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February 16: Mardi Gras and Shrove Tuesday in Western Christianity (2010); Statehood Day in Lithuania (1918)

• 1742 – Spencer Compton, 1st Earl of Wilmington became British Prime Minister, but ended up being a figurehead for the true leader of the British Government: Lord Carteret, the Secretary of State for the Northern Department.
• 1804 – United States Navy Lieutenant Stephen Decatur led a raid to destroy the captured USS Philadelphia (pictured) in Tripoli, denying her use to the Barbary States in the First Barbary War.
• 1918 – The Council of Lithuania signed the Act of Independence of Lithuania, proclaiming the restoration of an independent Lithuania governed by democratic principles, despite the presence of German troops in the country during World War I.
• 1934 – The Austrian Civil War ended with the military of the First Austrian Republic defeating the Social Democrats and the Republikanischer Schutzbund, leaving at least several hundred people dead in the five-day conflict.
• 1985 – "The Hizballah Program" was released, describing the ideology and goals of the Shia Islamic political and paramilitary organization Hezbollah as "putting an end to any colonialist entity" in Lebanon, bringing the Phalangists to justice for "the crimes they [had] perpetrated," and establishing an Islamic regime in Lebanon.

More anniversaries: February 15 – February 16 – February 17

February 15: Washington's Birthday/Presidents' Day in the United States (2010); Family Day in various regions of Canada (2010); Clean Monday/Start of Great Lent in Eastern Christianity (2010); Candlemas in Eastern Christianity; Flag Day in Canada; National Day in Serbia

• 1898 – The United States Navy battleship USS Maine exploded and sank in Havana, Cuba (wreckage pictured), killing more than 260 people and precipitating the Spanish-American War.
• 1900 – Second Boer War: British cavalry under Major-General John French defeated Boer forces to end a 124-day siege of Kimberley, present-day South Africa.
• 1942 – World War II: Japanese forces led by General Tomoyuki Yamashita captured Singapore, the largest surrender of British-led military personnel in British history.
• 1989 – The Soviet Union officially announced that all of its troops had withdrawn from Afghanistan after a nine-year conflict.
• 2003 – In one of the largest anti-war rallies in history, millions around the world in approximately 800 cities took part in protests against the impending invasion of Iraq.

More anniversaries: February 14 – February 15 – February 16

February 14: Chinese New Year (2010, Year of the Tiger); Korean New Year (2010); Tết (2010); Losar (Tibet, 2010); Tsagaan Sar (Mongolia, 2010); Valentine's Day; Feast of St. Brigid of Kildare in Eastern Christianity

• 1779 – English explorer James Cook was killed during a fight against Native Hawaiians near Kealakekua on the Island of Hawaii.
• 1876 – Inventor Alexander Graham Bell and electrical engineer Elisha Gray each filed a patent for the telephone, starting a controversy on who invented the telecommunications device first.
• 1919 – The first serious armed conflict of the Polish–Soviet War took place near present-day Biaroza, Belarus.
• 1989 – A fatwa was issued for the execution of Salman Rushdie (pictured) for authoring The Satanic Verses, a novel Islamic fundamentalists considered blasphemous.
• 2005 – Former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri was assassinated when explosives were detonated as his motorcade drove past the St. George Hotel in Beirut, sparking the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon.

More anniversaries: February 13 – February 14 – February 15

February 13

• 1706 – Great Northern War: The Swedish employed the double envelopment military strategy to defeat Saxony–Poland and their Russian allies at the Battle of Fraustadt near Fraustadt in present-day Wschowa, Poland.
• 1815 – The Cambridge Union Society, one of the oldest debating societies in the world, was founded at the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England.
• 1867 – Work began on the covering of the Senne, burying Brussels' polluted main waterway to allow urban renewal in the centre of the city.
• 1945 – World War II: The Allies began their strategic bombing of Dresden, Saxony, Germany, resulting in a lethal firestorm which killed tens of thousands of civilians.
• 1960 – African American college students staged the first of the Nashville sit-ins at three lunch counters (pictured) in Nashville, Tennessee, U.S., part of a nonviolent direct action campaign to end racial segregation.

More anniversaries: February 12 – February 13 – February 14

February 12: Darwin Day; Red Hand Day

• 881 – Pope John VIII crowned Charles the Fat as Holy Roman Emperor.
• 1502 – Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama set sail from Lisbon, Portugal, on his second voyage to India with the object of enforcing Portuguese interests in the Far East.
• 1541 – Spanish Conquistador Pedro de Valdivia founded Santiago, Chile, as Santiago del Nuevo Extremo.
• 1818 – Chile formally declared its independence from Spain.
• 1855 – Michigan State University (Beaumont Tower pictured) in East Lansing, Michigan, was founded as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the United States' first agriculture college.
• 1909 – The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, one of the oldest and most influential civil rights organizations in the United States, was founded to work on behalf of the rights of African Americans.

