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On this day: February 18

2026-02-18T00:00:00Z

February 18: First day of Ramadan (2026); Ash Wednesday (Western Christianity, 2026); Tibetan New Year begins (2026)

16th century depiction of the Battle of Wesenberg

1268 – Northern Crusades: The Battle of Wesenberg (depicted) took place between Novgorodian and Pskovian forces against the Livonian Order and its allies, ending with Russian forces retreating from Danish Estonia.
1766 – Enslaved Malagasy captives on the Dutch East India Company slave ship Meermin began a mutiny that led to the ship's destruction on Cape Agulhas in present-day South Africa and the recapture of the instigators.
1943 – The core members of the White Rose, an anti-Nazi resistance group, were arrested by the Gestapo.
1946 – President Harry S. Truman signed the Rescission Act, annulling benefits payable to Filipino troops who fought for the U.S. during World War II.
2001 – American FBI agent Robert Hanssen was arrested for having spied for the KGB and GRU over a 22-year period.

Francesco Redi (b. 1626)
Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici (d. 1743)
Toni Morrison (b. 1931)
Bobby Robson (b. 1933)

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On this day: February 19

2026-02-19T00:00:00Z

February 19

Flag of the Socialist Soviet Republic of Abkhazia

1600 – Huaynaputina, a stratovolcano in present-day Peru, produced the largest recorded volcanic explosion in South America.
1931 – The Socialist Soviet Republic of Abkhazia (flag pictured) was dissolved and reformed as the Abkhaz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, an autonomous republic of the Soviet Union within Georgia.
1942 – A book-burning was held and politicians were arrested in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, as part of a simulated Nazi invasion.
2006 – A methane explosion in a coal mine in Nueva Rosita, Mexico, trapped and killed 65 miners.
2011 – Items from the Belitung shipwreck, the largest single collection of Tang-dynasty artefacts found in one location, were first exhibited in Singapore.

Dorothe Engelbretsdatter (d. 1716)
Mary Dilys Glynne (b. 1895)
György Kurtág (b. 1926)
Choekyi Gyaltsen, 10th Panchen Lama (b. 1938)

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On this day: February 20

2026-02-20T00:00:00Z

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

Depiction of the Kraków Uprising

1816 – The Barber of Seville, an opera buffa composed by Gioachino Rossini, premiered at the Teatro Argentina in Rome to jeers from the audience.
1846 – Polish insurgents in the Free City of Kraków led an uprising (depicted) attempting to incite a fight for national independence that was put down by the Austrian Empire nine days later.
1931 – Paraguayan anarchists briefly seized the city of Encarnación as part of a larger plan to initiate a social revolution in the country.
1943 – The Saturday Evening Post published the first of Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms, among the most widely distributed paintings ever produced, in support of U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt's Four Freedoms.
1965 – The NASA spacecraft Ranger 8 spacecraft transmitted 7,137 photographs of the Moon in the final 23 minutes of its mission before crashing as planned into Mare Tranquillitatis.

Judith Montefiore (b. 1784)
Forbes Burnham (b. 1923)
Percy Grainger (d. 1961)
Audrey Munson (d. 1996)

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On this day: February 21

2026-02-21T00:00:00Z

February 21

Lucy Hobbs Taylor

1828 – The inaugural issue of the Cherokee Phoenix, the first newspaper in a Native American language, was published.
1866 – Lucy Hobbs Taylor (pictured) became the first woman to receive a doctorate from a dental college.
1919 – Bavarian socialist Kurt Eisner, who had organized the German Revolution that overthrew the Wittelsbach monarchy and established Bavaria as a republic, was assassinated.
1929 – Nanjing decade: In the first battle of the Warlord Rebellion in northeastern Shandong against the Nationalist government of China, a 24,000-strong rebel force led by Zhang Zongchang was defeated at Zhifu by 7,000 NRA troops.
1973 – After accidentally straying into the airspace of the Israeli-occupied Sinai Peninsula, Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 was shot down by two Israeli fighter aircraft, killing 108 of the 113 people on board.

Goscombe John (b. 1860)
Rhonda Sing (b. 1961)
Helen Hooven Santmyer (d. 1986)
Margot Fonteyn (d. 1991)

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On this day: February 22

2026-02-22T00:00:00Z

February 22

Daytona International Speedway

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.
2006 – Seven men staged the largest cash robbery in Britain at a Securitas depot in Tonbridge, Kent, United Kingdom.
2019 – A group broke into the North Korean embassy in Madrid, Spain, and stole several mobile telephones and digital storage devices.

Peder Syv (b. 1631)
James Russell Lowell (b. 1819)
Clarence 13X (b. 1928)
Bronwyn Oliver (b. 1959)

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On this day: February 23

2026-02-23T00:00:00Z

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

Christian, Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels

1725 – Johann Sebastian Bach premiered 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.

al-Zafir (b. 1133)
Allan MacLeod Cormack (b. 1924)
Edward Elgar (d. 1934)
Shiena Nishizawa (b. 1997)

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On this day: February 24

2026-02-24T00:00:00Z

February 24: Independence Day in Estonia (1918)

Louis Thomas Villaret de Joyeuse

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.

Æthelberht of Kent (d. 616)
Judah Folkman (b. 1933)
Gabriele Schnaut (b. 1951)
Leo Ornstein (d. 2002)

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On this day: February 25

2026-02-25T00:00:00Z

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

USS Ranger

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 edition of the 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.

Emma Catherine Embury (b. 1806)
Elizabeth Gertrude Britton (d. 1934)
Divya Bharti (b. 1974)
Don Bradman (d. 2001)

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On this day: February 26

2026-02-26T00:00:00Z

February 26

Nabonassar's name in Akkadian

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.

Fatima bint al-Ahmar (d. 1349)
Archibald Campbell, 9th Earl of Argyll (b. 1629)
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (b. 1954)
Jennie Smillie Robertson (d. 1981)

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On this day: February 27

2026-02-27T00:00:00Z

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

Memorial to the victims of the Sumgait pogrom

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.

Robert of Melun (d. 1167)
Alice Hamilton (b. 1869)
Ganesh Vasudev Mavalankar (d. 1956)
Leah Poulton (b. 1984)

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