February 19 - Events

Events

  • 197 – Emperor Septimius Severus defeats usurper Clodius Albinus in the Battle of Lugdunum, the bloodiest battle between Roman armies.
  • 356 – Emperor Constantius II issues a decree closing all pagan temples in the Roman Empire.
  • 1594 – Having already inherited the throne of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth through his mother Catherine Jagellonica of Poland in 1587, Sigismund III of the House of Vasa is crowned King of Sweden, having succeeded his father John III of Sweden in 1592.
  • 1600 – The Peruvian stratovolcano Huaynaputina explodes in the most violent eruption in the recorded history of South America.
  • 1649 – The Second Battle of Guararapes takes place, effectively ending Dutch colonization efforts in Brazil.
  • 1674 – England and the Netherlands sign the Treaty of Westminster, ending the Third Anglo-Dutch War. A provision of the agreement transfers the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam to England, and it is renamed New York.
  • 1807 – In Alabama, former Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr is arrested for treason and confined to Fort Stoddert.
  • 1819 – British explorer William Smith discovers the South Shetland Islands, and claims them in the name of King George III.
  • 1846 – In Austin, Texas the newly formed Texas state government is officially installed. The Republic of Texas government officially transfers power to the State of Texas government following Texas' annexation by the United States.
  • 1847 – The first group of rescuers reaches the Donner Party.
  • 1852 – The Phi Kappa Psi fraternity is founded at Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania.
  • 1859 – Daniel E. Sickles, a New York Congressman, is acquitted of murder on grounds of temporary insanity. This is the 1st time this defense is successfully used in the United States.
  • 1861 – Serfdom is abolished in Russia.
  • 1876 – Founding of the National Amateur Press Association (NAPA) in Philadelphia.
  • 1878 – Thomas Edison patents the phonograph.
  • 1884 – More than sixty tornadoes strike the Southern United States, one of the largest tornado outbreaks in U.S. history.
  • 1915 – World War I: The first naval attack on the Dardanelles begins when a strong Anglo-French task force bombards Ottoman artillery along the coast of Gallipoli.
  • 1921 – Rezā Shāh takes control of Tehran during a successful coup
  • 1937 – Yekatit 12: During a public ceremony at the Viceregal Palace (the former Imperial residence) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, two Ethiopian nationalists of Eritrean origin attempt to kill viceroy Rodolfo Graziani with a number of grenades. Italian authorities exact vicious reprisals on the population.
  • 1942 – World War II: nearly 250 Japanese warplanes attack the northern Australian city of Darwin killing 243 people.
  • 1942 – World War II: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the executive order 9066, allowing the United States military to relocate Japanese-Americans to Japanese internment camps.
  • 1943 – World War II: Battle of the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia begins.
  • 1945 – World War II: Battle of Iwo Jima – about 30,000 United States Marines land on the island of Iwo Jima.
  • 1948 – The Conference of Youth and Students of Southeast Asia Fighting for Freedom and Independence convenes in Calcutta.
  • 1949 – Ezra Pound is awarded the first Bollingen Prize in poetry by the Bollingen Foundation and Yale University.
  • 1953 – Censorship: Georgia approves the first literature censorship board in the United States.
  • 1959 – The United Kingdom grants Cyprus independence, which is then formally proclaimed on August 16, 1960.
  • 1960 – China successfully launches the T-7, its first sounding rocket.
  • 1963 – The publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique reawakens the Feminist Movement in the United States as women's organizations and consciousness raising groups spread.
  • 1972 – The Asama-Sansō hostage standoff begins in Japan.
  • 1976 – Executive Order 9066, which led to the relocation of Japanese Americans to internment camps, is rescinded by President Gerald R. Ford's Proclamation 4417
  • 1978 – Egyptian forces raid Larnaca International Airport in an attempt to intervene in a hijacking, without authorisation from the Republic of Cyprus authorities. The Cypriot National Guard and Police forces kill 15 Egyptian commandos and destroy the Egyptian C-130 transport plane in open combat.
  • 1985 – Artificial heart recipient William J. Schroeder becomes the first such patient to leave hospital.
  • 1985 – Iberia Airlines Boeing 727 crashes into Mount Oiz in Spain, killing 148.
  • 1986 – Akkaraipattu massacre: the Sri Lankan Army massacres 80 Tamil farm workers the eastern province of Sri Lanka.
  • 1986 – The Soviet Union launches its Mir spacecraft. Remaining in orbit for 15 years, it is occupied for 10 of those years.
  • 1999 – President Bill Clinton issues a posthumous pardon for U.S. Army Lt. Henry Ossian Flipper.
  • 2001 – The Oklahoma City bombing museum is dedicated at the Oklahoma City National Memorial.
  • 2002 – NASA's Mars Odyssey space probe begins to map the surface of Mars using its thermal emission imaging system.
  • 2006 – A methane explosion in coal mine near Nueva Rosita, Mexico, kills 65 miners.

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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)

    “When the world was half a thousand years younger all events had much sharper outlines than now. The distance between sadness and joy, between good and bad fortune, seemed to be much greater than for us; every experience had that degree of directness and absoluteness which joy and sadness still have in the mind of a child”
    —Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)

    “The system was breaking down. The one who had wandered alone past so many happenings and events began to feel, backing up along the primal vein that led to his center, the beginning of hiccup that would, if left to gather, explode the center to the extremities of life, the suburbs through which one makes one’s way to where the country is.”
    —John Ashbery (b. 1927)