Historical Events on February 26

Events 1 - 200 of 208

• 747 BC Epoch (origin) of Ptolemy's Nabonassar Era
• 364 Valentinian I is proclaimed Roman Emperor
• 1266 Battle of Benevento fought in Southern Italy between Manfred of Sicily and army of Charles of Anjou

• 1401 English Catholic priest William Sawtrey convicted of heresy and later becomes 1st Lollard martyr to be publicly burnt at the stake
• 1534 Pope Paul II affirms George van Egmond as bishop of Utrecht
• 1548 Ottoman fleet under Piri Reis retakes the port of Aden (modern Yemen) from the Portuguese
• 1590 Mauritius of Nassaus sails to Breda

• 1606 First known European landing in Australia by Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon at the Pennefather River, Cape York, northern Australia

• 1732 1st mass celebrated in 1st American Catholic church, St Joseph's, Philadelphia
• 1773 State of Pennsylvania approves construction of Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia; it will become the first experiment with the practice of solitary confinement in the United States
• 1794 Christiansborg Castle, Copenhagen burns down
• 1797 Bank of England issues first £1 note

• 1834 1st US interstate crime compact (NY-NJ) ratified
• 1839 1st Grand National steeplechase, Aintree Racecourse, Liverpool: Jem Mason wins aboard 5/1 favourite Lottery
• 1848 2nd French Republic proclaimed
• 1852 British troopship Birkenhead sinks off South Africa, 458 die, 193 survive

• 1862 Battle of Woodburn, Kentucky

• 1866 New York Legislature forms NYC Metropolitan Board of Health
• 1869 US 15th Amendment guaranteeing right to vote sent to states to ratify
• 1870 Beach Pneumatic Transit - 1st attempt to demonstrate a subway in New York opens (pneumatic powered)
• 1881 -27] Natal: British troops under Major General Colley occupy Majuba Hill
• 1881 P&O's SS Ceylon begins world's 1st round-the-world pleasure cruise from Liverpool

• 1885 Berlin Conference gives Congo to Belgium and Nigeria to Great Britain

• 1891 1st buffalo purchased for Golden Gate Park

• 1893 2 Clydesdale horses set record by pulling 48 tons on a sledge, in Michigan
• 1893 Norwegian Einar Halvorsen skates world record 500m (48 sec)
• 1895 Michael Owens of Toledo, Ohio, patents a glass-blowing machine to make glass bottles

• 1907 Royal Oil & Shell merge to form British Petroleum (BP)
• 1907 US Congress raise their own salaries to $7,500
• 1909 Austria and Turkey conclude an agreement in which Turkey recognizes Austria's 1908 annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and is to receive compensation

• 1912 Coal miners strike in Britain (settle on 1st March)
• 1914 HMHS Britannic, sister to the Titanic, is launched at Harland & Wolff, Belfast
• 1914 New York Museum of Science & Industry incorporated
• 1915 Malancourt, Argonnen 1st (German) flame-thrower
• 1916 Germans sink French transport ship Provence II, killing 930

• 1916 Russian troops conquer Kermansjah, Persia
• 1917 1st Annual fair at Utrecht Harbor (Netherlands)
• 1917 1st jazz records recorded - "Dixie Jazz Band One Step" and "Livery Stable Blues" by Original Dixieland Jass Band for the Victor Talking Machine Company in NYC

• 1918 Stands at Hong Kong Jockey Club collapse & burn, killing 604
• 1919 Acadia National Park forms (as Lafayette N P), Maine
• 1919 US Congress establishes Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona
• 1920 German silent horror film classic "The Cabinet of Dr Caligari" starring Werner Krauss is released
• 1921 The USSR signs treaties respecting the integrity of Persia and of Afghanistan
• 1923 Italian nationalist & fascists merge (blue-shirts & black-shirts)

• 1925 Jihad against Turkish government
• 1926 Dark Street in the Bronx renamed Lustre Street

• 1930 1st red & green traffic lights installed in Manhattan, NYC
• 1930 West Indies make 1st Test Cricket win, by 289 runs over England

• 1933 Golden Gate Bridge groundbreaking ceremony held at Crissy Field

• 1936 Military coup in Japan
• 1937 Christopher Isherwood and W. H. Auden's "Ascent of F6" premieres in London
• 1938 1st passenger ship equipped with radar
• 1938 Rie Van Veen swims world record 200m free style (2:24.6)
• 1940 US Air Defense Command forms at Mitchel Field, LI, NY
• 1941 2 fighters unable to continued slugfest, referee declares double KO
• 1941 Cowboys' Amateur Association of America organized (California)
• 1941 Utrecht & Zaandam strike against raid on Jews
• 1941 Vichy-France makes religious education in school mandatory
• 1942 German battle cruiser Gneisenau deactivated by bomb
• 1942 Radio Orange calls for March 1 day of prayer in Dutch Indies

