1567 – Lord Darnley, second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, is found strangled following an explosion at the Kirk o’ Field house in Edinburgh, Scotland, a suspected assassination.
1798 – Louis Alexandre Berthier invades Rome, proclaims a Roman Republic on February 15 and then on February 20 takes Pope Pius VI prisoner.
1840 – Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom marries Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
1861 – Jefferson Davis is notified by telegraph that he has been chosen as provisional President of the Confederate States of America.
1862 – American Civil War: A Union naval flotilla destroys the bulk of the Confederate Mosquito Fleet in the Battle of Elizabeth City on the Pasquotank River in North Carolina.
1870 – The YWCA is founded in New York City.
1933 – In round 13 of a boxing match at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, Primo Carnera knocks out Ernie Schaaf. Schaff dies 4 days later.
1940 – The Soviet Union begins mass deportations of Polish citizens from occupied eastern Poland to Siberia.
1954 – President Dwight Eisenhower warns against United States intervention in Vietnam.
1955 – Jim Cramer, American financier and author, co-founded TheStreet.com was born.
1957 – Laura Ingalls Wilder, American author (b. 1867) died.
1964 – Glenn Beck, American journalist, producer, and author was born.
1967 – The 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified.
* The Twenty-fifth Amendment (Amendment XXV) to the United States Constitution deals with succession to the Presidency and establishes procedures both for filling a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, as well as responding to Presidential disabilities. It supersedes the ambiguous wording of Article II, Section 1, Clause 6 of the Constitution, which does not expressly state whether the Vice President becomes the President, as opposed to an Acting President, if the President dies, resigns, is removed from office or is otherwise unable to discharge the powers of the presidency. The Twenty-fifth Amendment was adopted on February 23, 1967
1964 – Bob Dylan releases “The Times They Are a-Changin” his 3rd album, by Columbia Records. The album is seen as a protest album featuring songs about issues such as racism, poverty, and social change.
1996 – The IBM supercomputer Deep Blue defeats Garry Kasparov in chess for the first time.
1996 – The IRA plants a bomb that explodes in the Docklands area of London, One man is found dead and another person has been reported missing. The bombing marks the end of a 17-month IRA ceasefire during which Irish, British and American leaders worked for a political solution to the troubles in Northern Ireland.
1998 – Voters in Maine repeal a gay rights law passed in 1997 becoming the first U.S. state to abandon such a law.
2003 – France and Belgium break the NATO procedure of silent approval concerning the timing of protective measures for Turkey in case of a possible war with Iraq.
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