Today in History
By Editor
| YEAR | DAY | EVENT |
| 747BCE | Feb 26 | Origin of Era of Nabonassar. |
| 364CE | Feb 26 | On the death of Jovian, a conference at Nicaea chose Valentinan, an army officer who was born in the central European region of Pannania, to succeed him in Asia Minor. |
| 1076 | Feb 26 | Godfried III with the Hump, duke of Netherlands-Lutheran, was murdered. |
| 1154 | Feb 26 | Rogier II Guiscard (60), King of Sicily (1101-54), died. William the bad succeeded his father, Roger the II. |
| 1266 | Feb 26 | Charles d’Anjou, king of the two Sicilies, defeated Manfred (33), in the Battle of Benevento. Manfred, the bastard son of Emperor Frederik II, king of Sicily, was killed. |
| 1324 | Feb 26 | Dino Compagni, Italian silk seller, poet, chronicler, died. |
| 1361 | Feb 26 | Wenceslas of Bohemia, Holy Roman Catholic German emperor (1378-1400), was born. |
| 1505 | Feb 26 | In Brest Polish Chancellor J. Laski invited the Lithuanian government to reconfirm and expand the 1501 Union of Melnik, but the offer was rejected. |
| 1534 | Feb 26 | Pope Paul III was affirmed George van Egmond as bishop of Utrecht. |
| 1538 | Feb 26 | Worp van Thabor, Frisian abbot of Thabor (Chronicon Frisiae), died. |
| 1564 | Feb 26 | Christopher Marlowe (d.1593), English, poet, dramatist, was baptized. His work included “Doctor Faustus,” “Tamburlaine,” “The Jew of Malta,” and other plays. He was murdered at 29 in a Deptford tavern and was suspected of being a spy to the Continent on behalf of the Crown. In 1993 Anthony Burgess had a novel published posthumously about Marlowe titled “A Dead Man in Deptford.” |
| 1577 | Feb 26 | Erik XIV Wasa (43), King of Sweden (1560-69), died. |
| 1616 | Feb 26 | Spanish Inquisition delivered an injunction to Galileo. |
| 1726 | Feb 26 | Maximilian II, M. Emanuel, elector of Bavaria, governor of Netherlands, died. |
| 1732 | Feb 26 | The 1st mass celebrated in American Catholic church was at St Joseph’s Church, Philadelphia. |
| 1773 | Feb 26 | Construction was authorized for Walnut St. jail in Philadelphia, (1st solitary). |
| 1790 | Feb 26 | As a result of the Revolution, France was divided into 83 departments. |
| 1797 | Feb 26 | Bank of England issued 1st £1-note. |
| 1802 | Feb 26 | Victor Hugo (d.1885), French novelist and poet, was born in Besancon. In 1998 Graham Robb published the biography: “Victor Hugo.” “Initiative is doing the right thing without being told.” |
| 1804 | Feb 26 | Vice-Admiral William Bligh ended the siege of Fort Amsterdam, Willemstad. |
| 1805 | Feb 26 | Alexander Stulginskis, the 2nd president of Lithuania, was born at Kutaliai in the Silale region. He died Sep 22, 1969 in Kaunas. |
| 1813 | Feb 26 | Robert R. Livingston (66), US diplomat (Declaration of Independence), died in Clermont, NY. He had helped Robert Fulton develop the “North River Steam Boat” (1807). |
| 1815 | Feb 26 | Napoleon and 1,200 of his men escaped from the Island of Elba to start the 100-day re-conquest of France. |
| 1829 | Feb 26 | Levi Strauss, creator of blue jeans, was born. |
| 1832 | Feb 26 | The Polish constitution was abolished by Czar Nicholas I. |
| 1834 | Feb 26 | New York and New Jersey ratified the 1st US interstate crime compact. |
| 1842 | Feb 26 | Camille Flammarion, Mars researcher and popularizer of astronomy, was born. |
| 1845 | Feb 26 | Alexander III, Russian tsar (1881-94), was born in St Petersburg. [see Mar 10] |
| 1846 | Feb 26 | William Frederick Cody, aka “Buffalo Bill,” was born in Scott County, Iowa. He was a “Wild West” frontiersman-turned-showman. Three weeks after the disaster at the Little Bighorn, Buffalo Bill claimed he had taken ‘the first scalp for Custer!’ |
| 1848 | Feb 26 | Karl Marx and Frederich Engels published “The Communist Manifesto”. |
