23 February History
- 303 - Emperor Diocletian orders the general persecution of Christians in Rome.
- 1516 - The Hapsburg Charles I succeeds Ferdinand in Spain.
- 1540 - Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado begins his unsuccessful search for the fabled Seven Cities of Gold in the American Southwest.
- 1574 - The 5th War of Religion breaks out in France.
- 1615 - The Estates-General in Paris is dissolved, having been in session since October 1614.
- 1778 - Baron von Steuben joins the Continental Army at Valley Forge.
- 1821 - Poet John Keats dies of tuberculosis at the age of 25.
- 1836 - The Alamo is besieged by Santa Anna.
- 1846 - The Liberty Bell tolls for the last time, to mark George Washington's birthday.
- 1847 - Forces led by Zachary Taylor defeat the Mexicans at the Battle of Buena Vista.
- 1854 - Great Britain officially recognizes the independence of the Orange Free State.
- 1861 - Texas becomes the seventh state to secede from the Union.
- 1885 - John Lee survives three attempts to hang him in Exeter Prison, as the trap fails to open.
- 1898 - Writer Emile Zola is imprisoned in France for his letter J'accuse in which he accuses the French government of anti-semitism and the wrongful imprisonment of army captain Alfred Dreyfus.
- 1901 - Britain and Germany agree on a boundary between German East Africa and Nyasaland.
- 1904 - Japan guarantees Korean sovereignty in exchange for military assistance.
- 1916 - Secretary of State Lansing hints that the U.S. may have to abandon the policy of avoiding "entangling foreign alliances".
- 1921 - An airmail plane sets a record of 33 hours and 20 minutes from San Francisco to New York.
- 1926 - President Calvin Coolidge opposes a large air force, believing it would be a menace to world peace.
- 1936 - In Russia, an unmanned balloon rises to a record height of 25 miles.
- 1938 - Twelve Chinese fighter planes drop bombs on Japan.
- 1942 - A Japanese submarine shells an oil refinery near Santa Barbara, California, the first Axis bombs to hit American soil.
- 1944 - American bombers strike the Marianas Islands bases, only 1,300 miles from Tokyo.
- 1945 - Eisenhower opens a large offensive in the Rhineland.
- 1945 - U.S. Marines plant an American flag atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima.
- 1946 - Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita is hanged in Manila, the Philippines, for war crimes.
- 1947 - Several hundred Nazi organizers are arrested in Frankfurt by U.S. and British forces.
- 1950 - New York's Metropolitan Museum exhibits a collection of Hapsburg art. The first showing of this collection in the U.S.
- 1954 - Mass innoculation begins as Salk's polio vaccine is given to children for first time.
- 1955 - Eight nations meet in Bangkok for the first SEATO council.
- 1960 - Whites join Negro students in a sit-in at a Winston-Salem, N.C. Woolworth store.
- 1964 - The U.S. and Britain recognize the new Zanzibar government.
- 1967 - American troops begin the largest offensive of the war, near the Cambodian border.
- 1972 - Black activist Angela Davis is released from jail where she was held for kidnapping , conspiracy and murder.
- 1991 - French forces unofficially start the Persian Gulf ground war by crossing the Saudi-Iraqi border.
23 February Birthdays
- 1633 - Samuel Pepys, English diarist.
- 1685 - George F. Handel, German composer.
- 1743 - Meyer Amschel Rothschild, banker and founder of the Rothschild dynasty in Europe.
- 1868 - W.E.B. [William Edward Burghardt] Du Bois, U.S. historian and civil rights leader, founder of what became the NAACP.
- 1883 - Victor Fleming, film director (The Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind)
- 1899 - Erich Kastner, German poet, novelist and children's author (Emil and the Detectives).
- 1904 - William Shirer, CBS broadcaster and author (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich).
- 1924 - Allan MacLeod Cormack, physicist, developed the CAT scan.