.
• 1453 - Isabella, Duchess of Lorraine dies (b. 1400)
• 1485 - Niclas, Graf von Abensberg dies (b. 1441). German soldier.
• 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").
• 1572 - Aegidius Tschudi dies (b. 1505). Swiss historian.
• 1594 - O médico de Elizabeth I, Roger Loper, é preso por suposta conspiração para envenenar a Rainha .
• 1609 - Paul Sartorius dies at 39. Composer.
• 1612 - John Pearson was born (d. 1686). English theologian.
• 1621 - Cosimo II de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany dies (b. 1590)
• 1644 - Holandeses abandonam São Luís e a capitania do Maranhão volta ao domínio português.
• 1648 - King Christian IV of Denmark and Norway dies (b. 1577)
• 1670 - Benjamin Wadsworth was born (d. 1737). American President of Harvard University.
• 1675 - Guillaume Delisle was born (d. 1726). French cartographer.
• 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.
• 1704 - Louis Godin was born (d. 1760). French astonomer.
• 1712 - Louis-Joseph de Montcalm was born (d. 1759). French military commander.
• 1724 - George Townshend, 1st Marquess Townshend was born (d. 1807). British field marshal.
• 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.
• 1746 - Hermann von der Hardt dies (b. 1660). German historian.
• 1784 - John Wesley charters the Methodist Church.
• 1786 - John Gwynn dies (b. 1713). English architect and engineer.
• 1788 - Thomas Cushing dies (b. 1725). American Continental Congressman.
• 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 (d. 1914). English illustrator.
• 1823 - Ernest Renan was born (d. 1892). French philosopher.
• 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 (d. 1897). French tightrope walker whose spectacular crossings of Niagara Falls (USA/Canada) made him world famous.
• 1830 - O Visconde de Caramuru, presidente da Bahia (Brasil) é assassinado por um desconhecido.
• 1833 - Alfred von Schlieffen was born (d. 1913). German field marshal.
• 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.
• 1857 - André Dumont dies (b. 1809). Belgian geologist.
• 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 (d. 1947). Rector of Hexham Abbey and St Bartholomew the Great .
• 1869 - Alphonse de Lamartine dies. French statesman and poet.
• 1870 - The Bulgarian Exarchate is established by decree of Sultan Abd-ul-Aziz of the Ottoman Empire.
• 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 (d. 1929). French mathematician, who worked on iteration theory which was later analysed by Benoit Mandelbrot.
• 1882 - Geraldine Farrar was born (d. 1967). American soprano.
• 1882 - José Vasconcelos was born in Oaxaca. Mexican thinker and politician.
• 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.
• 1891 - Armando Cortes-Rodrigues was born in Vila Franca do Campo, San Miguel Island, Azores (d. 14 Oct 1971). Portuguese writer.
• 1894 - Ben Hecht was born (d. 1964). American playwright, film writer.
• 1895 - Guiomar Novaes was born. Brazilian 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 in 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).
• 1897 - Queen Ranavalona III, the last monarch in Madagascar, was deposed by a French military force.
• 1900 - The Second 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 (d. 1959). German pilot and designer of aircrafts.
• 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 ) .
• 1904 - Foundation of Grupo Sport Benfica now Sport Lisboa e Benfica
• 1906 - Bugsy Siegel was born in Brooklyn, New York (d. 1947). American gangster.
• 1908 - Billie Bird was born (d. 2002). American actress.
• 1909 - Stephen Spender was born (d. 1995). English 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 ). American actor ( Fiddler on the Roof).
• 1915 - Sir Peter Medawar was born (d. 2 Oct 1987) . British zoologist who received (with Sir Macfarlane Burnet) the Nobel Prize in 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). American/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) dies. Argentine poet.
• 1917 - Fidel Sánchez Hernández was born (d. 2003). Former president of El Salvador (1967-1972)
• 1921 - Conflicto armado entre Costa Rica y Panamá.
• 1921 - António Palma dies. Portuguese actor.
• 1922 - Egypt was declared an independent country.
• 1922 - The United Kingdom accepts the independence of Egypt.
• 1922 - Paulo Mendes Campos was born (d. 1991). Brazilian writer.
• 1923 - Charles Durning was born. American actor
• 1924 - U.S. begins intervention in Honduras .
