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
• 1534 Pope Paul II affirms George van Egmond as bishop of Utrecht
• 1590 Mauritius of Nassaus sails to Breda
• 1606 First known European landing in Australia by Dutch navigator Willem Jansz (or Janszoon) at the Pennefather River, Cape York, northern Australia

• 1732 1st mass celebrated in 1st American Catholic church, St Joseph's, Philadelphia
• 1773 Construction authorized for Walnut St jail (Philadelphia) (1st solitary)
• 1794 Christiansborg Castle, Copenhagen burns down
• 1797 Bank of England issues first £1 note

• 1832 Polish constitution abolished and replaced by Tsar Nicholas I
• 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
• 1851 13th Grand National: Terry Abbott wins aboard Irish stallion Abd-El-Kader at 7/1; first dual winner and first to win back-to-back
• 1852 British troopship Birkenhead sinks off South Africa, 458 die, 193 survive
• 1859 Paul Morphy's chess match vs Augustus Mongredien begins; Morphy wins
• 1862 Battle of Woodburn, Kentucky

• 1866 New York Legislature forms NYC Metropolitan Board of Health
• 1869 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
• 1884 British & Portuguese treaty signed in Congo by Leopold II
• 1885 Berlin Conference gives Congo to Belgium and Nigeria to Great Britain
• 1887 George Lohmann took 1st 8-wkt haul in test cricket, 8-35 at SCG
• 1891 1st buffalo purchased for Golden Gate Park
• 1891 Henrik Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler" premieres in Oslo
• 1893 2 Clydesdale horses set record by pulling 48 tons on a sledge, Mich
• 1893 Einar Halvorsen skates world record 500m (48 sec)
• 1895 Michael Owens of Toledo, Ohio, patents a glass-blowing machine

• 1907 Royal Oil & Shell merge to form British Petroleum (BP)
• 1907 US Congress raised their own salaries to $7,500
• 1907 Louis Botha Het Volk Party wins a majority in the election in Transvaal, South Africa
• 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 New York Museum of Science & Industry incorporated
• 1914 HMHS Britannic, sister to the Titanic, is launched at Harland & Wolff, Belfast
• 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 jazz records recorded - "Dixie Jazz Band One Step" and "Livery Stable Blues" by Original Dixieland Jass Band for the Victor Talking Machine Company

• 1917 1st Annual fair at Utrecht Harbor (Netherlands)
• 1918 Stands at Hong Kong Jockey Club collapse & burn, killing 604
• 1919 Acadia National Park forms (as Lafayette N P), Maine
• 1919 Congress forms Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona
• 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 "Green Pastures" opens at Mansfield Theater
• 1930 1st red & green traffic lights installed (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
• 1933 Marinus van der Lubbe kept overnight in a police cell

• 1935 Adolf Hitler secretly authorizes formation of the Luftwaffe with Hermann Göring commander-in-chief
• 1936 Adolf Hitler introduces Ferdinand Porsche's "Volkswagen"
• 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)
• 1938 US female Figure Skating championship won by Joan Tozzer
• 1938 US male Figure Skating championship won by Robin Lee
• 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
• 1942 Werner Heisenberg, a principal scientist in the German nuclear weapons program, delivers a lecture to Nazi officials about extracting energy from nuclear fission
• 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 Tenn

• 1949 USAF plane began 1st nonstop around-the-world flight


• 1950 Leonard Bernstein's "Age of Anxiety" premieres in NYC
• 1951 Bread rationing in Czechoslovakia begins
• 1952 Netherlands-Indonesian Unity conference

• 1953 Allen Dulles officially promoted from deputy director to become the 5th Director of the Central Intelligence Agency

• 1954 1st typesetting machine (photo engraving) used, Quincy Mass
• 1954 Michigan rep Ruth Thompson (R) introduces legislation to ban mailing "obscene, lewd, lascivious or filthy" phonograph (rock & roll) records
• 1955 "Peter Pan" closes at Winter Garden Theater NYC after 149 performances
• 1955 1st aviator to bail out at supersonic speed-GF Smith

• 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

• 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
• 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 Arthur Kopit's "Oh, Dad, Poor Dad . . ." premieres in NYC
• 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 Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
• 1967 Verne Gagne beats Mad Dog Vachon in St Paul, to become NWA champ

