Historical Events On This Day

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• 747 BC Epoch (origin) of Ptolemy's Nabonassar Era.
• 364 Valentinian I is proclaimed Roman Emperor.
• 1266 Battle of Benevento fought in Southern Italy between Manfred of Sicily and army of Charles of Anjou
• 1534 Pope Paul II affirms George van Egmond as bishop of Utrecht
• 1590 Mauritius of Nassaus sails to Breda
• 1832 Polish constitution abolished/replaced by Tsar Nicholas I
• 1834 1st US interstate crime compact (NY-NJ) ratified
• 1839 1st Grand National: Jem Mason aboard Lottery wins
• 1848 2nd French Republic proclaimed
• 1851 13th Grand National: T. Abbott aboard Abd-El-Kader IRE wins
• 1852 British troopship Birkenhead sinks off South Africa-458 die, 193 survive
• 1859 Paul Morphy's chess match vs Augustus Mongredien begins; Morphy wins
• 1862 Battle of Woodburn, KY
• 1863 Lincoln signs National Currency Act
• 1866 New York Legislature forms NYC Metropolitan Board of Health
• 1869 15th Amendment guaranteeing right to vote sent to states to ratify
• 1901 British general Kitchener confers with Boer general Louis Botha about peace conditions, which break down over the question of amnesty for some Boers
• 1907 Royal Oil & Shell merge to form British Petroleum (BP)
• 1907 US Congress raised their own salaries to $7,500
• 1907 Louis Botha Het Volk Party wins a majority in the election in Transvaal, South Africa
• 1909 Austria and Turkey conclude an agreement in which Turkey recognizes Austria's 1908 annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and is to receive compensation
• 1935 RADAR-Radio Detection & Ranging 1st demonstrated (Robert Watson-Watt)
• 1936 Hitler introduces Ferdinand Porsche's "Volkswagen"
• 1936 Military coup in Japan
• 1937 Christopher Isherwood and W. H. Auden's "Ascent of F6" premieres in London
• 1938 1st passenger ship equipped with radar
• 1938 Rie Van Veen swims world record 200m free style (2:24.6)
• 1938 US female Figure Skating championship won by Joan Tozzer
• 1938 US male Figure Skating championship won by Robin Lee
• 1940 US Air Defense Command forms at Mitchel Field, LI, NY
• 1941 2 fighters unable to continued slugfest, referee declares double KO
• 1941 Cowboys' Amateur Association of America organized (California)
• 1941 Utrecht & Zaandam strike against raid on Jews
• 1941 Vichy-France makes religious education in school mandatory
• 1942 German battle cruiser Gneisenau deactivated by bomb
• 1942 Radio Orange calls for March 1 day of prayer in Dutch Indies
• 1942 Werner Heisenberger informs nazis about uranium project "Wunderwaffen"
• 1943 German assault moves to Beja North Tunisia
• 1944 1st female US navy captain, Sue Dauser of nurse corps, appointed
• 1945 Very heavy bombing on Berlin by 8th US Air Force
• 1946 2 killed & 10 wounded in race riot in Columbia Tenn
• 1974 Gold hits record $188 an ounce in Paris
• 1975 "Night... Made America Famous" opens at Barrymore NYC for 75 performances
• 1975 1st televised kidney transplant (Today Show)
• 1976 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
• 1977 1st flight of Space Shuttle (atop a Boeing 747)
• 1978 Ira Levin's "Deathtrap" premieres in NYC
• 1978 Nancy Lopez wins LPGA Bent Tree Golf Classic
• 1979 Last total eclipse of Sun in 20th century for continental US
• 1979 CBS' premiere of NYC sitcom "Flatbush", which received many derision phone calls about it from Brooklynites to CBS
• 1980 Egypt & Israel exchange ambassadors for 1st time
• 1980 Milt coup under Desi Bouterse in Suriname
• 1980 R Hadlee scores Test Cricket century v Roberts, Garner, Holding, Croft
• 1981 3 Anglican missionaries detained in Iran since Aug 1980 are released
• 1981 84 penalties (406 mins) assessed for a brawl between NHL Minn & Bost
• 1981 French Train Grande Vitesse averages 380 kph on trial run
• 1983 Shortwave pirate Radio USA (Wellsville, NY) begins transmission
• 1984 Last US marines in multinational peacekeeping force in Lebanon left Beirut
• 1984 Rev Jesse Jackson acknowledges that he called NYC "Hymietown"
• 1984 Robert Penn Warren, Pulitzer Prize winner, named 1st US poet laureate
• 1985 27th Grammy Awards: Whats Love Got to Do With It, Cyndi Lauper wins
• 1986 Evert van Benthem wins 14th Frisian 11-Cities skating race (6:55:16)
• 1986 People Power Revolution in the Philippines.
