20 February History
- 1513 - Pope Julius II dies. He will lay in rest in a huge tomb sculptured by Michelangelo.
- 1725 - New Hampshire militiamen partake in the first recorded scalping of Indians by whites in North America.
- 1792 - The U.S. Postal Service is created.
- 1809 - The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the power of the federal government is greater than any individual state in the Union.
- 1831 - Polish revolutionaries defeat the Russians in the Battle of Growchow.
- 1864 - Confederate troops defeat a Union army sent to bring Florida into the union at the Battle of Olustee, Fla.
- 1900 - J.F. Pickering patents his airship.
- 1906 - Russian troops seize large portions of Mongolia.
- 1915 - President Woodrow Wilson opens the Panama-Pacific Expo in San Francisco to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal.
- 1918 - The Soviet Red Army seizes Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine.
- 1938 - Hitler demands self-determination for Germans in Austria and Czechoslovakia.
- 1941 - The United States sends war planes to the Pacific.
- 1942 - Lt. Edward O'Hare downs five out of nine Japanese bombers that are attacking the carrier Lexington.
- 1943 - German troops of the Afrika Korps break through the Kasserine Pass, defeating U.S. forces.
- 1954 - The Ford Foundation gives a $25 million grant to the Fund for Advancement of Education.
- 1959 - The FCC applies the equal time rule to TV newscasts of political candidates.
- 1962 - Mercury astronaut John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth.
- 1963 - Moscow offers to allow on-site inspection of nuclear testing.
- 1965 - Ranger 8 hits the moon and sends back 7,000 photos to the United States.
- 1968 - North Vietnamese army chief in Hue orders all looters to be shot on sight.
- 1971 - Young people protest having to cut their long hair in Athens, Greece.
- 1982 - Carnegie Hall in New York begins $20 million in renovations.
20 February Birthdays
- 1726 - William Prescott, U.S. Revolutionary War hero at the Battle of Bunker Hill.
- 1808 - Honore Daumier, French caricaturist.
- 1838 - Ludwig Boltzmann, atomic physics engineer
- 1888 - Marie Rambert, ballet dancer and director.
- 1894 - Curt Richter, biologist.
- 1898 - Jimmy Yancey, American blues pianist.
- 1901 - Rene Dubos, microbiologist, developed the first commercial antibiotic.
- 1901 - Louis I. Kahn, architect.
- 1902 - Ansel Adams, American landscape photographer, especially of western wilderness and mountain panoramas.
- 1904 - Aleksey Nikolayevich Kosygin, Premier of the Soviet Union (1964-1980).
- 1924 - Gloria Vanderbilt, fashion designer
- 1925 - Robert Altman, film director (Nashville, The Player).
- 1927 - Sidney Poitier, American actor, first African American male to win an Oscar (Lillies of the Field).