• 1968 Clandestine Radio Voice of Iraqi People (Communist) final transmission
• 1970 "Georgy" opens at Winter Garden Theater NYC for 4 performances
• 1970 Beatles release "Beatles Again" aka "Hey Jude" album
• 1971 Secretary-General U Thant signs United Nations proclamation of the vernal equinox as Earth Day.
• 1971 Two Royal Ulster Constabulary officers are shot and killed by the Irish Republican Army while on a mobile patrol in the Ardoyne area of Belfast, North Ireland


• 1972 Slag heap dam collapses above Buffalo Creek, West Virginia, kills 125
• 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
• 1973 Triple Crown horse Secretariat bought for a record $5.7m

• 1974 Gold hits record $188 an ounce in Paris
• 1975 "Night... Made America Famous" opens at Barrymore NYC for 75 performances
• 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)
• 1978 Ira Levin's "Deathtrap" premieres in NYC
• 1979 Last total eclipse of Sun in 20th century for continental US
• 1979 CBS' premiere of NYC sitcom "Flatbush", which received many derision phone calls about it from Brooklynites to CBS
• 1980 Egypt & Israel exchange ambassadors for 1st time
• 1980 Military coup under Desi Bouterse in Suriname

• 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 Reverend Jesse Jackson acknowledges that he called NYC "Hymietown"
• 1984 Robert Penn Warren, Pulitzer Prize winner, named 1st US poet laureate
• 1985 27th Grammy Awards: Whats Love Got to Do With It, Cyndi Lauper wins
• 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 compact discs
• 1987 NASA launches GEOS-H

• 1987 Tower Commission probes Iran-Contra affair
• 1987 USSR resumes nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
• 1987 Wash blocks 20 Indiana shots tying NBA regulation game record
• 1988 Christa Rotherburger (GDR) skates ladies world record 1000m (1:17.65)

• 1989 "Jerome Robbins' Broadway" opens at Imperial Theater NYC for 634 performances
• 1989 Lowest barometric pressure in Netherlands (95.5 hPa)
• 1989 NY Yankees announce that Tom Seaver is their new TV sportscaster
• 1989 California court throws out most of Margo Adams's $12 million breach-of- contract suit against Red Sox third baseman Wade Boggs
• 1990 USSR agrees to withdraw all 73,500 troops from Czech by July, 1991
• 1990 The Sandinistas are defeated in Nicaraguan elections.
• 1991 Asanka Gurusinha scores twin Test Cricket tons v NZ (119 & 102)
• 1991 Bill Veeck & Tony Lazzeri elected to Baseball Hall of Fame
• 1991 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 "Search & Destroy" opens at Circle in Sq Theater NYC for 46 performances
• 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
• 1993 9th Soap Opera Digest Awards - Days of Our Lives wins
• 1993 Allan Border beats Gavaskar's record for most Test Cricket runs 10,123
• 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
• 1997 39th Grammy Awards: Change the World Babyface, Beck & LeAnn Rimes wins

• 1998 Steven M Gluckstern completes sale of NY Islanders
• 1998 Total solar eclipse in Venezuela-Pacific Ocean (4m09)
• 1999 15th Soap Opera Digest Awards - General Hospital wins
• 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.

• 2005 25th Golden Raspberry Awards: "Catwoman" wins
• 2006 XX Winter Olympic Games close in Turin, Italy
• 2010 41st NAACP Image Awards: "Precious" wins Outstanding Motion Picture
• 2011 31st Golden Raspberry Awards: "The Last Airbender" wins
• 2012 Bus plunges off a cliff in Shanxi, China causing 15 deaths
• 2012 Train derailment kills 3 and injures 45 in Burlington, Ontario

• 2012 61st NBA All-Star Game, Amway Centre, Orlando, FL: West beats East, 152-149; MVP: Kevin Durant, OKC Thunder, F
• 2013 A rocket launched from the Gaza strip into Israel ends the ceasefire since November 2012
• 2013 A hot air balloon crashes in Luxor, Egypt, killing 19 tourists
• 2013 A flexible battery capable of being charged wirelessly and folded and stretched is developed

• 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
• 2018 Cold weather nicknamed "the Beast from the East" hits Europe, killing 7 and covering Pompeii in snow

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