almanac


	Today in History
	15th February

	1145 Bernardo elected Pope Eugene III
	1313 Peace of Angleur
	1368 Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor in 1433-37, born. He was also king of Hungary, Germany, Lombard and Bohemia.
	1386 Duke Philip the Stout forms Council of Flanders
	1519 Pedro Menendez de Aviles, explorer (found St Augustine Florida) was born
	1539 Emperor Charles receives Cardinal Pole in Toledo
	1552 Dutch coast hit by heavy storm
	1563 Russian troops occupy Polotsk Lithuania
	1564 Galileo, Italian mathematician, astronomer and physicist, born. He developed the astronomical telescope with which he discovered craters on the moon and the satellites of Jupiter.
	1637 Emperor Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor, archduke of Austria and king of Bohemia and Hungary, died	Engraving by Francisco de Paula Martí. created/published [1791]. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
	1637 Ferdinand III succeeds Ferdinand II as Holy Roman Emperor
	1677 King Charles II reports anti-French covenant with Netherlands
	1689 German Parliament declares war on France
	1710 Louis XV, king of France from 1715 to 1774, born.
	1763 The Treaty of Hubertusburg was signed, ending hostilities between Austria and Prussia in the Seven Years' War.
	1764 St Louis founded as a French trading post by Pierre Laclade Ligue
	1768 1st mustard manufactured in America advertised, Philadelphia
	1775 Angelo Braschi chosen as Pope Pius VI
	1797 Battle of Cape St Vincent
	1804 New Jersey becomes last northern state to abolish slavery
	1864 Fire in Rotterdam Neth damages Museum Boymans
	1876 Historic Elm at Boston blown down
	1882 SS Dunedin leaves NZ with 1st frozen meat to England
	1898 USS Maine sinks in Havana harbor, cause unknown-258 sailors die
	1898 The Spanish-American War began after the battleship USS Maine blew up in Havana harbor. The cause of the explosion still remains a mystery.
	1906 British Labour Party organizes
	1918 1st WW I US army troop ship torpedoed & sunk by Germany, off Ireland
	1918 Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania adopt Gregorian calendar
	1919 American Legion organizes in Paris
	1922 The Permanent Court of International Justice, sitting at The Hague in the Netherlands, held its first session.
	1928 Herbert Henry Asquith, Liberal British prime minister 1908-1916, died. He was responsible for the Parliament Act of 1911 which limited the power of the House of Lords
	1933 Giuseppe Zangara, an Italian-born anarchist, failed in his attempt to assassinate U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Miami
	1939 German battleship Bismarck was launched
	1942 Japanese troops march into Palembang, South Sumatra
	1942 In Singapore, a British-led allied force of some 85,000 troops, bombarded and cut off from support and supplies after a weeklong battle, surrendered to a Japanese invading force less than half its size.
	1944 891 British bombers attack Berlin	Galileo Galilei
	1944 The monastery at Monte Cassino in Italy was bombed by Allied aircraft.
	1946 Bank of England nationalized
	1948 Mao Zedong's army occupies Yenan
	1949 Dmitri Shostakovitch' "Song of the Woods," premieres in Leningrad
	1950 Walt Disney's "Cinderella" released
	1955 1st pilot plant to produce man-made diamonds announced
	1957 Andrei A Gromyko succeeds Dmitri Shepilov as Soviet foreign minister
	1959 Antonio Segni forms Italian govt
	1965 Canada adopted the Red Maple Leaf as its new national flag.
	1970 Dominican DC-9 crashes into sea at Santo Domingo, kills 102
	1970 Nationalists disrupt UN session on Congo
	1971 Britain changed over to decimal currency from pounds, shillings and pence.
	1977 Social-democrats win Danish parliamentary election
	1978 Zaire revises constitution
	1982 Ocean Ranger oil-drilling platform lost off Newfoundland, 84 die
	1984 500,000 Iranian soldiers move into Iraq
	1984 Ethel Merman, U.S. actress and singer, died. Star of Broadway musicals including "Annie Get Your Gun" and "Call Me Madam."
	1986 Ferdinand Marcos wins rigged Philippines presidential election
	1989 Israel attacks border strip Taba near Egypt
	1989 more than 100,000 Soviet troops left Afghanistan under a U.N.-brokered accord 10 years after Moscow sent troops to help the tottering Marxist government in Kabul.
	1990 Britain and Argentina restored full diplomatic ties, affirming reconciliation after their 1982 war for the Falkland Islands.
	1991 Freighter with dynamite explodes in Phang Nga Thailand, 120 die
	1992 Two Spaniards completed the first east-west balloon flight across the Atlantic when they arrived in Venezuela from Spain.
	1993 Bomb strike on mafia drug lords in Bogot , Colombia; kills 14
	1993 The Slovak parliament elected economist Michal Kovac as newly-independent Slovakia's first president.
	1994 North Korea ended a yearlong standoff with the International Atomic Energy Agency, after it allowed the agency's inspectors to check seven declared nuclear plants.
	1995 Burundi premier Anatole Kanyenkiko, resigns
	1996 the British government said a three-year inquiry into arms sales to Iraq before the Gulf War had cleared ministers of conspiracy and had revealed no official cover-up.