| YEAR | DAY | EVENT |
| 1066 | Feb 28 | Westminster Abbey opened. |
| 1533 | Feb 28 | Michel de Montaigne (d.1592), was born near Bordeaux, France. He was the French moralist who created the personal essay. Montaigne was brought up by his father under peasant guidance and a German tutor for Latin. He spent a lifetime of political service under Henry IV, and then composed his “Essays.” This was the first book to reveal with utter honesty and frankness the author’s mind and heart. Montaigne sought to reach beyond his own illusions, to see himself as he really was, which was not just the way others saw him. “Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.” |
| 1569 | Feb 28 | The Lithuanian delegation pulled out of union talks with Poland and departed Liublin. |
| 1573 | Feb 28 | Elias Hill, German architect, city builder (Augsburg), was born. |
| 1574 | Feb 28 | On the orders of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, two Englishmen and an Irishman were burnt for heresy. |
| 1609 | Feb 28 | Paul Sartorius (39), composer, died. |
| 1610 | Feb 28 | Thomas West, Baron de La Mar, was appointed governor of Virginia. |
| 1626 | Feb 28 | Cyril Tourneur (c51), English poet, dramatist, died. |
| 1632 | Feb 28 | Jean-Baptiste Lully, composer, was born in Florence, Italy. [see Nov 28] |
| 1638 | Feb 28 | Scottish Presbyterians signed the National Covenant at Greyfriars, Edinburgh. |
| 1638 | Feb 28 | Henri duc de Rohan, French soldier, Huguenot leader, died. |
| 1646 | Feb 28 | Roger Scott was tried in Massachusetts for sleeping in church. |
| 1663 | Feb 28 | Thomas Newcomen, English co-inventor of the steam engine, was born. |
| 1692 | Feb 28 | The Salem witch hunts began. |
| 1704 | Feb 28 | Indians attacked Deerfield, Mass., killing 40 and kidnapping 100. |
| 1708 | Feb 28 | A slave revolt in Newton, Long Island, NY, left 11 dead. |
| 1728 | Feb 28 | Georg F. Handel’s opera “Siroe, re di Persia,” premiered in London. |
| 1749 | Feb 28 | The 1st edition of “The History of Tom Jones: A foundling” was published. Henry Fielding (1707-1754) wrote the book and a film based on the novel was made in 1963. A TV production premiered in 1998. |
| 1759 | Feb 28 | Pope Clement XIII allowed the Bible to be translated into various languages. |
| 1778 | Feb 28 | Rhode Island General Assembly authorized the enlistment of slaves. |
| 1784 | Feb 28 | John Wesley (1703-1791) chartered the Methodist Church. His teaching emphasized field preaching along with piety, probity and respectability. In 2003 Roy Hattersley authored “A Brand from the Burning: The Life of John Wesley.” |
| 1801 | Feb 28 | Motiejus Valancius, Lithuanian educator, historian, writer and bishop, was born in Nasrenai in the Kretinga region. He died May 29, 1875, in Kaunas. His portrait is on the 2-litas note. |
| 1810 | Feb 28 | The 1st US fire insurance joint-stock company was organized in Philadelphia. |
| 1813 | Feb 28 | Russia and Prussia formed the Kalisz union against Napoleon. |
| 1820 | Feb 28 | John Tenniel, illustrator of “Alice in Wonderland,” was born. |
| 1823 | Feb 28 | Ernst Renan, French philosopher, historian, scholar of religion, was born. |
| 1824 | Feb 28 | Charles Blondin, tightrope walker, was born. |
| 1825 | Feb 28 | Quincy Adams Gillmore (d.1888), Major General (Union volunteers), was born. |
| 1827 | Feb 28 | The first U.S. railroad chartered to carry passengers and freight, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Co., was incorporated. |
| 1844 | Feb 28 | A 12-inch gun aboard the USS Princeton exploded, killing Secretary of State Abel P. Upshur, Navy Secretary Thomas W. Gilmer and several others. |
| 1847 | Feb 28 | Colonel Alexander Doniphan and his ragtag Missouri Mounted Volunteers rode to victory at the Battle of Sacramento during the Mexican War. |
| 1849 | Feb 28 | The steamer California, sounding the first steamship whistle on the SF Bay, arrived in SF with San Francisco postmaster John W. Geary on board carrying mail for the Pacific coast. Steamboat service began from Panama City to SF. Pacific Mail Steamship Co. sent the side-wheel steamship California to SF with American gold-seekers and 50 Peruvian miners. Also onboard were preacher Osgood C. Wheeler (32) and his wife Elizabeth. |
| 1852 | Feb 28 | The French ship arrived in San Francisco from Le Havre with some 200 lottery emigrants. They included criminals, political prisoners, honest workers, common thugs and others considered undesirable. France had organized a national lottery for a gold bar and used the proceeds to ship people to California. |