More anniversaries: February 11 – February 12 – February 13

February 11: Fat Thursday (2010); National Foundation Day in Japan

• 660 BC – According to tradition, Emperor Jimmu founded Japan and established his capital in Yamato.
• 1858 – Fourteen year-old peasant girl Bernadette Soubirous reported the first of eighteen Marian apparitions in Lourdes, France, resulting in the town becoming a major site for pilgrimages by Catholics.
• 1979 – Iranian Revolution: The Pahlavi dynasty effectively collapsed when the military declared itself "neutral" after rebel troops overwhelmed forces loyal to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in armed street fighting.
• 1990 – Anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela (pictured), a political prisoner for 27 years, was released from Victor Verster Prison near Paarl, South Africa.
• 1991 – The international organization Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization was established to represent the interests of indigenous peoples, minorities, occupied nations, and other areas which lack international representation.

More anniversaries: February 10 – February 11 – February 12

February 10

• 1258 – Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid caliphate, surrendered to Hulagu Khan and the Mongols after almost a two-week siege.
• 1567 – After an explosion destroyed the house in Kirk o' Field, Edinburgh, where he was staying, the strangled body of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, the King consort of Scotland, was found in a nearby orchard.
• 1763 – Britain, France, and Spain signed the Treaty of Paris to end the Seven Years' War, significantly reducing the size of the French colonial empire while at the same time marking the beginning of an extensive period of British dominance outside of Europe.
• 1840 – Prince Albert (pictured) of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha married Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom at the Chapel Royal, becoming prince-consort.
• 1930 – The Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang launches the failed Yen Bai mutiny in the hope of ending French colonial rule in Vietnam.
• 1996 – Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov in a game of chess, the first ever game won by a chess-playing computer against a World Chess Champion under chess tournament conditions.

More anniversaries: February 9 – February 10 – February 11

February 9

• 474 – As the seven-year old Leo II was deemed too young to rule, his father Zeno was crowned as the co-emperor of the Byzantine Empire.
• 1825 – After no presidential candidate received a majority of electoral votes, the United States House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams President of the United States.
• 1895 – William G. Morgan, a YMCA physical education director in Holyoke, Massachusetts, USA, invented a game called Mintonette, which evolved into volleyball (pictured).
• 1920 – The Spitsbergen Treaty was signed, recognizing Norwegian sovereignty over the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, but all signatories were also given equal rights to engage in commercial activities on the islands.
• 1943 – World War II: Allied forces declared Guadalcanal secure, ending the Guadalcanal Campaign as a significant strategic victory for Allied forces fighting Japan in the Pacific War.

More anniversaries: February 8 – February 9 – February 10

February 8: Prešeren Day in Slovenia

• 1587 – Mary I, Queen of Scots was executed at Fotheringhay Castle for her involvement in the Babington Plot to murder her cousin, Elizabeth I of England.
• 1879 – At a meeting of the Royal Canadian Institute, engineer and inventor Sandford Fleming first proposed the adoption of worldwide standard time zones based on a single universal world time.
• 1904 – The Russo-Japanese War began with a surprise torpedo attack by the Japanese on Russian ships near present-day Lüshunkou, China.
• 1910 - Newspaper man and magazine publisher William D. Boyce (pictured) established the Boy Scouts of America, expanding the Scout Movement into the United States.
• 1915 – Film director D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation was released, becoming one of the the most influential and controversial films in the history of American cinema.

More anniversaries: February 7 – February 8 – February 9

February 7: Independence Day in Grenada (1974)

• 1301 – The title of Prince of Wales (badge pictured) was granted for the first time to an heir apparent to the English throne, Edward of Carnarvon.
• 1795 – The Eleventh Amendment to the United States Constitution, limiting the ability of U.S. citizens and foreign nationals to sue U.S. states in federal courts, was ratified in order to overrule the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Chisholm v. Georgia.
• 1863 – In New Zealand's worst maritime tragedy, HMS Orpheus of the British Royal Navy sank off the coast of Auckland, killing 189 crew out of the ship's complement of 259.
• 1907 – Over 3,000 women trudged through the cold and the rutty streets of London in the Mud March, the first large procession organized by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, to advocate for women's suffrage.
• 2009 – A series of 400 individual bushfires ignited across the Australian state of Victoria on Black Saturday, eventually resulting in 173 total deaths, the highest ever loss of life from a bushfire in Australia.