| 1852 | Feb 26 | The British frigate Birkenhead sank off South Africa and 458 died. |
| 1858 | Feb 26 | In India pioneering tea-planter Maniram Dewan was hanged by British colonial rulers for taking part in the 1857 rebellion. The Sepoy Mutiny leader had introduced commercial tea production to the Assam region. |
| 1860 | Feb 26 | White settlers massacred a band of Wiyot Indians at the village of Tuluwat on Indian Island near Eureka, Ca. At least 60 women, children and elders were killed. Bret Harte, newspaper reporter in Arcata, fed the news to newspapers in San Francisco. |
| 1861 | Feb 26 | Ferdinand I, 1st tsar of modern Bulgaria (1908-18), was born in Vienna. |
| 1862 | Feb 26 | Battle of Woodburn, KY. |
| 1863 | Feb 26 | Pres. Lincoln signed a National Currency Act. |
| 1866 | Feb 26 | New York Legislature established the NYC Metropolitan Board of Health. |
| 1869 | Feb 26 | Nadezjda K. Krupskaja, Russian revolutionary, wife of Lenin, was born. |
| 1870 | Feb 26 | New York City’s first pneumatic-powered subway line was opened to the public. The tunnel was only a block long, and the line had only one car. |
| 1871 | Feb 26 | France and Prussia signed a preliminary peace treaty at Versailles. |
| 1876 | Feb 26 | Agustin P. Justo y Rolon, President of Argentina (1931-38), was born. |
| 1877 | Feb 26 | Rudolph Dirks, cartoonist, was born. He became the creator of the “Katzenjammer Kids.” |
| 1877 | Feb 26 | Carel S. Adama van Scheltema, Dutch poet, writer (socialism), was born. |
| 1879 | Feb 26 | Mabel Dodge Luhan, American biographer, was born. |
| 1881 | Feb 26 | Natal British troops under General-Major Colley occupied Majuba Hill. |
| 1884 | Feb 26 | Leopold II in Congo signed a British and Portuguese treaty. |
| 1885 | Feb 26 | The Congress of Berlin gave Congo to Belgium and Nigeria to England. |
| 1887 | Feb 26 | Sir Benegal Narsing Rau, president of UN Security Council (1950), was born in India. |
| 1891 | Feb 26 | Henrik Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler” premiered in Oslo. |
| 1893 | Feb 26 | Ivor Armstrong Richards (I.A. Richards), writer, critic and teacher (Meaning of Meaning), was born. |
| 1895 | Feb 26 | Michael Owens of Toledo, OH., patented a glass-blowing machine. |
| 1901 | Feb 26 | Boxer Rebellion leaders Chi-Hsin (Chi-hsui) and Hsu-Cheng-Yu were publicly executed in Peking. |
| 1903 | Feb 26 | Richard Gatling (b.1818), American inventor, died. The Gatling gun, an early type of machine gun, was named after him. In 2008 Julia Keller authored “Mr. Gatling’s Terrible Marvel.” |
| 1907 | Feb 26 | Members of US Congress raised their own salaries to $7500. |
| 1909 | Feb 26 | Diplomats gathered in Shanghai agreed to set up the International Opium Commission. This was the first international effort to ban trade in a narcotic drug. |
| 1912 | Feb 26 | Coal miners struck in England. They settled on 03/01. |
| 1914 | Feb 26 | New York Museum of Science and Industry was incorporated. |
| 1915 | Feb 26 | The 1st flame-thrower was used by the Germans at Malancourt, Argonnen. |
| Â 1916 | Feb 26 | Jackie Gleason, comedian (Ralph Kramden in the Honeymooners), was born in Brooklyn, NY. |
| 1917 | Feb 26 | Utrecht Harbor, Netherlands, held its 1st Annual fair. |
| 1918 | Feb 26 | Theodore [Hamilton] Sturgeon, US sci-fi author (Starshine, A Way Home, Hugo, Caviar), was born. |
| 1919 | Feb 26 | Congress established Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. |
| 1920 | Feb 26 | Tony Randall [Leonard Rosenberg], actor (Felix-Odd Couple, Love Sidney), was born in Tulsa, OK. |
| 1921 | Feb 26 | Betty Hutton, actress (Greatest Show on Earth), was born in Battle Creek, MI. |
| 1923 | Feb 26 | Italian nationalist blue-shirts merged with the fascist black-shirts. |