| 1854 | Feb 28 | Some 50 slavery opponents met in Ripon, Wis., to call for creation of a new political group, which became the Republican Party. [see Mar 20, Jul 6] |
| 1859 | Feb 28 | Arkansas legislature required free blacks to choose exile or slavery. |
| 1861 | Feb 28 | The territory of Colorado was organized. |
| 1862 | Feb 28 | Karl Goldmark’s opera “The Queen of Sheba,” premiered in Paris. |
| 1863 | Feb 28 | Four Union gunboats destroyed the CSS Nashville near Fort McAllister, Ga. Popular during the Crimean War, the floating battery was revived by hard-pressed Confederates because the popular gunboats were not capable of doing the things that the batteries could do. |
| 1864 | Feb 28-Mar 3 | A skirmish took place at Albemarle County, Virginia (Burton’s Ford). |
| 1871 | Feb 28 | The 2nd Enforcement Act set federal control of congressional elections. |
| 1879 | Feb 28 | In the “Exodus of 1879” southern blacks fled political and economic exploitation. |
| 1882 | Feb 28 | Geraldine Farrar, US soprano, actress (Story of American Singer), was born. |
| 1883 | Feb 28 | 1st US vaudeville theater opened in Boston. |
| 1888 | Feb 28 | Vincent d’Indy’s Wallenstein trilogy, premiered. |
| 1890 | Feb 28 | Vaslav Nijinsky, ballet dancer (3/12 NS), was born in Kiev, Ukraine. He was the pre-eminent ballet artist of his day and at 20 became the protege and lover of Sergei Diaghilev. He spent some time in psychotherapy during which he made a number of abstract drawings. Nijinsky died in 1950 in London. |
| 1893 | Feb 28 | Edward Acheson of Pennsylvania, patented an abrasive he named “carborundum.” |
| 1894 | Feb 28 | Ben Hecht (d.1964), American author and screenwriter, was born. “There’s one thing that keeps surprising you about stormy old friends after they die -Â their silence.” |
| 1895 | Feb 28 | Guiomar Novaes, pianist (Brazilian Order of Merit), was born in Brazil. |
| 1895 | Feb 28 | Marcel Pagnol, French playwright, director (Marchands de Gloire), was born. |
| 1896 | Feb 28 | Philip Showalter Hench, physician (cortisone-Nobel), was born in Pittsburgh. |
| 1900 | Feb 28 | After a 119-day siege by the Boers, the English defenders of Ladysmith, under General Sir George White were relieved. |
| 1901 | Feb 28 | Linus Pauling, American chemist, was born in Portland, Oregon. He won the Nobel Prize for chemistry (1954) and a Nobel Peace Prize (1962) for his arguments for nuclear disarmament. He also advocated major doses of vitamin C to maintain health. |
| 1904 | Feb 28 | Vincent d’Indy’s 2nd Symphony in B premiered. |
| 1905 | Feb 28 | Jane Lathrop Stanford, the wife of Leland Stanford, died of suspected arsenic poisoning at the Moana Hotel in Honolulu. |
| 1906 | Feb 28 | Bugsy Siegel, gangster who created casinos in Las Vegas, was born. |
| 1907 | Feb 28 | Milton Caniff, cartoonist (Terry and the Pirates), was born in Hillsboro, Ohio. |
| 1909 | Feb 28 | Stephen Spender (d.1995), English poet, critic, was born. |
| 1910 | Feb 28 | Vincente Minnelli, director (American in Paris, Gigi), was born in Chicago, IL. |
| 1911 | Feb 28 | Denis Burkitt, British medical researcher, was born. |
| 1915 | Feb 28 | Zero “Samuel” Mostel (d.1977), actor (Fiddler on the Roof), was born in Brooklyn. |
| 1916 | Feb 28 | Haiti became the first U.S. protectorate. |
| 1917 | Feb 28 | Russian Duma set up a Provisional Committee; workers set up Soviets. |
| 1920 | Feb 28 | Maurice Ravel’s “Le Tombeau de Couperin,” premiered. |
| 1922 | Feb 28 | Britain declared Egypt a sovereign state, but British troops remained. |
| 1923 | Feb 28 | Charles Durning, actor (Fury, Sting, Tootsie), was born in Highland Falls, NY. |
| 1924 | Feb 28 | U.S. troops were sent to Honduras to protect American interests during an election conflict. |
| 1925 | Feb 28 | “Tea For Two” by Marion Harris hit #1. |
| 1926 | Feb 28 | Svetlana Alliluyeva, daughter of Josef Stalin, author (My Life), was born. |
| 1928 | Feb 28 | Smokey the Bear was created. |
| 1931 | Feb 28 | Oswald Mosley founded his New Party. |
| 1933 | Feb 28 | Hitler disallowed the German communist party (KPD). |
| 1935 | Feb 28 | Nylon was discovered by Dr. Wallace H. Carothers. |
| 1936 | Feb 28 | The Japanese Army restored order in Tokyo and arrested officers involved in a coup. |
| 1939 | Feb 28 | Great Britain recognized the Franco regime in Spain. [see Feb 27, 1938] |
| 1940 | Feb 28 | The Superliner Queen Elizabeth was launched in Britain. |
| 1942 | Feb 28 | Japanese landed in Java, the last Allied bastion in Dutch East Indies. |
