20 February History


Month:                           Date:     

  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • 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).