| 1924 | Feb 26 | Noboru Takeshita, Japanese PM (1987-89), was born. |
| 1925 | Feb 26 | Jihad-Saint war against Turkish government. |
| 1926 | Feb 26 | Dark Street in the Bronx was renamed Lustre Street. |
| 1928 | Feb 26 | Antonie “Fats” Domino was born in New Orleans. He was an American Rock n’ Roll singer famous by his songs “Blueberry Hill” and “Ain’t that a Shame.” |
| 1929 | Feb 26 | President Coolidge signed a measure establishing Grand Teton National Park In Wyoming. |
| 1930 | Feb 26 | “The Green Pastures” opened at Mansfield Theater. |
| 1931 | Feb 26 | Otto Wallach (83), German chemist (Nobel 1910), died. |
| 1932 | Feb 26 | Johnny Cash (d.2003) country singer (I Walk The Line, Folsom Prison Blues, Boy Named Sue), was born in Kingsland, Arkansas. |
| 1933 | Feb 26 | Sir James Goldsmith (d.7/18/97), later financier and corporate raider (Referendum Party), was born in Paris to a Catholic French mother and a German Jewish father who later moved to Britain and served as a Conservative member of parliament. |
| 1935 | Feb 26 | New York Yankees released Babe Ruth. He signed with Boston Braves. |
| 1936 | Feb 26 | Japanese military troops marched into Tokyo to conduct a coup and assassinate political leaders. |
| 1937 | Feb 26 | C. Isherwood and W.H. Auden’s “Ascent of F6” premiered in London. |
| 1938 | Feb 26 | US female Figure Skating championship was won by Joan Tozzer. US male Figure Skating championship was won by Robin Lee. |
| 1940 | Feb 26 | The U.S. Air Defense Command was established at Mitchell Field, Long Island, NY. |
| 1941 | Feb 26 | Cowboys’ Amateur Association of America was organized in California. |
| 1942 | Feb 26 | Don Mason, WWII Navy flier, sent the message: “Sighted sub sank same.” |
| 1943 | Feb 26 | U.S. Flying Fortresses and Liberators pounded the Reich docks and U-boat lairs at Wilhelmshaven. |
| 1944 | Feb 26 | Sue Dauser was appointed the 1st female US navy captain of nurse corps. |
| 1945 | Feb 26 | Mitch Ryder, rocker (Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels-Devil With the Blue Dress), was born. |
| 1946 | Feb 26 | A race riot in Columbia, TN, killed 2 people and 10 wounded. |
| 1947 | Feb 26 | President Truman named Lewis W. Douglas as ambassador to Britain. |
| 1949 | Feb 26 | A USAF plane began a 1st nonstop around-the-world flight |
| 1950 | Feb 26 | Leonard Bernstein’s “Age of Anxiety” premiered in NYC. |
| 1951 | Feb 26 | Bread rationing began in Czechoslovakia. |
| 1953 | Feb 26 | Allen W. Dulles was promoted from deputy to 5th director of CIA. |
| 1954 | Feb 26 | Michigan Representative Ruth Thompson (R) introduced legislation to ban mailing “obscene, lewd, lascivious or filthy” phonograph (rock and roll records. |
| 1954 | Feb 26 | 1st typesetting machine (photo engraving) used at Quincy, MA. |
| 1955 | Feb 26 | “Peter Pan” closed at Winter Garden Theater in NYC after 149 performances. |
| 1956 | Feb 26 | Writers Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes met at a party in Cambridge. |
| 1960 | Feb 26 | USA’s David Jenkins won the Olympics Gold for men’s figure skating. |
| 1961 | Feb 26 | Mohammed V ibn Yusuf (51), sultan, King of Morocco, died. |
| 1962 | Feb 26 | After becoming the first American to orbit the Earth, John Glenn told a joint meeting of Congress, “Exploration and the pursuit of knowledge have always paid dividends in the long run.” |
| 1965 | Feb 26 | Spoony Singh Sundher (1922-2006), Indian-born entrepreneur, opened his Hollywood Wax Museum on Hollywood Blvd. close to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. He charged $1.50 admittance. |
| 1966 | Feb 26 | Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (b.1883), Indian lawyer and pro-independence activist, died after renouncing medicine food and water on Feb 1 in a fast until death. |
