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Additional
February 20
English Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopedia
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February 20
Events
1339
– The
Milanese
army and the St. George's (San Giorgio) Mercenaries of
Lodrisio Visconti
clashed in the
Battle of Parabiago
.
1472
–
Orkney
and
Shetland
are
pawn
ed by Norway to Scotland in lieu of a
dowry
for
Margaret of Denmark
.
1547
–
Edward VI of England
is crowned
King of England
at
Westminster Abbey
.
1685
–
René-Robert Cavelier
establishes
Fort St. Louis
at
Matagorda Bay
thus forming the basis for France's claim to
Texas
.
1792
– The
Postal Service Act
, establishing the
United States Post Office Department
, is signed by United States President
George Washington
.
1798
–
Louis-Alexandre Berthier
removes
Pope Pius VI
from power.
1810
–
Andreas Hofer
,
Tirol
ean patriot and leader of rebellion against
Napoleon
's forces, is executed.
1813
–
Manuel Belgrano
defeats the
royalist
army of
Pío de Tristán
during the
Battle of Salta
.
1816
–
Rossini's
opera
The Barber of Seville
premieres at the
Teatro Argentina
in Rome.
1835
–
Concepción, Chile
is destroyed by an earthquake.
1846
– Polish insurgents lead an
uprising in Kraków
to incite a fight for national independence.
1864
–
American Civil War
:
Battle of Olustee
: The largest battle fought in
Florida
during the war.
1865
– End of the
Uruguayan War
, with a peace agreement between President
Tomás Villalba
and rebel leader
Venancio Flores
, setting the scene for the destructive
War of the Triple Alliance
.
1872
– In New York City the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
opens.
1873
– The
University of California
opens its first
medical school
in
San Francisco
.
1877
–
Tchaikovsky
's ballet
Swan Lake
receives its première performance at the
Bolshoi Theatre
in Moscow.
1901
– The legislature of
Hawaii Territory
convenes for the first time.
1909
– Publication of the
Futurist Manifesto
in the French journal
Le Figaro
.
1913
–
King O'Malley
drives in the first
survey
peg to mark commencement of work on the construction of
Canberra
.
1921
– The
Young Communist League of Czechoslovakia
is founded.
1931
– The
Congress of the United States
approves the construction of the
San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge
by the state of
California
.
1933
– The Congress of the United States proposes the
Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution
that will end
Prohibition in the United States
.
1933 –
Adolf Hitler
secretly meets
with German industrialists to arrange for financing of the
Nazi Party
's upcoming election campaign.
1935
–
Caroline Mikkelsen
becomes the first woman to set foot in Antarctica.
1942
– Lieutenant
Edward O'Hare
becomes America's first World War II
flying ace
.
1943
– American
movie studio
executives agree to allow the
Office of War Information
to censor movies.
1943 – The
Parícutin
volcano begins to form in Parícutin, Mexico.
1943 –
The Saturday Evening Post
publishes the first of
Norman Rockwell
's
Four Freedoms
in support of United States President
Franklin Roosevelt
's 1941
State of the Union address
theme of
Four Freedoms
.
1944
–
World War II
: The "
Big Week
" began with American bomber raids on German aircraft manufacturing centers.
1944 – World War II: The United States takes
Eniwetok
Island.
1952
–
Emmett Ashford
becomes the first
African-American
umpire
in organized
baseball
by being authorized to be a substitute umpire in the Southwestern International League.
1956
– The
United States Merchant Marine Academy
becomes a permanent Service Academy.
1959
– The
Avro Arrow
program to design and manufacture
supersonic
jet fighters
in Canada is cancelled by the
Diefenbaker
government amid much political debate.
1962
–
Mercury program
: While aboard
Friendship 7
,
John Glenn
becomes the first American to orbit the
earth
, making three orbits in four hours, 55 minutes.
1965
–
Ranger 8
crashes into the Moon after a successful mission of photographing possible landing sites for the
Apollo program
astronauts
.
1971
– The United States
Emergency Broadcast System
is accidentally activated in an erroneous national alert.
1978
– The last
Order of Victory
is bestowed upon
Leonid Brezhnev
.
1986
– The
Soviet Union
launches its
Mir
spacecraft. Remaining in orbit for 15 years, it is occupied for ten of those years.
1987
–
Unabomber
: In
Salt Lake City
, a bomb explodes in a computer store.
1988
– The
Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast
votes to secede from
Azerbaijan
and join
Armenia
, triggering the
Nagorno-Karabakh War
.
1989
– An
IRA
bomb destroys a section of a British Army barracks in
Ternhill
, England.
1991
– A gigantic statue of
Albania
's long-time leader,
Enver Hoxha
, is brought down in the Albanian capital
Tirana
, by mobs of angry protesters.
1998
– American figure skater
Tara Lipinski
becomes the youngest gold-medalist at the
1998 Winter Olympics
in
Nagano
, Japan.
2003
– During a
Great White
concert in
West Warwick, Rhode Island
, a
pyrotechnics
display
sets the Station nightclub ablaze
, killing 100 and injuring over 200 others.
2005
– Spain becomes the first country to vote in a
referendum on ratification
of the
proposed Constitution
of the
European Union
, passing it by a substantial margin, but on a low turnout.
2006
– In South Korea the
United Liberal Democrats
,
the three top political parties
was merged into
Grand National Party
.
2009
–
Two Tamil Tigers aircraft packed with C4 explosives
en route to the national airforce headquarters are shot down by the Sri Lankan military before reaching their target, in a
kamikaze
style attack.
2010
– In Madeira Island, Portugal, heavy rain causes
floods and mudslides
, resulting in at least 43 deaths, in the worst disaster in the
history of the archipelago
.
2013
– The smallest
extrasolar planet
,
Kepler-37b
is discovered.
2014
– Dozens of
Euromaidan
anti-government protesters died
in Ukraine's capital
Kiev
, many reportedly killed by snipers.
2015
– Two
trains collide
in the Swiss town of
Rafz
resulting in as many as 49 people injured and
Swiss Federal Railways
cancelling some services.
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