During his famous “Liberty or Death” speech, American Revolutionary Patrick Henry declared, “I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future but by the past.” Studying history helps us make wise decisions in the present. Below are some of the important births, deaths, and events that occurred in February in history.
February 15
399 BC – Influential Athenian philosopher Socrates is sentenced to death, accused of corrupting the city’s youth.
1564 – Astronomer Galileo Galilei is born in Pisa, Italy. He helped popularize the theory of heliocentrism, including by developing a telescope that enabledhim to see Jupiter’s moons (proving some heavenly bodies didn’t revolve around Earth). Originally a friend of the pope and Cardinal Bellarmine, Galileo was put on trial and then under comfortable house arrest by Catholic authorities after his works insulted the pope and apparently challenged the Bible. Galileo was very wrong on some points, including in his explanation of the tides and his denial that the planets move in elliptical orbits. Protestants have since misrepresented Galileo’s story to claim the Catholic Church was aggressively “anti-science.”
1763 – The Treaty of Hubertusburg is signed, ending the Seven Years’ War between Austria, Saxony, and Prussia.
1898 – The USS Maine blows up in Cuba’s Havana Harbor, killing over 260 Americans. While it is not clear if Spain (Cuba’s owner) was to blame, U.S. public anger over the incident led to the Spanish-American War.
1965 – Popular and influential American pianist and singer—and the first black American variety TV series host—Nat King Cole dies.
February 16
1923 – The ‘burial chamber of King Tutankhamen’s recently unearthed tomb was unsealed in Egypt.
1926 – Popular and talented American dancer and actress Vera-Ellen is born.
1941 – North Korean Communist dictator Kim Jong-Il is born.
1959 – Brutal Communist dictator Fidel Castro is sworn in as prime minister of Cuba, after a coup. Under his regime, as of 2016, almost 11,000 people had been killed.
February 17
1865 – The Confederate town of Columbia, South Carolina burns. Union Gen. Sherman has falsely been accused of burning it down to punish the Confederate traitors.
1909 – Famous Apache chief Geronimo dies at Fort Sill while in American custody.
2021 – Iconic and revolutionary U.S. radio host and author Rush Limbaugh dies. Read my full piece.
February 18
1294 – Mongolian general Kublai Khan, who conquered China and ruled it as the first Yuan Dynasty emperor, dies.
1564 – Great Italian artist Michelangelo dies.
1885 – Mark Twain’s iconic novel “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” which addressed slavery and other evils in the American South, is published.
February 19
356 – Reportedly the date on which Emperor Constantius II decreed all of the Roman Empire’s pagan temples be closed.
1405 – Famous Turkic conqueror Tamerlane (Timur) dies.
1473 – Catholic cleric, astronomer, and heliocentrist Nicolaus Copernicus is born in Poland.
1777 – Revolutionary War hero Seth Pomeroy dies. Read more here.
1878 – American inventor Thomas Edison patents the phonograph.
1942 – Democrat U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issues a racist executive order commanding Japanese Americans be rounded up and detained in internment camps. Some Italian and German Americans were also interned.
1945 – American Marines begin the bloody invasion of the Japanese island of Iwo Jima during WWII.
2016 – American authoress Harper Lee dies.
February 20
1895 – Former slave, popular orator, civil rights champion, and U.S. politician Frederick Douglass dies. Reach my previous article.
1962 – John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit Earth, as the U.S. catches up to Soviet Russia in the space race.
February 21
1513 – Pope Julius II, patron of famed Renaissance artists, dies.
1916 – The bloody and lengthy Battle of Verdun begins during WWI.
1972 – U.S. President Richard Nixon arrives in Communist China for talks with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dictator and history’s greatest mass murderer, Mao Zedong, a back-stab of the free Chinese. The CCP is now our main enemy.
February 22
1512 – Amerigo Vespucci, the navigator after whom the Americas are named, dies.
1732 – Birthday of the greatest Founder, the Father of his Country, General and first U.S. President, George Washington. Read my full piece.
1770 – 11-year-old Christopher Seider, considered the first casualty of the American Revolution, is shot during a protest by a British customs officer.
1944 – WWII: Successful end of the American Invasion of the Eniwetok atoll.
1967 – The Americans and South Vietnamese troops begin Operation Junction City against the murderous Communist Viet Cong during the Vietnam War.
February 23
1455 – Johannes Gutenberg prints his first copy of the Bible on his printing press, an invention that would revolutionize history.
1685 – Composer George F. Handel is born.
1778 – Prussian military officer Baron von Steuben arrives at Valley Forge to train and drill the American Revolutionary army, thus preparing them to fight the British more effectively.
1836 – The famous siege of the Alamo begins.
1904 – “[LOC] Panama grants the U.S. control over the Panama Canal zone for $10 million.”
1939 – Academy Awards: Frank Capra’s film “You Can’t Take It With You” won multiple Oscars, and Walt Disney won a special award for “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
1942 – WWII: First Japanese attack on the U.S. mainland during WWII, a bombardment on the California coast.
1945 – WWII, Iwo Jima: Marines raise the U.S. flag on Mount Suribachi, captured in an iconic photograph.
February 24
1525 – Date of the Battle of Pavia, Habsburg victory over the French [Britannica].
1739 – Persians beat Mughal emperor the Battle of Karnal.
1786 – Birth of Wilhelm Grimm, one of the famous brothers who compiled the Grimms’ Fairy Tales.
1868 – The U.S. House of Representatives votes to impeach President Andrew Johnson (the Senate unfortunately did not follow suit). A Democrat and virulent racist who came to the presidency from the office of VP after Lincoln’s assassination, Johnson deliberately encouraged racist and damaging Southern Reconstruction, blocking black civil rights, instead of the Reconstruction Lincoln and his fellow Republicans had envisioned.
1885 – Future admiral Chester Nimitz is born, U.S. Pacific commander in WWII.
February 25
1570 – Pope Pius V issues the bull Regnans in Excelsis, excommunicating heretic English Queen Elizabeth I and absolving her orthodox subjects of loyalty to her.
1634 – Albrecht von Wallenstein, Bohemian nobleman and influential Catholic general during the Thirty Years’ War, is assassinated.
February 26
1522 – Cuauhtémoc, the last Aztec emperor, dies.
1775 – First American colonial armed resistance to the British occurs in Salem.
1802 – French writer Victor Hugo is born.
1813 – Death of “Robert R. Livingston, ‘The Chancellor,’ [who was] a Founding Father and served on the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence. He also helped negotiate the Lousiana Purchase…He continued in his role as Chancellor of New York and administered the oath of office to [President] George Washington on April 30, 1789…President Thomas Jefferson appointed him as Minister to France and he negotiated the Louisiana Purchase [American History Central].”
1815 – Napoleon Bonaparte, erstwhile emperor of France, escapes Elba to seize back control of France.
1846 – Internationally acclaimed Wild West star “Buffalo Bill” Cody is born.
Did I miss any important events? Let me know in the comments.
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Author: Catherine Salgado
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