| 1967 | Feb 26 | USSR performed an underground nuclear test at Eastern Kazakhstan, Semipalitinsk, USSR. |
| 1968 | Feb 26 | Lionel Rose (1949-2011) outpointed Fighting Harada in Tokyo and became a national sports hero and an icon for Australia’s indigenous community. Hundreds of thousands lined Melbourne’s streets to welcome him home after his title triumph. He lost the world bantamweight title to Mexican Ruben Olivares in a fifth-round knockout in August 1969. |
| 1969 | Feb 26 | Karl Jaspers (b.1883), German psychiatrist, philosopher, died. |
| 1970 | Feb 26 | Beatles released “Beatles Again,” aka the “Hey Jude” album. |
| 1972 | Feb 26 | Soviets recovered Luna 20 with a cargo of moon rocks. |
| 1973 | Feb 26 | A publisher and 10 reporters were subpoenaed to testify on Watergate. |
| 1975 | Feb 26 | The 1st televised kidney transplant was shown on the Today Show. |
| 1976 | Feb 26 | US performed a nuclear test at Nevada Test Site. |
| 1978 | Feb 26 | Ira Levin’s “Deathtrap” premiered in NYC at the Music Box Theater. |
| 1979 | Feb 26 | A total solar eclipse cast a moving shadow 175 miles wide from Oregon to North Dakota before moving into Canada. This was the last total solar eclipse of the 20th century for the continental US. |
| 1980 | Feb 26 | Republican Ronald Reagan won the New Hampshire primary over George H.W. Bush and Howard Baker 49.8 to 22.8 to 12.9%. Democrat Jimmie Carter won over Ted Kennedy, Jerry Brown and Birch Bayh 47.2 to 37.4 to 9.6%. |
| 1981 | Feb 26 | Three British Anglican missionaries, detained in Iran since August 1980, were released. |
| 1982 | Feb 26 | Gabor Szabo (b.1936), Hungarian jazz pianist (Perfect Circle), died. |
| 1983 | Feb 26 | Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” album went to #1 and stayed #1 for 37 weeks. |
| 1984 | Feb 26 | Reverend Jesse Jackson acknowledged that he had called NYC: “Hymietown.” |
| 1982 | Feb 26 | In the 27th Grammy Awards Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It” won as record and song of the year. Cyndi Lauper won as best new artist. |
| 1986 | Feb 26 | Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and author Robert Penn Warren was named the first poet laureate of the US by Librarian of Congress Daniel J. Boorstin. Warren was awarded the post of US poet laureate consultant to the Library of Congress as the name was changed from consultant in poetry. |
| 1987 | Feb 26 | British stores released the 1st Beatles compact discs. |
| 1988 | Feb 26 | In NYC police officer Edward Byrne was killed with five shots to the head. His death led Congress to create the Edward Byrne Justice Assistance Grant (JAG). |
| 1989 | Feb 26 | US Defense Secretary-designate John Tower, dogged by questions about a possible drinking problem, publicly pledged not to drink any alcohol during his term of office if confirmed by the Senate. |
| 1990 | Feb 26 | USSR agreed to withdraw all 73,500 troops from Czechoslovakia by July1991. |
| 1991 | Feb 26 | Allied troops took control of Kuwait after a 100-hour ground war. It was later reported that high concentrations of US armor-piercing depleted uranium shells were detonated in Iraq and Kuwait. |
| 1992 | Feb 26 | “Search and Destroy” opened at the Circle in the Square Theater in NYC for 46 performances. |
| 1993 | Feb 26 | In Egypt a bomb in a coffee shop killed 3 people and injured 18 In Cairo. |
| 1994 | Feb 26 | A jury in San Antonio acquitted 11 followers of David Koresh of murder, rejecting claims they had ambushed federal agents; five were convicted of manslaughter. |
| 1995 | Feb 26 | The United States and China averted a trade war by signing a comprehensive agreement. |
