- 1010 – Ferdowsi completes his epic poem Shahnameh.[1]
- 1126 – Following the death of his mother Urraca, Alfonso VII is proclaimed king of Castile and León.[2]
- 1262 – Battle of Hausbergen between bourgeois militias and the army of the bishop of Strasbourg.
- 1576 – Spanish explorer Diego García de Palacio first sights the ruins of the ancient Mayan city of Copán.
- 1618 – Johannes Kepler discovers the third law of planetary motion.
- 1655 – John Casor becomes the first legally-recognized slave in England’s North American colonies where a crime was not committed.
- 1658 – Treaty of Roskilde: After a devastating defeat in the Northern Wars (1655–1661), Frederick III, the King of Denmark–Norway is forced to give up nearly half his territory to Sweden to save the rest.
- 1702 – Queen Anne, the younger sister of Mary II, becomes Queen regnant of England, Scotland, and Ireland.[3]
- 1722 – The Safavid Empire of Iran is defeated by an army from Afghanistan at the Battle of Gulnabad, pushing Iran into anarchy.
- 1736 – Nader Shah, founder of the Afsharid dynasty, is crowned Shah of Iran.
- 1775 – An anonymous writer, thought by some to be Thomas Paine, publishes “African Slavery in America”, the first article in the American colonies calling for the emancipation of slaves and the abolition of slavery.
- 1777 – Regiments from Ansbach and Bayreuth, sent to support Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War, mutiny in the town of Ochsenfurt.
- 1782 – Gnadenhutten massacre: Ninety-six Native Americans in Gnadenhutten, Ohio, who had converted to Christianity, are killed by Pennsylvania militiamen in retaliation for raids carried out by other Indian tribes.
- 1801 – War of the Second Coalition: At the Battle of Abukir, a British force under Sir Ralph Abercromby lands in Egypt with the aim of ending the French campaign in Egypt and Syria.
- 1817 – The New York Stock Exchange is founded.
- 1844 – King Oscar I ascends to the thrones of Sweden and Norway.
- 1862 – American Civil War: The Naval Battle of Hampton Roads begins.
- 1868 – Sakai incident: Japanese samurai kill 11 French sailors in the port of Sakai, Osaka.
- 1910 – French aviator Raymonde de Laroche becomes the first woman to receive a pilot’s license.
- 1914 – First flights (for the Royal Thai Air Force) at Don Mueang International Airport in Bangkok.
- 1916 – World War I: A British force unsuccessfully attempts to relieve the siege of Kut (present-day Iraq) in the Battle of Dujaila.
- 1917 – International Women’s Day protests in St. Petersburg mark the beginning of the February Revolution (February 23rd in the Julian calendar).
- 1917 – The United States Senate votes to limit filibusters by adopting the cloture rule.
- 1920 – The Arab Kingdom of Syria, the first modern Arab state to come into existence, is established.
- 1921 – Spanish Prime Minister Eduardo Dato Iradier is assassinated while exiting the parliament building in Madrid.
- 1924 – A mine disaster kills 172 coal miners near Castle Gate, Utah.
- 1936 – Daytona Beach and Road Course holds its first oval stock car race.
- 1937 – Spanish Civil War: The Battle of Guadalajara begins.
- 1942 – World War II: Imperial Japanese Army forces gave ultimatum to Dutch East Indies Governor General Jonkheer Tjarda van Starkenborgh Stachouwer and KNIL Commander in Chief Lieutenant General Hein Ter Poorten, to unconditionally surrender.
- 1942 – World War II: Imperial Japanese Army forces captured Rangoon, Burma from British.
- 1947 – Thirteen thousand troops of the Republic of China Army arrive in Taiwan after the February 28 Incident and launch crackdowns which kill thousands of people, including many elites. This turns into a major root of the Taiwan independence movement.
- 1949 – President of France Vincent Auriol and ex-emperor of Annam Bảo Đại sign the Élysée Accords, giving Vietnam greater independence from France and creating the State of Vietnam to oppose Viet Minh-led Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
- 1957 – Egypt re-opens the Suez Canal after the Suez Crisis.
- 1957 – The 1957 Georgia Memorial to Congress, which petitions the U.S. Congress to declare the ratification of the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution null and void, is adopted by the U.S. state of Georgia.
- 1963 – The Ba’ath Party comes to power in Syria in a coup d’état by a clique of quasi-leftist Syrian Army officers calling themselves the National Council of the Revolutionary Command.
- 1965 – Thirty-five hundred United States Marines are the first American land combat forces committed during the Vietnam War.
- 1966 – Nelson’s Pillar in Dublin, Ireland, destroyed by a bomb.
- 1971 – The Fight of the Century between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali commences. Frazier wins in 15 rounds via unanimous decision.
- 1974 – Charles de Gaulle Airport opens in Paris, France.
- 1979 – Philips demonstrates the compact disc publicly for the first time.
- 1983 – Cold War: While addressing a convention of Evangelicals, U.S. President Ronald Reagan labels the Soviet Union an “evil empire“.
- 1985 – A supposed failed assassination attempt on Islamic cleric Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah in Beirut, Lebanon kills at least 45 and injures 175 others.
- 2004 – A new constitution is signed by Iraq‘s Governing Council.
- 2014 – Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, carrying a total of 239 people, disappears en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
- 2017 – The Azure Window, a natural arch on the Maltese island of Gozo, collapses in stormy weather.
-Source: wikipedia
