- 1504 – Christopher Columbus uses his knowledge of a lunar eclipse that night to convince Jamaican natives to provide him with supplies.
- 1644 – Abel Tasman‘s second Pacific voyage began.
- 1704 – Queen Anne’s War: French forces and Native Americans stage a raid on Deerfield, Massachusetts Bay Colony, killing 56 villagers and taking more than 100 captive.
- 1712 – February 29 is followed by February 30 in Sweden, in a move to abolish the Swedish calendar for a return to the Julian calendar.
- 1720 – Ulrika Eleonora, Queen of Sweden abdicates in favour of her husband, who becomes King Frederick I on 24 March.
- 1752 – King Alaungpaya founds Konbaung Dynasty, the last dynasty of Burmese monarchy.
- 1768 – Polish nobles formed Bar Confederation.
- 1796 – The Jay Treaty between the United States and Great Britain comes into force, facilitating ten years of peaceful trade between the two nations.
- 1864 – American Civil War: Kilpatrick–Dahlgren Raid fails: Plans to free 15,000 Union soldiers being held near Richmond, Virginia are thwarted.
- 1892 – St. Petersburg, Florida is incorporated.
- 1912 – The Piedra Movediza (Moving Stone) of Tandil falls and breaks.
- 1916
- Tokelau is annexed by the United Kingdom.
- Child labor: In South Carolina, the minimum working age for factory, mill, and mine workers is raised from twelve to fourteen years old.
- 1920 – Czechoslovak National assembly adopted the Constitution.
- 1936 – February 26 Incident in Tokyo ends.
- 1940
- For her performance as “Mammy” in Gone with the Wind, Hattie McDaniel becomes the first African American to win an Academy Award.
- Finland initiates Winter War peace negotiations.
- In a ceremony held in Berkeley, California, because of the war, physicist Ernest Lawrence receives the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics from Sweden’s Consul General in San Francisco.
- 1944 – World War II: The Admiralty Islands are invaded in Operation Brewer led by American General Douglas MacArthur.
- 1960 – The 5.7 Mw Agadir earthquake shakes coastal Morocco with a maximum perceived intensity of X (Extreme), destroying Agadir, and leaving 12,000 dead and another 12,000 injured.
- 1972 – Vietnam War: Vietnamization: South Korea withdraws 11,000 of its 48,000 troops from Vietnam.
- 1980 – Gordie Howe of the then Hartford Whalers makes NHL history as he scores his 800th goal.
- 1988
- South African archbishop Desmond Tutu is arrested along with 100 other clergymen during a five-day anti-apartheid demonstration in Cape Town.
- Svend Robinson becomes the first member of the House of Commons of Canada to come out as gay.
- 1992 – First day of Bosnia and Herzegovina independence referendum.
- 1996
- Faucett Flight 251 crashes in the Andes; all 123 passengers and crew die.
- Siege of Sarajevo officially ends.
- 2000 – Second Chechen War: Eighty-four Russian paratroopers are killed in a rebel attack on a guard post near Ulus Kert.
- 2004 – Jean-Bertrand Aristide is removed as President of Haiti following a coup.
- 2008
- The United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence decides to withdraw Prince Harry from a tour of Afghanistan “immediately” after a leak led to his deployment being reported by foreign media.
- Misha Defonseca admits to fabricating her memoir, Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years, in which she claimed to have lived with a pack of wolves in the woods during the Holocaust.
- 2012 – Tokyo Skytree construction completed. It is, as of January 2020, the tallest tower in the world, 634 meters high, and second tallest artificial structure on Earth, next to Burj Khalifa.
-Source: wikipedia