| 1996 | Feb 26 | President Clinton moved to step up economic sanctions on Cuba in response to Cuba’s downing of two unarmed airplanes belonging to the Cuban-American exile group Brothers to the Rescue. |
| 1997 | Feb 26 | In the 39th Grammy Awards “Change the World” won four awards, including record of the year; Celine Dion’s “Falling Into You” won album of the year and best pop album. |
| 1998 | Feb 26 | A jury in Amarillo, Texas, rejected an $11 million lawsuit brought by Texas cattlemen who blamed Oprah Winfrey’s talk show for a price fall after a segment on food safety that included a discussion about mad-cow disease. |
| 1999 | Feb 26 | President Clinton, outlining foreign policy goals for the final two years of his administration, urged continued American engagement in the quest for peace and freedom abroad. |
| 2000 | Feb 26 | Jose Imperatori, vice consul at the Cuban interests section in Washington, was expelled from the US after he refused to leave voluntarily under charges of spying. |
| 2001 | Feb 26 | The US State Dept. issued its annual report on the status of human rights and cited “unconfirmed but credible” reports from China of continued use of torture by police to obtain coerced confessions. The report also faulted both Israel and the Palestinians for the current Middle East bloodshed. |
| 2002 | Feb 26 | It was reported that the US has begun providing the former Soviet Republic of Georgia with military aid to counter terrorist threats in the Pankisi Gorge region. Some 100-200 US soldiers were included in the $64 million program to begin in mid-March. |
| 2003 | Feb 26 | The National Book Critics Circle for general nonfiction went to Samantha Power for “A Problem from Hell: American and the Age of Genocide.” |
| 2004 | Feb 26 | It was reported that dentists were departing Britain’s publicly funded National Health Service in large numbers, leaving a growing number of Britons without access to affordable care. |
| 2005 | Feb 26 | Walter Anderson (51), telecommunications entrepreneur, was arrested and charged with evading $200 million in federal and local taxes. |
| 2006 | Feb 26 | The Bush administration said it has accepted a proposal from Dubai Ports World for a 45-day review of national security implications of its plans to take control of operations at 6 US ports. |
| 2007 | Feb 26 | Former US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned that the American economy might slip into recession by year’s end. |
| 2008 | Feb 26 | Buddy Miles (60), former drummer with Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana and other popular rock musicians, died in Texas. Over his career he appeared in over 70 albums. |
| 2009 | Feb 26 | Virgin Megastore, a music and video retailer, announced the closures of its San Francisco and New York stores. This would leave the company with 3 stores (Hollywood, Denver, and Orlando) from a peak of 23 stores in 2002. The San Francisco, which opened in 1995, planned to shut down in late April. |
| 2010 | Feb 26 | New York Gov. David Paterson abandoned his campaign for a full term as state governor. |
| 2011 | Feb 26 | In Kingston, NY, a privately owned, vintage military jet crashed into the Hudson River. Divers the next day recovered the body of pilot Michael Faraldi (38). |
| 2012 | Feb 26 | In Los Angeles the Iranian film “A Separation” won an Oscar for best foreign film. Director Asghar Farhadi’s movie explores troubles in Iranian society through the story of a marriage in collapse. |
| 2013 | Feb 26 | A major winter storm hit the US midsection for the 2nd time in a week. |
| 2014 | Feb 26 | Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed a bill designed to give added protection from lawsuits to people who assert their religious beliefs in refusing service to gays. |
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