| 1943 | Feb 28 | “Porgy & Bess” opened on Broadway with Anne Brown & Todd Duncan. |
| 1943 | Feb 28 | In Operation Gunnerside Norwegian commandos flown in from Britain destroyed the Nazi heavy water plant near Rjukan. The raid was later depicted in the 1965 film “The Heroes of Telemark.” The 9 commandos included Claus Helberg (d.2003) and Knut Haukelid (d.1994). |
| 1945 | Feb 28 | U.S. tanks broke the natural defense line west of the Rhine and crossed the Erft River. |
| 1946 | Feb 28 | The U.S. Army declared that it would use the V-2 rocket to test radar as an atomic rocket defense system. |
| 1947 | Feb 28 | There was an anti-Kuomintang demonstration on Taiwan. As many as 20,000 civilians were massacred by the Kuomintang (KMT). A riot was sparked by the arrest of a woman selling contraband cigarettes in Taipei. Crowds attacked the Nationalist Party institutions as Nationalist troops and secret police struck back over the ensuing months. In 1996 a 69 cent postage stamp was planned in commemoration of the “228 Incident.” In 2006 a team from UC Berkeley won a design competition for a 15-acre “228 National Memorial Park. |
| 1948 | Feb 28 | The last British troops left India. The First Battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry passed through the Gateway of India monument in a ceremony. |
| 1950 | Feb 28 | The French Assembly in Paris decided to limit the sale of Coca-Cola. |
| 1951 | Feb 28 | The Senate committee headed by Estes Kefauver, D-Tenn., Issued a preliminary report saying at least two major crime syndicates were operating in the United States. |
| 1953 | Feb 28 | Stalin met with Beria, Bulganin, Khrushchev and Malenkov.) |
| 1960 | Feb 28 | The Eighth Winter Olympic Games formally closed in Squaw Valley, Calif. |
| 1967 | Feb 28 | Art Davidson, Ray Genet and Dave Johnston completed the first winter ascent of Alaska’s Mount McKinley. On their descent they became trapped by a storm for 6 days at 18,500 feet in an ice-cave. In 1969 Art Davidson authored “Minus 148°.” |
| 1969 | Feb 28 | A Los Angeles court refused Robert Kennedy assassin Sirhan Sirhan’s request to be executed. |
| 1970 | Feb 28 | Bicycles were permitted to cross the Golden Gate Bridge. |
| 1971 | Feb 28 | The male electorate in Lichtenstein refused to give voting rights to women. |
| 1972 | Feb 28 | President Nixon and Chinese Premier Chou En-lai signed the Shanghai Communique at the Jin Jiang Hotel Assembly Hall on the last night of Nixon’s visit. |
| 1974 | Feb 28 | Britain’s Labor Party won the parliamentary election. No party had an overall majority resulting in a hung parliament. This lasted until elections in October. |
| 1975 | Feb 28 | The EU signed another trade deal in Lome, Togo, to keep markets open to former European colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific Islands (ACP) |
| 1977 | Feb 28 | Eddie “Rochester” Anderson (b.1905), African-American comedian, died. |
| 1978 | Feb 28 | Consuelo Kanaga (b.1894), San Francisco photographer, died. |
| 1979 | Feb 28 | Ernest Thompson’s play “On Golden Pond,” premiered in NYC. |
| 1982 | Feb 28 | The FALN, a Puerto Rican Nationalist Group, bombed Wall Street. 4 powerful bombs detonated in front of business institutions in New York’s financial district. |
| 1983 | Feb 28 | The last episode of M*A*S*H was shown. A record 125 million made MASH the most watched TV show. |
| 1984 | Feb 28 | New Hampshire held its presidential primary. Ronald Reagan won with 86.1% of the total vote. Gary Hart won the Democratic tally over Walter Mondale and John Glenn. |
| 1986 | Feb 28 | In the Philippines Pres. Corazon Aquino signed executive order No. 1 creating the Presidential Commission on Good Governance. It was created to trace and recover assets stolen under the Marcos regime, estimated at up to $10 billion. By 2007 only a quarter of that number was retrieved. |
| 1988 | Feb 28 | The 15th Olympic Winter Games held its closing ceremony in Calgary, Canada. |
| 1989 | Feb 28 | In Chicago, Richard M. Daley, son of Mayor Richard J. Daley who served as mayor for 21 years, defeated acting Mayor Eugene Sawyer in a Democratic primary election. |
| 1990 | Feb 28 | In San Francisco protesters lit the street outside the St. Francis Hotel with a flaming torch parade and bonfire as part of demonstrations against a visit by Pres. George H.W. Bush. |
| 1991 | Feb 28 | NCR Corporation acquired the Teradata Company specializing in data warehousing and analytic applications. |
| 1992 | Feb 28 | Twenty-eight people were injured when an IRA bomb exploded at London Bridge train station. |