More anniversaries: February 6 – February 7 – February 8

February 6: Waitangi Day in New Zealand (1840)

• 1819 – British official Stamford Raffles (pictured) signed a treaty with Sultan Hussein Shah of Johor, establishing Singapore as a new trading post for the British East India Company.
• 1840 – The British and the Māori signed the Treaty of Waitangi, considered as the founding document of New Zealand.
• 1862 – Union forces earned one of their first important victories in the American Civil War at the Battle of Fort Henry in western Tennessee.
• 1934 – In an attempted coup d'état against the French Third Republic, far right leagues demonstrated on the Place de la Concorde in Paris.
• 1952 – Elizabeth II ascended to the thrones of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and three other Commonwealth countries upon the death of her father, George VI.
• 1958 – British European Airways Flight 609, carrying the Manchester United football club, a number of their fans and journalists covering the team, crashed while attempting to take off from Munich-Riem Airport in Munich, West Germany, killing eight players and 15 others.

More anniversaries: February 5 – February 6 – February 7

February 5: Constitution Day in Mexico; Sapporo Snow Festival in Japan begins (2010)

• 1782 – Running out of medical supplies to combat the disease scurvy, British troops surrendered to an allied Franco-Spanish force, ending the latter's invasion of the Island of Minorca in the Mediterranean Sea.
• 1783 – The first of five strong earthquakes hit the region of Calabria in present-day southern Italy, killing over 32,000 total people over a period of nearly two months.
• 1862 – Domnitor Alexander John Cuza merged his two principalities, Wallachia and Moldavia, to form the Danubian Principalities.
• 1885 – Leopold II of Belgium (pictured) established the Congo Free State as his personal possession in Africa through his organization Association Internationale Africaine and his private army, the Force Publique.
• 1917 The U.S. Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1917 with an overwhelming majority, overriding U.S. President's Woodrow Wilson's veto, banning, among others, immigration from nearly all of south and southeast Asia.
• 1958 – A Mark 15 nuclear bomb now known as the Tybee Bomb disappeared off the shores of Tybee Island, Georgia, U.S. after it was jettisoned during a practice exercise when the bomber carrying it collided in midair with a fighter plane.

More anniversaries: February 4 – February 5 – February 6

February 4: Arba'een in Shi'a Islam (2010); Independence Day in Sri Lanka (1948)

• 960 – Emperor Taizu began his reign in China, initiating the Song Dynasty period that would eventually last for more than three centuries.
• 1703 – Forty-six of the Forty-Seven Ronin committed seppuku (ritual suicide) in Edo, present-day Tokyo, as recompense for avenging the death of their master, Daimyo of Akō Asano Naganori.
• 1859 – German scholar Constantin von Tischendorf rediscovered the Codex Sinaiticus, a 4th century uncial manuscript of the Greek Bible, in Saint Catherine's Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai in Egypt.
• 1945 – World War II: Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin (pictured left-to-right) met at the Yalta Conference in Yalta on the Crimean Peninsula to discuss Europe's postwar reorganization.
• 1957 – USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine, logged her 60,000th nautical mile, matching the endurance of the fictional Nautilus described in Jules Verne's novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

More anniversaries: February 3 – February 4 – February 5

February 3: Setsubun in Japan; Four Chaplains' Day in the United States

• 1488 – Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias landed in Mossel Bay, having sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and the southern tip of Africa.
• 1509 – Turkish–Portuguese War: Portugal defeated a joint fleet of Mamlûk Burji Sultanate of Egypt, Ottoman Empire, the Zamorin of Calicut and the Sultan of Gujarat at the Battle of Diu off the coast of Diu, India.
• 1787 – Shays' Rebellion, an armed uprising in central and western Massachusetts, was crushed, an event that energized calls in the United States for a stronger government than what was established by the Articles of Confederation.
• 1959 – American rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson were killed when their plane crashed shortly after taking off from Mason City Municipal Airport in Iowa.
• 1966 – The Soviet spacecraft Luna 9 (pictured) became the first space probe to land on the Moon and transmit pictures from the lunar surface to Earth.

More anniversaries: February 2 – February 3 – February 4

February 2: Candlemas in Western Christianity; Groundhog Day in Canada and the United States

• 1536 – An expedition to the New World led by Spanish conquistador Pedro de Mendoza founded what is now Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 1848 – The Mexican–American War ended with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which gave 1.36 million km² (525,000 square miles) of Mexican territory known as the Mexican Cession to the United States in exchange for US$15 million.
• 1922 – The novel Ulysses was first published in its entirety after this material by author James Joyce (pictured) first appeared in serialized parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, becoming one of the most important works of Modernist literature.
• 1943 – World War II: The Soviet Red Army captured 91,000 tired and starving German soldiers, ending the Battle of Stalingrad, one of the bloodiest battles in human history.
• 1982 – The Syrian army bombarded the town of Hama in order to quell a revolt by the Muslim Brotherhood, killing about 7,000–25,000 people.

