Events in History
- Feb 11 Spanish Cortes fires king Amadeus I
- Feb 12 US Congress passes the Coinage Act of 1873, abolishing bimetallism and placing the country on the gold standard
- Feb 20 University of California gets its first Medical School (UC/San Francisco)
- Feb 20 British Naval Officer John Moresby discovers the site of Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea and claims it for Britain
- Feb 27 Dutch socialist Samuel van Wooden demands law against child labor
Birthdays in History
- Feb 1 Joseph Allard, Canadian fiddler (d. 1947)
- Feb 1 John Barry, Irish recipient of the Victoria Cross (d. 1901)
- Feb 2 Freiherr Konstantin von Neurath, German secretary of State (1932-38)
- Feb 2 Johan P earl van Limburg Stirum, Dutch diplomat
- Feb 3 Ernest B Allo, French theologist
- Feb 11 Feodor Chaliapine, Russian author/novelist (Pages from My Life)
- Feb 15 Hans von Euler-Chelpin, German-born Swedish biochemist who investigated the fermentation of sugar and enzymes (Nobel 1929), born in Augsburg, Kingdom of Bavaria (d. 1964)
- Feb 22 Muhammad Iqbal, Dutch East Indies lawyer/poet/philosopher
- Feb 23 Liang Qichao, Chinese scholar (d. 1929)
- Feb 26 Ewoud van Everdingen, Dutch meteorologist
Deaths in History
- Feb 1 Matthew Maury, hydrographer, dies
- Feb 2 Edward Johnson, American Major General (Confederate Army), dies at 56
- Feb 7 Sheridan Le Fanu, Irish writer (The House by the Churchyard), dies at 58
- Feb 13 Petrus AS van Limburg Brouwer, [Abraham van Luik], literary, dies
- Feb 19 Vasil Levski, Bulgarian revolutionary, dies at 35