• 1987 1st release of Beatles compact discs
• 1987 NASA launches GEOS-H
• 1989 "Jerome Robbins' Broadway" opens at Imperial Theater NYC for 634 performances
• 1989 Betsy King wins LPGA Women's Kemper Golf Open/Helene Curtis Pro-Am
• 1989 Lowest barometric pressure in Netherlands (95.5 hPa)
• 1989 NY Yankees announce that Tom Seaver is their new TV sportscaster
• 1989 California court throws out most of Margo Adams's $12 million breach-of- contract suit against Red Sox third baseman Wade Boggs
• 1990 USSR agrees to withdraw all 73,500 troops from Czech by July, 1991
• 1990 The Sandinistas are defeated in Nicaraguan elections.
• 1991 Asanka Gurusinha scores twin Test Cricket tons v NZ (119 & 102)
• 1991 Bill Veeck & Tony Lazzeri elected to Baseball Hall of Fame
• 1991 Kuwaiti resistance leaders declare they have control of their capital
• 1991 NY-NJ Knights (WLAF) players 1st come together
• 1991 Signs of Iran crude now an option for US refiners, but no imports from Iran likely in near future
• 1992 "Search & Destroy" opens at Circle in Sq Theater NYC for 46 performances
• 1992 Irish Supreme Court rules 14 year old rape victim may get an abortion
• 1993 2nd tallest building in world, NYC World Trade Center bombed, 7 die
• 1993 9th Soap Opera Digest Awards - Days of Our Lives wins
• 1993 Allan Border beats Gavaskar's record for most Test Cricket runs 10,123
• 1994 St Louis Blues beat Ottawa Senators 11-1
• 1995 London finance house Barings collapses after huge losses in Singapore by rogue trader Nick Leeson
• 1997 39th Grammy Awards: Change the World Babyface, Beck & LeAnn Rimes wins
• 1998 Steven M Gluckstern completes sale of NY Islanders
• 1998 Total solar eclipse in Venezuela-Pacific Ocean (4m09)
• 1999 15th Soap Opera Digest Awards - General Hospital wins
• 2001 The Taliban destroy two giant Buddha statues in Bamyan, Afghanistan.
• 2004 Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski is killed in a plane crash near Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
• 2004 The United States lifts a ban on travel to Libya, ending travel restrictions to the nation that had lasted for 23 years.
• 2005 25th Golden Raspberry Awards: Catwoman wins
• 2006 20th Winter Olympic Games close at Turin, Italy
• 2010 41st NAACP Image Awards: "Precious" wins Outstanding Motion Picture
• 2011 31st Golden Raspberry Awards: The Last Airbender wins
• 2012 Bus plunges off a cliff in Shanxi, China causing 15 deaths
• 2012 Train derailment kills 3 and injures 45 in Burlington, Ontario
• 2012 61st NBA All-Star Game: West beats East 152-149 at Orlando
• 2013 A rocket launched from the Gaza strip into Israel ends the ceasefire since November 2012
• 2013 A hot air balloon crashes in Luxor, Egypt, killing 19 tourists
• 2013 A flexible battery capable of being charged wirelessly and folded and stretched is developed
• 2016 Iranian elections: reformers and moderates win control of parliament