February 26 - Events

Events

  • 747 BCE – Epoch (origin) of Ptolemy's Nabonassar Era.
  • 364 – Valentinian I is proclaimed Roman Emperor.
  • 1266 – Battle of Benevento: An army led by Charles, Count of Anjou, defeats a combined German and Sicilian force led by King Manfred of Sicily. Manfred is killed in the battle and Pope Clement IV invests Charles as king of Sicily and Naples.
  • 1658 – Treaty of Roskilde: After a devastating defeat in the Northern Wars (1655–1661), the King of Denmark-Norway is forced to give up nearly half his territory to Sweden to save the rest.
  • 1794 – The first Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen burns down.
  • 1815 – Napoleon Bonaparte escapes from Elba.
  • 1876 – Japan and Korea sign a treaty granting Japanese citizens extraterritoriality rights, opening three ports to Japanese trade, and ending Korea's status as a tributary state of Qing Dynasty China.
  • 1909 – Kinemacolor, the first successful color motion picture process, is first shown to the general public at the Palace Theatre in London.
  • 1914 – HMHS Britannic, sister to the RMS Titanic, is launched at Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast.
  • 1917 – The Original Dixieland Jass Band records the first jazz record, for the Victor Talking Machine Company in New York.
  • 1919 – President Woodrow Wilson signs an act of the U.S. Congress establishing most of the Grand Canyon as a United States National Park (see Grand Canyon National Park).
  • 1920 – The first German Expressionist film and early horror movie, Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, premièred in Berlin.
  • 1929 – President Calvin Coolidge signs an Executive Order establishing the 96,000 acre Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.
  • 1935 – Adolf Hitler orders the Luftwaffe to be re-formed, violating the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles.
  • 1935 – Robert Watson-Watt carries out a demonstration near Daventry which leads directly to the development of RADAR in the United Kingdom.
  • 1936 – In the February 26 Incident, young Japanese military officers attempt to stage a coup against the government.
  • 1946 – Finnish observers report the first of many thousands of sightings of ghost rockets.
  • 1952 – Vincent Massey is sworn in as the first Canadian-born Governor-General of Canada.
  • 1960 – A New York bound Alitalia airliner crashed into a cemetery at Shannon, Ireland, shortly after takeoff, killing 34 of the 52 persons on board.
  • 1961 – Hassan II becomes King of Morocco.
  • 1966 – Apollo Program: Launch of AS-201, the first flight of the Saturn IB rocket
  • 1966 – Vietnam War: The ROK Capital Division of the South Korean Army massacres 380 unarmed civilians in South Vietnam.
  • 1971 – U.N. Secretary General U Thant signs United Nations proclamation of the vernal equinox as Earth Day.
  • 1972 – The Buffalo Creek Flood caused by a burst dam kills 125 in West Virginia.
  • 1980 – Egypt and Israel establish full diplomatic relations.
  • 1987 – Iran-Contra affair: The Tower Commission rebukes President Ronald Reagan for not controlling his national security staff.
  • 1991 – Gulf War: United States Army forces capture the town of Al Busayyah.
  • 1992 – Nagorno-Karabakh War: Khojaly Massacre: Armenian armed forces open fire on Azeri civilians at a military post outside the town of Khojaly leaving hundreds dead.
  • 1993 – World Trade Center bombing: In New York City, a truck bomb parked below the North Tower of the World Trade Center explodes, killing 6 and injuring over a thousand.
  • 1995 – The United Kingdom's oldest investment banking institute, Barings Bank, collapses after a securities broker, Nick Leeson, loses $1.4 billion by speculating on the Singapore International Monetary Exchange using futures contracts.
  • 2004 – Republic of Macedonia President Boris Trajkovski is killed in a plane crash near Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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Famous quotes containing the word events:

    “Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone, which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past.”
    —David Hume (1711–1776)

    “One cannot be a good historian of the outward, visible world without giving some thought to the hidden, private life of ordinary people; and on the other hand one cannot be a good historian of this inner life without taking into account outward events where these are relevant. They are two orders of fact which reflect each other, which are always linked and which sometimes provoke each other.”
    —Victor Hugo (1802–1885)

    “There are no little events in life, those we think of no consequence may be full of fate, and it is at our own risk if we neglect the acquaintances and opportunities that seem to be casually offered, and of small importance.”
    —Amelia E. Barr (1831–1919)