| 1993 | Feb 28 | Ishiro Honda (81), Japanese director, producer (Godzilla), died. |
| 1994 | Feb 28 | Two U.S. F-16 fighter jets downed four Serb warplanes that U.N. officials said had bombed an arms plant run by Bosnia’s Muslim-led government. This was the first NATO use of force in the troubled area. |
| 1995 | Feb 28 | U.S. Marines swept ashore in Somalia to protect retreating U.N. peacekeepers. |
| 1996 | Feb 28 | Russia joined the Council of Europe and halted capital punishment. The Russian Federation had applied to join the Council of Europe on 7 May 1992. |
| 1997 | Feb 28 | Brushing aside congressional calls for a tougher stance against Mexico, President Clinton recertified the country as a fully cooperating ally in the struggle against drug smuggling. |
| 1998 | Feb 28 | In weekly radio addresses, President Clinton and Republicans sparred over education, with Clinton describing tests showing American high school students lagging behind those of other industrial nations as a “wake-up call” while the Republicans blamed the disappointing results on a “hungry bureaucracy in Washington” that gobbles up education funds. |
| 1999 | Feb 28 | A US air strike in Iraq was said to have damaged an oil pipeline, stopped the flow of oil and killed one Iraqi. The US denied the charges. Iraq claimed that a communications center for a major oil pipeline into Turkey was struck. |
| 2000 | Feb 28 | In Massachusetts computer-industry publisher Patrick J. McGovern and his wife, Lore Harp McGovern, pledged a $350 million donation over 20 years to MIT to finance brain research. |
| 2001 | Feb 28 | China ratified a UN-sponsored human rights treaty but backed away from a guarantee of workers’ rights |
| 2002 | Feb 28 | Dr. Ellen Feinberg (43) stabbed to death her 10-year-old son and wounded a younger son in Champaign, Ill. |
| 2003 | Feb 28 | The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stood by its ruling that reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools was unconstitutional because of the words “under God.” |
| 2004 | Feb 28 | The Bow Mariner, a tanker carrying 3.5 million gallons of ethanol, exploded and sank off Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Three crewmen were known dead and six others were rescued. 18 crew members were left missing. |
| 2005 | Feb 28 | The US Mint began distributing new buffalo nickels to banks. The reverse side showed a bolder profile of Thomas Jefferson. |
| 2006 | Feb 28 | The US Supreme Court voted 8-0 to bar the use of racketeering laws against antiabortion protesters. |
| 2007 | Feb 28 | The US government said the nation has 754,000 homeless people, filling emergency shelters through the year and spilling into special seasonal shelters in the coldest months. |
| 2008 | Feb 28 | The Pew Center on the States reported that 1% of adult Americans are in jail or prison, an all-time high that cost state governments nearly $50 billion a year in addition to over $5 billion spent by the federal government. The US led the world in the percentage of residents incarcerated with China a distant second. |
| 2009 | Feb 28 | In Louisiana 3 ½ years after Hurricane Katrina, the National Guard pulled the last of its troops out of New Orleans, leaving behind a city still desperate and dangerous. |
| 2010 | Feb 28 | The US White House called for a “simple up-or-down” vote on health care legislation as Speaker Nancy Pelosi appealed to House Democrats to get behind President Barack Obama’s chief domestic priority even it if threatens their political careers. |
| 2011 | Feb 28 | A Pentagon official said the US military is repositioning naval and air forces around Libya, as international demands intensify for an end to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s decades-long rule. |
| 2012 | Feb 28 | In the US Republican primaries Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, won 41% to Rick Santorum’s 38% in Michigan. Romney won Arizona with 48% to Santorum’s 26%, with 76% of the vote counted. |
| 2013 | Feb 28 | US Army Pvt. Bradley Manning (25), accused of providing secret documents to the WikiLeaks website, pleaded guilty to misusing classified material he felt “should become public,” but denied the top charge of aiding the enemy. |
| 2014 | Feb 28 | In northern Yemen at least 13 people died when Shi’ite Muslim fighters clashed with security forces. The violence erupted after members of the Houthi group staged a protest in al Hazm. |
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