• 1925 - Friedrich Ebert dies (b. 4 Feb 1871). Weimar Germany's first president
• 1926 - Svetlana Alliluyeva was born. Soviet defector, daughter of Joseph Stalin
• 1929 - Frank O. Gehry was born in Toronto. Canadian-American architect and designer, renowned worldwide for his original, sculptural, and often audacious work, including the curvaceous Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.
• 1929 - Hayden Fry was born. American 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 Neil Cooper was born. American physicist and winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize for Physics with John Bardeen and John Robert Schrieffer, for his role in developing the BCS (for their initials) theory of superconductivity.
• 1930 - Juan Aberle dies. Composer from El Salvador.
• 1930 - Gavin MacLeod was born. American actor.
• 1931 - Dean Smith was born. American basketball coach.
• 1932 - Don Francks was born. Canadian actor.
• 1933 - Rein Taagepera was born. Estonian politician.
• 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 - Fernando Fader dies (b. 11 Apr 1882). Impressionist painter.
• 1935 - Francisca (Chiquinha) Gonzaga dies. Brazilian composer.
• 1936 - Italian forces take Mt. Alaji in Abyssinia, avenging the massacre of 1895 .
• 1936 - Charles 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.
• 1938 - Klaus Staeck was born, graphic artist.
• 1939 - The word "Dord" is discovered in the Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition, prompting an investigation.
• 1939 - Erika Pluhar was born. Actress and singer.
• 1939 - Tommy Tune was born. American 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).
• 1940 - Joe South was born. American singer and songwriter.
• 1941 - Se funda en Bogotá el Santa Fe Corporación Deportiva.
• 1941 - King Alfonso XIII of Spain dies (b. 1886) .
• 1942 - During World War II, Japanese troops landed on the island of Java, which they occupied until 1945.
• 1942 - Karel Doorman dies (b. 1889). Dutch admiral.
• 1942 - Brian Jones was born (d. 1969). English musician ("The Rolling Stones").
• 1942 - Joe South was born. Musician.
• 1942 - Frank Bonner was born. American actor and director.
• 1942 - Dino Zoff was born. Italian legengary soccer player (goalkeeper).
• 1943 - António Livramento was born (d. 7 Jun 1999). Portuguese roller hockey player considered several times the best player of the world.
• 1944 - Kelly Bishop was born. American actress.
• 1944 - Sepp Maier was born. German soccer player (goalkeeper).
• 1944 - Win Aung was born. Burmese politician.
• 1945 - Bubba Smith was born. American football player, actor (Police Academy) .
• 1946 - Robin Cook was born (d. 2005). British politician .
• 1946 - Syreeta Wright was born (d. 2004). American singer.
• 1947 - Stephanie Beacham was born. British actress
• 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. English director, writer and composer .
• 1948 - Bernadette Peters was born. American actress and singer .
• 1948 - Mercedes Ruehl was born. American actress.
• 1948 - Steven Chu was born. American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate.
• 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. American composer and 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 .
• 1955 - Gilbert Gottfried was born. American comedian and actor.
• 1956 - Jimmy Nicholl was born. Canadian-born Northern Irish footballer.
• 1956 - Frigyes Riesz dies ( b. 22 Jan 1880). Hungarian mathematician and pioneer of functional analysis, which has found important applications to mathematical physics.
• 1957 - John Turturro was born. American actor
• 1959 - Maxwell Anderson dies (b. 1888). American playwright, film writer.
• 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 (d. 1980). Canadian actress and Playboy model .
• 1961 - Rae Dawn Chong was born. Canadian actress.
• 1961 - Mark Latham was born. Australian politician.
• 1966 - Paulo Futre was born in Montijo. Portuguese soccer player.
• 1967 - Henry Luce dies (b. 1898). American publisher.
• 1968 - David V Duccini was born. Philosopher.
• 1969 - Robert Sean Leonard was born. American actor.
• 1970 - Lemony Snicket was born. American writer, author of The Series of Unfortunate Events books .
• 1970 - Noureddine Morceli was born. Algerian athlete, 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. Canadian 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.
• 1974 - Lee Carsley was born. Irish footballer.
• 1974 - Bobby Bloom dies (b. 1946). American singer/songwriter.
• 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 - José Luis Romero dies. Argentine historian.
• 1977 - Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson dies (b. 1905). American actor.
• 1978 - Cyprus : Spyros Kyprianou was elected president with no opposition.
• 1978 - Philip Ahn dies (b. 1905). American actor.
• 1978 - Zara Cully dies (b. 1892). American actress.
• 1978 - Marissa Perez was born. Miss Connecticut Teen USA (1996) .