• 1943 German assault moves to Beja, North Tunisia
• 1944 1st female US navy captain, Sue Dauser of nurse corps, appointed
• 1945 Very heavy bombing on Berlin by 8th US Air Force
• 1946 2 killed & 10 wounded in race riot in Columbia, Tennessee
• 1949 USAF plane began 1st nonstop around-the-world flight

• 1951 Bread rationing in Czechoslovakia begins
• 1952 Netherlands-Indonesian Unity conference

• 1954 1st typesetting machine (photo engraving) used, Quincy, Massachusetts
• 1954 Michigan Representative Ruth Thompson (R) introduces legislation to ban mailing "obscene, lewd, lascivious or filthy" phonograph (rock & roll) records
• 1955 1st aviator to bail out at supersonic speed-GF Smith

• 1960 David Jenkins wins the men's figure skating gold medal at the Squaw Valley Winter Olympics; US takes the singles double after Carol Heiss wins women's event

• 1960 USA's David Jenkins wins Olympic Gold for men's figure skating

• 1960 Verne Gagne beats Doctor X in Omaha, to become NWA wrestling champ
• 1961 3rd Daytona 500: Marvin Panch wins in a 1960 Pontiac owned by Smokey Yunick when race leader Fireball Roberts' car suffered a blown engine with 13 laps remaining

• 1962 US Supreme court disallows race separation on public transportation
• 1965 Dutch government of Marijnen falls
• 1965 West Germany ceases military aid to Tanzania
• 1966 KBIM TV channel 10 in Roswell, NM (CBS) begins broadcasting
• 1967 USSR performs nuclear test at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in northeast Kazakhstan
• 1967 Verne Gagne beats Mad Dog Vachon in St Paul, to become NWA champion
• 1968 Clandestine Radio Voice of Iraqi People (Communist) final transmission
• 1970 The Beatles release "Hey Jude" compilation album in US (originally to be titled "Beatles Again")

• 1971 Two Royal Ulster Constabulary officers shot and killed by the Irish Republican Army while on mobile patrol in the Ardoyne area of Belfast, North Ireland
• 1972 Ireland-Wales Five Nations Rugby match scheduled for Lansdowne Road, Dublin is cancelled because of escalating political situation; Championship not completed for first time since World War II
• 1972 Slag heap dam collapses above Buffalo Creek, West Virginia, kills 125

• 1974 Gold hits record $188 an ounce in Paris
• 1975 1st televised kidney transplant (Today Show)
• 1976 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
• 1977 1st flight of Space Shuttle (atop a Boeing 747)

• 1979 CBS' premiere of NYC sitcom "Flatbush", which received many derision phone calls about it from Brooklynites to CBS
• 1979 Last total eclipse of Sun in 20th century for continental US
• 1980 Egypt & Israel exchange ambassadors for 1st time
• 1980 Military coup under Desi Bouterse in Suriname overthrows the Henck Arron government

• 1981 3 Anglican missionaries detained in Iran since Aug 1980 are released
• 1981 84 penalties (406 mins) assessed for a brawl between NHL Minn & Bost
• 1981 French Train Grande Vitesse averages 380 kph on trial run

• 1983 Shortwave pirate Radio USA (Wellsville, NY) begins transmission
• 1984 Last US marines in multinational peacekeeping force in Lebanon left Beirut
• 1984 Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Penn Warren is named the 1st US poet laureate
• 1984 Reverend Jesse Jackson acknowledges that he called NYC "Hymietown"

• 1986 Evert van Benthem wins 14th Frisian 11-Cities skating race (6:55:16)
• 1986 People Power Revolution in the Philippines.
• 1987 1st release of Beatles on compact disc: "Please Please Me"; "With The Beatles"; "A Hard Day's Night"; and "Beatles For Sale" [1]
• 1987 NASA launches GEOS-H

• 1987 Tower Commission probes Iran-Contra affair
• 1987 USSR resumes nuclear test at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in northeast Kazakhstan
• 1987 Wash blocks 20 Indiana shots tying NBA regulation game record
• 1988 Christa Rotherburger (GDR) skates ladies world record 1000m (1:17.65)

