February 14

February 14 is the 45th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 320 days remaining, 321 in leap years.

Events

• 1014 – Pope Boniface I recognizes Henry of Bavaria as King of Germany.
• 1076 – Pope Gregory VII excommunicates Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor.
• 1556 – Thomas Cranmer is declared a heretic.
• 1575 – Henry III of France marries Louise de Lorraine-Vaudémont
• 1743 – Henry Pelham becomes British Prime Minister.
• 1779 – James Cook is killed by the natives of the Sandwich Islands.
• 1797 – John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent & Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson led the British Royal Navy to victory over a Spanish fleet in the Battle of Cape St. Vincent near Gibraltar.
• 1803 – Chief Justice John Marshall declares that any act of U.S. Congress which conflicts with the Constitution is void.
• 1804 – Karadjordje led the First Serbian Uprising against the Ottoman Empire.
• 1849 – In New York City, James Knox Polk becomes the first President of the United States to have his photograph taken.
• 1854 – Texas is linked by telegraph with the rest of the United States, when a connection between New Orleans and Marshall, Texas is completed.
• 1859 – Oregon is admitted as the 33rd U.S. state.
• 1876 – Alexander Graham Bell applied for a patent for the telephone. So did Elisha Gray.
• 1879 – The War of the Pacific broke out when Chilean armed forces occupied the Bolivian port city of Antofagasta.
• 1895 – First showing of Oscar Wilde's last play The Importance of Being Earnest (St James's Theatre in London).
• 1899 – Voting machines are approved by the U.S. Congress for use in federal elections.
• 1900 – Russia responds to international pressure to free Finland by tightening imperial control over the country.
• 1900 – Boer War: In South Africa, 20,000 British troops invade the Orange Free State.
• 1903 – The United States Department of Commerce and Labor is established (later split into Dept. of Commerce and Dept. of Labor).
• 1912 – Arizona is admitted as the 48th U.S. state.
• 1912 – In Groton, Connecticut, the first diesel-powered submarine is commissioned.
• 1918 – The movie Tarzan of the Apes is released.
• 1918 – The Soviet Union adopts the Gregorian calendar (1 February according to the Julian calendar).
• 1920 – The League of Women Voters is founded in Chicago.
• 1924 – IBM corporation founded.
• 1929 – St. Valentine's Day Massacre: Seven gangsters rivalling Al Capone are murdered in Chicago.
• 1943 – World War II:Rostov, Russia is liberated.
• 1943  – World War II: The Battle of the Kasserine Pass – German General Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps launch an offensive against Allied defenses in Tunisia.
• 1944 – World War II: Anti-Japanese revolt on Java.
• 1945 – Bombing of Dresden in World War II: The British Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force began to fire-bomb Dresden, the capital of the German state of Saxony.
• 1945 – Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay and Peru join the United Nations.
• 1945 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt meets with King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia aboard the USS Quincy, officially starting the US-Saudi diplomatic relationship.
• 1946 – The Bank of England is nationalized.
• 1946 – ENIAC (for "Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer"), the first general-purpose electronic computer, is unveiled at the University of Pennsylvania.
• 1949 – The Knesset (Israeli parliament) first convenes.
• 1949 – The Asbestos Strike begins in Canada. The strike marks the beginning of the Quiet Revolution in Quebec.
• 1952 – 1952 Winter Olympic Games open in Oslo, Norway.
• 1961 – Discovery of the chemical elements: Element 103, Lawrencium, is first synthesized (Berkeley, California).
• 1962 – First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy takes television viewers on a tour of the White House.
• 1966 – Australian currency is decimalized.
• 1979 – In Kabul, Muslim extremists kidnap the American ambassador to Afghanistan, Adolph Dubs who is later killed during a gunfight between his kidnappers and police.
• 1980 – 1980 Winter Olympic Games open in Lake Placid, New York.
• 1980 – Walter Cronkite announces his retirement from CBS Evening News.
• 1985 – CNN reporter Jeremy Levin is freed from captivity in Lebanon.
• 1989 – Union Carbide agrees to pay USD $470 million to the Indian government for damages it caused in the 1984 Bhopal Disaster.
• 1989 – Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini issues a fatwa encouraging Muslims to kill the author of The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie.
• 1989 – The first of 24 satellites of the Global Positioning System is placed into orbit.
• 1998 – Authorities in the United States announce that Eric Robert Rudolph is a suspect in an Alabama abortion clinic bombing.
• 2000 – The spacecraft NEAR Shoemaker entered orbit around asteroid 433 Eros, the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid.
• 2004 – In a suburb of Moscow, Russia, the roof of the Transvaal water park collapses, killing more than 25 people, and wounding more than 100 others.

