Today in History
20th February
Charles Darwin
|
||
|
||
20th February |
||
| 1525 Swiss & German mercenaries desert Francois I's army | ||
| 1547 King Edward VI of England was enthroned following death of Henry VIII | ||
| 1613 Gerard Reynst appointed Dutch gov-gen of East-Indies |
|
|
| 1653 In the first English-Dutch War, the Dutch fleet under Van Tromp was defeated after three days by the English at the battle of Portland. | ||
| 1673 1st recorded wine auction held (London) | ||
| 1710 Johan Willem Friso becomes viceroy of Groningen Netherland | ||
| 1732 Estates of Holland ratifies Treaty of Vienna | ||
| 1737 French minister of Finance, Chauvelin, resigns | ||
| 1745 Bonnie Prince Charlies troops occupy Fort August, Scotland | ||
| 1768 1st American chartered fire insurance company opens (Penn) | ||
| 1809 Supreme Court rules federal govt power greater than any state | ||
| 1809 After rejecting Joseph as King of Spain, the city of Zaragoza finally fell to the French after a prolonged siege. | ||
| 1811 Austria declared itself bankrupt. | ||
| 1816 Rossini's opera "Barber of Seville" premieres in Rome | ||
| 1823 English Capt James Weddell reaches 74ø 15' S, 1520 km from S pole | ||
| 1831 Polish revolutionaries defeat Russians in battle of Growchow | ||
| 1832 Charles Darwin visits Fernando Noronha in Atlantic Ocean | ||
| 1835 Alessandro d'Ancona, Italian philologist was born | ||
| 1839 Congress prohibits dueling in District of Columbia | ||
| 1846 British occupy Sikh citadel of Lahore | ||
| 1856 John Rutledge, Liverpool-NY steamer, hits iceberg; many die |
|
|
| 1861 Dept of Navy of Confederacy forms | ||
| 1861 Steeple of Chichester Cathedral blown down during a storm | ||
| 1864 Civil War battle of Olustee, Florida | ||
| 1864 In the U.S. Civil War, 5,000 Confederates under Gen. Joseph Finnegan beat 6,000 Federal forces under Gen. Truman Seymour at the battle of Ocean Pond. | ||
| 1869 Tenn Gov W C Brownlow declares martial law in Ku Klux Klan crisis | ||
| 1872 Hydraulic electric elevator patented by Cyrus Baldwin | ||
| 1872 Luther Crowell patents a machine that manufactures paper bags | ||
| 1872 Metropolitan Museum of Art opens (NYC) | ||
| 1872 Silas Noble & JP Cooley patents toothpick manufacturing machine | ||
| 1887 Germany, Austria-Hungary & France end Triple Alliance | Charles Darwin |
|
| 1890 Amsterdam Theater destroyed by fire | ||
| 1899 Ill Tel & Tel granted franchise for Chicago freight tunnel system | ||
| 1901 1st territorial legislature of Hawaii convenes | ||
| 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition opens in SF | ||
| 1917 Ammunitions ship explodes in Archangelsk harbor, about 1,500 die | ||
| 1919 French premier Clemenceau injured during assassination attempt | ||
| 1920 Britain recognized the autonomous government in Trans-Jordan. | ||
| 1921 Riza Khan Pahlevi seizes control of Iran | ||
| 1922 Vilinus, Lithuania, agrees to separate from Poland | ||
| 1932 Japanese troops occupy Tunhua China | ||
| 1935 Karoline Mikkelson is 1st woman on Antarctica | ||
| 1938 British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden resigned in protest at Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement toward German dictator Adolf Hitler. | ||
| 1941 1st transport of Jews to concentration camps leave Plotsk Poland | ||
| 1941 Romania breaks relations with Netherlands | ||
| 1942 The Japanese invaded Portuguese Timor and Portugal protested to Japan. | ||
| 1943 Allied troops occupy Kasserine pass in Tunisia | ||
| 1943 New volcano Paracutin erupts in farmer's corn patch (Mexico) | ||
| 1944 US takes Eniwetok Island | ||
| 1947 Lord Louis Mountbatten was named as the last Viceroy of India. | ||
| 1948 Czechoslovakia's non-communist minister resigns | ||
| 1949 1st International Pancake Race held (Liberal Ks) | ||
| 1950 Dylan Thomas arrives in NYC for his 1st US poetry reading tour | ||
| 1952 "African Queen" opens at Capitol Theater in NYC | ||
| 1952 1st black umpire in organized baseball certified (Emmett Ashford) | ||
| 1954 General Zahedi wins election in Persia | ||
| 1962 John Glenn became the first U.S. astronaut in Earth's orbit when the Mercury capsule Friendship VII carried him into space for a five-hour voyage. | ||
| 1966 Author Valery Tarsis banished in USSR | ||
| 1971 Maj General Idi Amin Dada appoints himself president of Uganda | ||
| 1975 Margaret Thatcher elected leader of British Conserv Party | ||
| 1978 Egypt announces it is pulling its diplomats out of Cyprus | ||
| 1979 175 people were killed by an eruption of the Sinira volcano in Indonesia. | ||
| 1985 The sale of contraceptives was made legal in Ireland. | ||
| 1990 Soviet parliamentary leaders proposed a draft law which would allow the republics the right to break away from the Soviet Union. | ||
| 1992 Orthodox patriarch Shenouda III visits Netherlands | ||
| 1994 3 Afghans take 70 Pakistani children hostage | ||
| 1994 Yemen's rival leaders, Ali Abdullah Saleh and Vice-President Ali Salem Al Baidh, signed a pact designed to end more than six months of feuding. | ||
| 1996 Two senior Iraqi defectors, Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel Hassan and his brother Saddam Kamel and their families, returned to Iraq six months after fleeing to Jordan; they were pardoned by Saddam Hussein but died in a gunbattle on February 23. | ||