What Happened on February 14th in History

World War II: In the action of 14 February 1944, a Royal Navy submarine sinks a German-controlled Italian Regia Marina submarine in the Strait of Malacca.

The action of 14 February 1944 refers to the sinking of a German U-boat off the Strait of Malacca during World War II by a British submarine. It was one of the few naval engagements of the Asian and...

World War II: On the first day of the bombing of Dresden, the British Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Forces begin fire-bombing Dresden.

In four raids between 13 and 15 February 1945, 772 heavy bombers of the Royal Air Force (RAF) and 527 of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive...

World War II: Navigational error leads to the mistaken bombing of Prague, Czechoslovakia by a United States Army Air Forces squadron of B-17s assisting in the Soviet Red Army's Vistula–Oder Offensive.

Prague, the capital and largest city of the German-occupied Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, was bombed several times by the Allies during World War II. The first Allied aircraft to fly over...

World War II: Mostar is liberated by Yugoslav partisans

Mostar is a city and the administrative centre of Herzegovina-Neretva Canton of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, an entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the historical capital of...

President Franklin D. Roosevelt meets King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia aboard the USS Quincy, officially beginning U.S.-Saudi diplomatic relations.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, also known as FDR, was the 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. He is the longest-serving US president and the only one to have...

The Bank of England is nationalized.

The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694 to act as the English Government's banker and debt...

The act abolishing all noble ranks and related styles comes into force in Hungary.

The Statute IV of 1947 regarding the abolition of certain titles and ranks a law still in force in the Republic of Hungary, declares the abolition of hereditary noble ranks and related styles and...

The Knesset (parliament of Israel) convenes for the first time.

The Knesset is the unicameral legislature of Israel.

The Asbestos Strike begins in Canada. The strike marks the beginning of the Quiet Revolution in Quebec.

The Asbestos strike of 1949, based in and around the town of Asbestos, Quebec, Canada, was a four-month labour dispute by asbestos miners. It has traditionally been portrayed as a turning point in...

First Indochina War - small French garrison at Đắk Đoa is overrun by the Viet Minh after a week's siege.

The First Indochina War, known alternatively internationally as the French Indochina War, was fought in French Indochina between France and the Viet Minh and their respective allies, from 19...

Discovery of the chemical elements: Element 103, Lawrencium, is first synthesized at the University of California.

The discoveries of the 118 chemical elements known to exist as of 2026 are presented here in chronological order. The elements are listed generally in the order in which each was first defined as...

In Kabul, Setami Milli militants kidnap the American ambassador to Afghanistan, Adolph Dubs who is later killed during a gunfight between his kidnappers and police.

Kabul is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. It is within the jurisdiction of Kabul District and has an estimated population of 5,333,284 people. Located in the eastern half of the country,...

United American Bank of Knoxville, Tennessee collapses. Its president, Jake Butcher, is later convicted of fraud.

Knoxville is a city in Knox County, Tennessee, United States, and its county seat. Located on the Tennessee River within the Appalachian Mountains, it is the largest city in the Grand Division of...

Union Carbide agrees to pay $470 million to the Indian government for damages it caused in the 1984 Bhopal disaster.

Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) is an American chemical company headquartered in Seadrift, Texas. It has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Dow Chemical Company since 2001. Union Carbide produces...

Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini issues a fatwa encouraging Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses.

Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, historically known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea...

Ninety-two people are killed when Indian Airlines Flight 605 crashes in Bangalore, India.

Indian Airlines Flight 605 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Bombay to Bangalore. On 14 February 1990, an Airbus A320-231 registered as VT-EPN, crashed onto a golf course while...

The Voyager 1 spacecraft takes the photograph of planet Earth that later becomes famous as Pale Blue Dot.

Voyager 1 is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977, as part of the Voyager program, to study the outer Solar System and the interstellar space beyond the Sun's heliosphere. It was...

An oil tanker train collides with a freight train in Yaoundé, Cameroon, spilling fuel oil. One person scavenging the oil created a massive explosion which killed 120.

Rail freight transport is the use of railways and trains to transport cargo, as opposed to passengers.

The spacecraft NEAR Shoemaker enters orbit around asteroid 433 Eros, the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid.

Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous – Shoemaker, renamed after its 1996 launch in honor of planetary scientist Eugene Shoemaker, was a robotic space probe designed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied...

Iraq disarmament crisis: UNMOVIC Executive Chairman Hans Blix reports to the United Nations Security Council that disarmament inspectors have found no weapons of mass destruction in Ba'athist Iraq.

In the Iraq disarmament crisis of the early 2000s, Iraq, led by president Saddam Hussein, was pressured by the United States and its other adversaries to destroy alleged stockpiles of weapons of...

In a suburb of Moscow, Russia, the roof of the Transvaal water park collapses, killing more than 28 people, and wounding 193 others.

Moscow is the capital and largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents within the city limits, over 19.1 million...

In Beirut, 23 people, including former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, are killed when the equivalent of around 1,000 kg of TNT is detonated while Hariri's motorcade drives through the city.

Beirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. As of 2025, Greater Beirut has a population of 2.4 million, just under half of Lebanon's population, which makes it the twelfth-largest city in the...

Seven people are killed and 151 wounded in a series of bombings by suspected al-Qaeda-linked militants that hit Makati, Davao City, and General Santos, all in the Philippines.

al-Qaeda is a pan-Islamist militant organization led by Sunni Islamist jihadists who self-identify as a vanguard spearheading a global Islamist revolution to unite the Muslim world under a...

YouTube is launched by a group of college students, eventually becoming the largest video sharing website in the world and a main source for viral videos.

YouTube is an American online video-sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim, and Steve Chen who were all former employees at PayPal....

Northern Illinois University shooting: A gunman opens fire in a lecture hall of Northern Illinois University in DeKalb County, Illinois, resulting in six fatalities (including the gunman) and 21 injuries.

The 2008 Northern Illinois University shooting was a school shooting that took place on Thursday, February 14, 2008, at Northern Illinois University (NIU) in DeKalb, Illinois. Steven Kazmierczak, 27...

As a part of Arab Spring, the Bahraini uprising begins with a 'Day of Rage'.

The Arab Spring was a series of pro-democracy anti-government protests, uprisings, and armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began in Tunisia in response...

Jacob Zuma resigns as President of South Africa.

Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma is a South African politician who served as the president of South Africa from 2009 to 2018. He is also referred to by his initials JZ and clan names Nxamalala and...

A shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida is one of the deadliest school massacres with 17 fatalities and 17 injuries.

On February 14, 2018, a mass shooting occurred when 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz opened fire on students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 people and...

Pulwama attack takes place in Lethpora in Pulwama district, Jammu and Kashmir, India in which 40 Central Reserve Police Force personnel and a suicide bomber were killed and 35 were injured.

The 2019 Pulwama attack occurred on 14 February 2019, when a convoy of vehicles carrying Indian security personnel on the Jammu–Srinagar National Highway was attacked by a vehicle-borne suicide...

At least 22 people are killed in an attack on a village in Northwest Region, Cameroon.

The Ngarbuh massacre took place in northwestern Cameroon on 14 February 2020 during the Anglophone Crisis, and resulted in the murder of 21 civilians, including 13 children, by Cameroonian soldiers...