Births

• 1483 – Zahir al-Din Mohammed Babur Shah, founder of the Moghul dynasty (d. 1530)
• 1602 – Francesco Cavalli, Italian composer (d. 1676)
• 1766 – Thomas Malthus, economist (d. 1834)
• 1819 – Joshua A. Norton, Emperor Norton I of the United States of America and Protector of Mexico (d. 1880)
• 1847 – Anna Howard Shaw, women's suffrage leader (d. 1919)
• 1856 – Frank Harris, author and editor (d. 1931)
• 1869 – Charles Wilson, physicist (d. 1959)
• 1884 – Hezekiah M. Washburn, missionary (d. 1972)
• 1890 – Nina Hamnett, artist (d. 1956)
• 1894 – Jack Benny, actor, comedian (d. 1974)
• 1895 – Max Horkheimer, philosopher and sociologist (d. 1973)
• 1898 – Fritz Zwicky, physicist and astronomer (d. 1974)
• 1905 – Thelma Ritter, actress (d. 1969)
• 1911 – Willem Kolff, Dutch inventor
• 1912 – Tibor Sekelj, Croat explorer (d. 1988)
• 1913 – Jimmy Hoffa, labor union leader (d. 1975 (disappeared))
• 1913  – Mel Allen, sports reporter (d. 1996)
• 1913  – Woody Hayes, American college football coach (d. 1987)
• 1916 – Masaki Kobayashi, director
• 1916  – Edward Platt, American actor (d. 1974)
• 1917 – Herbert A. Hauptman, biophysicist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1985
• 1921 – Hugh Downs, game show host, journalist
• 1927 – Lois Maxwell, Canadian actress
• 1929 – Vic Morrow, actor (d. 1982)
• 1931 – Brian Kelly, American actor (d. 2005)
• 1932 – Alexander Kluge, actor and film director
• 1934 – Michel Corboz, Swiss conductor
• 1934  – Florence Henderson, American television actress
• 1936 – Fanne Foxe, erotic dancer
• 1941 – Paul Tsongas, former United States Senator (d. 1997)
• 1941  – Donna Shalala, American politician, educator
• 1942 – Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York City
• 1943 – Maceo Parker, musician (P-Funk)
• 1944 – Alan Parker, director, writer
• 1944 – Carl Bernstein, journalist
• 1945 – Frank Welker, American actor
• 1946 – Bernard Dowiyogo, former president of Nauru (d. 2003)
• 1946  – Gregory Hines, dancer, actor (d. 2003)
• 1948 – Raymond Teller, magician (Penn and Teller)
• 1959 – Renee Fleming, Canadian soprano
• 1960 – Jim Kelly, American football quarterback
• 1960  – Meg Tilly, Canadian actress
• 1962 – Kevyn Aucoin, American cosmetologist
• 1963 – Enrico Colantoni, Canadian actor
• 1968 – Jules Asner, model, television personality
• 1970 – Simon Pegg, comedian, writer and actor
• 1971 – Noriko Sakai, Japanese singer
• 1972 – Drew Bledsoe, American football quarterback
• 1972  – Rob Thomas, musician (matchbox twenty), television producer
• 1973 – Steve McNair, American football quarterback
• 1978 – Richard Hamilton, basketball player
• 1980 – Fatima Leyva, Mexican women's soccer player

Deaths

• 1400 – King Richard II of England murdered (b. 1367)
• 1405 – Timur (aka Tamerlane), Mongol monarch and conqueror (b. 1336)
• 1523 – Pope Adrian VI, a Pope
• 1779 – James Cook, British naval captain and explorer (b. 1728)
• 1831 – Vincente Guerrero, Mexican revolutionary hero (b. 1782)
• 1831  – Henry Maudslay, inventor and machine tool-maker (b. 1771)
• 1929 – Tom Burke, American runner (b. 1875)
• 1943 – David Hilbert, mathematician (b. 1862)
• 1959 – Baby Dodds, jazz musician (b. 1898)
• 1969 – Vito Genovese, gangster (b. 1897)
• 1970 – Herbert Strudwick, champion Surrey and England wicket-keeper (b. 1880).
• 1975 – Julian Huxley, British biologist (b. 1887)
• 1975  – P. G. Wodehouse, writer (b. 1881)
• 1979 – Adolph Dubs, American diplomat (b. 1920)
• 1983 – Lina Radke, German athlete (b. 1903)
• 1988 – Frederick Loewe, Austrian-American composer (b. 1901)
• 1989 – James Bond, American ornithologist and the namesake of the fictional spy James Bond (b. 1900)
• 1994 – Andrei Chikatilo, Russian serial killer (executed) (b. 1936)
• 1994  – Michael Gazzo, American actor (b. 1923)
• 1999 – John Ehrlichman, presidential advisor (b. 1925)
• 2000 – Tony Bettenhausen, Jr., American Formula One driver
• 2003 – Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal (b. 1996)
• 2003  – Johnny Longden, jockey (b. 1907)
• 2004 – Marco Pantani, Italian bicyclist and Tour-de-France winner (b. 1970)
• 2005 – Lebanese former PM Rafik Hariri killed in a car bombing in Beirut

Holidays and observances

• Denmark – Gaekkebrev – gift exchange by school kids
• Mexico – Day of National Mourning (1831)
• Arizona – Admission Day (1912)
• Oregon – Admission Day (1859)
• international – Valentine's Day
• Catholicism – Feast day of Saint Valentine
• Catholicism – Feast day of Saints Cyril and Methodius

External links

• BBC: On This Day

February 13 – February 15 – January 14 – March 14 — historical anniversaries