More anniversaries: February 1 – February 2 – February 3

February 1: Imbolc (Northern Hemisphere); Feast of St. Brigid of Kildare (Western Christianity); National Freedom Day (United States)

• 1790 – The Supreme Court of the United States first convened at the Merchants' Exchange Building in New York City.
• 1884 – The first fascicle of the Oxford English Dictionary, a 352-page volume that covered words from A to Ant, was published.
• 1896 – Giacomo Puccini's opera La bohème premiered at the Teatro Regio in Turin, Italy, eventually becoming part of the standard Italian opera repertory and one of the most frequently performed operas internationally.
• 1946 – As a result of a compromise between the major powers within the United Nations, Norwegian politician Trygve Lie was elected as the first UN Secretary-General.
• 1957 – Invented by German mechanical engineer Felix Wankel, the first working prototype of the Wankel rotary engine (pictured) ran for the first time at the research and development department of German manufacturer NSU Motorenwerke AG.
• 2003 – The NASA Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas during reentry into the Earth's atmosphere on its 28th and final mission, killing all seven crew members.

More anniversaries: January 31 – February 1 – February 2

January 31: Independence Day in Nauru (1968)

• 1747 – The London Lock Hospital, the first clinic specialising in the treatment of venereal diseases, opened.
• 1862 – American telescope-maker and astronomer Alvan Graham Clark first observed the faint white dwarf companion of Sirius (pictured), the brightest star in the night sky.
• 1961 – Aboard NASA's Mercury-Redstone 2, Ham the Chimp became the first hominid launched into outer space.
• 1968 – Vietnam War: Forces of the Viet Cong and the Vietnam People's Army launched the Tet Offensive to strike military and civilian command and control centers throughout South Vietnam.
• 2007 – Suspects were arrested in Birmingham, UK, accused of plotting to kidnap, and eventually behead, a Muslim British soldier serving in Iraq.

More anniversaries: January 30 – January 31 – February 1

January 30: Tu Bishvat (Judaism, 2010)

• 1649 – English Civil War: King Charles I, who was defeated in both the First and the Second Civil War, was beheaded for high treason in front of the Banqueting House in London.
• 1826 – The Menai Suspension Bridge, connecting the island of Anglesey and the mainland of Wales, one of the world's first modern suspension bridges, opened.
• 1930 – In Pavlovsk, USSR, meteorologist Pavel Molchanov launched one of the world's first radiosondes, a device attached to weather balloons to measure various atmospheric parameters.
• 1945 – World War II: Allied forces liberated over 500 prisoners of war from a Japanese POW camp near Cabanatuan City, Nueva Ecija, Philippines.
• 1948 – Nathuram Godse fatally shot Mahatma Gandhi (pictured), political and spiritual leader of India and the Indian independence movement, at Birla House in Delhi.
• 1964 – In a bloodless coup, General Nguyen Khanh overthrew General Duong Van Minh's military junta in South Vietnam, less than three months after Minh came to power in a bloody coup against then-President of South Vietnam Ngo Dinh Diem.

More anniversaries: January 29 – January 30 – January 31

January 29

• 904 – Sergius III, whose pontificate was marked with feudal violence and disorder in central Italy, came out of retirement to take over the papacy from the deposed antipope Christopher.
• 1845 – "The Raven", a narrative poem by American poet Edgar Allan Poe about a talking raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, was first published in the New York Evening Mirror.
• 1856 – Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom issued a Warrant under the Royal sign-manual that established the Victoria Cross (pictured), originally to recognise acts of valour by British military personnel during the Crimean War.
• 1943 – The Battle of Rennell Island, the last major naval engagement between the United States Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy during the Guadalcanal campaign, began.
• 2002 – In his State of the Union Address, U.S. President George W. Bush described governments he accused of sponsoring terrorism and seeking weapons of mass destruction as an "axis of evil", specifically naming Iran, Iraq, and North Korea.

More anniversaries: January 28 – January 29 – January 30

January 28

• 1077 – Walk to Canossa: Pope Gregory VII lifted the excommunication of Henry IV after the Holy Roman Emperor made his trek from Speyer to Canossa Castle to beg the pope for forgiveness for his actions in the Investiture Controversy.
• 1754 – Horace Walpole first coined the word "serendipity" in a letter he wrote to a friend, saying that he derived the term from the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip.
• 1820 – A Russian expedition led by naval officers Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev approached the coast of Antarctica.
• 1855 – A train on the Panama Railway made the world's first transcontinental crossing by rail, a 48-mile (77 km) trip from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean across the Isthmus of Panama.
• 1986 – The NASA Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated (pictured) 73 seconds into its tenth mission, killing all seven crew members.

More anniversaries: January 27 – January 28 – January 29