• 1978 - Benjamin Raich was born. Austrian Olympic skier.
• 1979 - "The famous Mr. Ed" dies, the talking horse .
• 1979 - Primož Peterka was born. Slovenian ski jumper .
• 1980 - Pascal Bosschaart was born. Dutch footballer.
• 1982 - Natalia Vodianova was born. Russian Model.
• 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.
• 1985 - Jelena Janković was born. Serbian tennis player.
• 1985 - David Byron dies (b. 1947). British singer (Uriah Heep).
• 1985 - Ray Ellington dies (b. 1916). British singer.
• 1986 - Daniel Broderick was born. Australian musician.
• 1986 - European Economic Community sign "Special Act" for Europe free trade .
• 1986 - Olof Palme is assassinated in Stockholm (b. 1927). Prime Minister of Sweden, (1969-76, 82-86)
• 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 - Guillermo Manuel Ungo dies. Salvadoran politician.
• 1991 - Reinhard Bendix dies (b. 1916). German sociologist.
• 1992 - Twenty-eight people were injured when an IRA bomb exploded at London Bridge train station.
• 1993 - 7th American Comedy Award: Seinfeld wins.
• 1993 - Ruby Keeler dies (b. 1910). Canadian actress, singer, dancer.
• 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.
• 1993 - Ishiro Honda dies at 81. Japanese director and producer (Godzilla).
• 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.
• 1995 - Raul Salinas de Gortari was arrested for masterminding the murder of Jose Francisco Ruiz (28 Sep 1994). He was imprisoned in Almaloya prison, Mexico’s highest-security facility. In 1998 Raul Salinas was acquitted of money laundering but remained in jail on murder and illegal-enrichment charges
• 1996 - A Rússia é admitida como membro do Conselho da Europa.
• 1996 - Daniel Chipenda dies at 64. Angolan politician.
• 1996 - 38th Grammy Awards: Alannis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill won best rock album and album of the year; Seal’s "Kiss from a Rose" won for record and song of the year.
• 1997 - Earthquake in Pakistan, kills 45 .
• 1997 - The North Hollywood shootout takes place.
• 1998 - Dermot Morgan dies (b. 1952). Irish actor and comedian.
• 1998 - Arkady Shevchenko dies (b. 1930). Soviet diplomat.
• 1998 - Kosovo War: Serbian police begin the offensive againt the KLA in Kosovo.
• 1999 - In Nigeria retired General Obasanjo led the presidential vote with 62%. Serious concern over vote-rigging was expressed.
• 1999 - Xie Bingxin dies at age 99. Chinese children's novelist. Her books included "For Small Readers," Little Tangerine Lamp," and "Ode to a Cherry Blossom."
• 2001 - Flooding continued in central Mozambique as the death toll rose to 52. 81,000 were made homeless since the beginning of the year.
• 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 was born. American racehorse, 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 (b. 1920). German violinist.
• 2002 - Mary Stuart dies (b. 1926). American actress.
• 2003 - Tassos Papadopoulos took office as the fifth Greek Cypriot president, pledging to strive for the reunification.
• 2003 - Roger Michael Needham dies (b. 1935). British cryptographer.
• 2003 - Chris Brasher dies (b. 1928). British athlete .
• 2003 - Fidel Sánchez Hernández dies (b. 1917). President of El Salvador . He directed the so-called 100-hour war, when the Salvadoran army invaded Honduras in 1969 over a territorial dispute.
• 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 (b. 1914). American historian writer, and Librarian of Congress. His work includes The Americans trilogy: "The Colonial Experience" (1959), "The National Experience" (1966), and "The Democratic Experience" (1973).
• 2004 - Andres Nuiamäe dies killed in battle (b. 1982). Estonian soldier.
• 2004 - Carmen Laforet dies. Spanish writer.
• 2005 - In Iraq a suicide car bomber blasted a crowd of police and national guard recruits as they gathered for physicals outside a medical clinic south of Baghdad, killing at least 120 people and wounding 132.
• 2005 - Burundians voted on a new constitution that enshrines Hutu control by allotting them 60% of parliamentary seats with 40% for Tutsis.
• 2005 - In Nepal at least 50 Maoist rebels and 4 soldiers were killed in a gunbattle in the western Bardiya district.
• 2005 - Grenada : Alister Hughes dies at 86. Journalist known for his coverage of Grenada's political woes and the US invasion in 1983.