• 1989 Lowest barometric pressure in Netherlands (95.5 hPa)

• 1990 The Sandinistas are defeated in Nicaraguan elections.
• 1990 USSR agrees to withdraw all 73,500 troops from Czech by July, 1991
• 1991 Asanka Gurusinha scores twin Test Cricket tons v NZ (119 & 102)

• 1991 Gulf War: Battle of 73 Easting - Coalition forces win decisive victory over Iraq in tank battle involving 500-700 combined vehicles

• 1991 Gulf War: Kuwaiti resistance leaders declare they have control of their capital
• 1991 NY-NJ Knights (WLAF) players 1st come together
• 1991 Signs of Iran crude now an option for US refiners, but no imports from Iran likely in near future
• 1992 200+ Azerbaijanis, mostly civilians are killed by local Armenian forces and the 366th CIS regiment in the Khojaly massacre in Nagorno-Karabakh
• 1992 Irish Supreme Court rules 14-year-old rape victim may get an abortion
• 1993 "World Trade Center bombing of 1993": truck bomb explodes in parking garage of NYC World Trade Center at 12:18pm, killing 6 and injuring over 1,000 in what was the deadliest act of terrorism perpetrated on US soil at the time

• 1994 St Louis Blues beat Ottawa Senators 11-1
• 1995 London finance house Barings collapses after huge losses in Singapore by rogue trader Nick Leeson

• 1998 Steven M Gluckstern completes sale of NY Islanders
• 1998 Total solar eclipse in Venezuela-Pacific Ocean (4m09)
• 2001 The Taliban destroy two giant Buddha statues in Bamyan, Afghanistan.
• 2004 Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski is killed in a plane crash near Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
• 2004 The United States lifts a ban on travel to Libya, ending travel restrictions to the nation that had lasted for 23 years.

• 2006 XX Winter Olympic Games close in Turin, Italy
• 2008 Global Seed Vault officially opens in Svalbard, Norway, to help preserve diversity and loss from other genebanks
• 2010 Opera "Madame White Snake", by Boston Opera composed by Zhou Long, premieres at the Cutler Majestic Theatre, Boston (Pulitzer Prize for Music 2011)
• 2012 17-year old black teenager Trayvon Martin shot and killed by George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida, highlighted issue of racial profiling in the US

• 2012 Bus plunges off a cliff in Shanxi, China causing 15 deaths
• 2012 Train derailment kills 3 and injures 45 in Burlington, Ontario
• 2013 A flexible battery capable of being charged wirelessly and folded and stretched is developed
• 2013 A hot air balloon crashes in Luxor, Egypt, killing 19 tourists
• 2013 A rocket launched from the Gaza strip into Israel ends the ceasefire since November 2012

• 2016 Iranian elections: reformers and moderates win control of parliament
• 2017 59th Daytona 500: Kurt Busch wins after Kyle Larson runs out of gas on last lap; Jeffrey Earnhardt makes NASCAR history, 1st ever 4th generation driver to compete in Daytona 500

• 2017 Margo Hayes becomes the first woman to climb a 9a+ (5.15a) graded route by ascending La Rambla in Siurana, Spain
• 2018 7.5 magnitude earthquake in central Papa New Guinea kills at least 100
• 2018 Cold weather nicknamed "the Beast from the East" hits Europe, killing 7 and covering Pompeii in snow
• 2018 Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway, receives its 1 millionth seed on its 10 year anniversary
• 2019 Catholic Cardinal George Pell convicted of child sexual abuse in Melbourne, Australia. As treasurer at the Vatican, the highest-ranking church official to be convicted; overturned in 2020
• 2019 City of Venice in Italy introduces a day visitors tax
• 2019 India launches air strikes on alleged terrorist camps within Pakistan
• 2019 More than 4,500 complaints of child sexual abuse against migrant children received by US Health Department, Department of Justice received 1,300 more
• 2019 UK reaches its highest-ever winter temperature with 21.2°C (70.2F) in Kew Gardens, London
• 2020 Saudi Arabia bars overseas pilgrims from accessing religious sites of Mecca and Medina because of COVID-19 fears for 1st time in living memory
• 2021 Amnesty International Report says that Eritrean troops might have committed crimes against humanity, killing hundreds of civilians, in attack on Ethiopian city of Aksum 28-29 November [1]
• 2021 Toymaker Hasbro announces that the Mr Potato Head brand name will be changed to be gender-neutral [1]

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