What Happened on February 16th in History
30 historical events on this date
The Popular Front wins the 1936 Spanish general election.
Legislative elections were held in Spain on 16 February 1936. At stake were all 473 seats in the unicameral Cortes Generales. The winners of the 1936 elections were the Popular Front, a left-wing...
Wallace H. Carothers receives a United States patent for nylon.
Wallace Hume Carothers was an American chemist, inventor, and the leader of organic chemistry at DuPont, who was credited with the invention of nylon.
World War II: Altmark incident: The German tanker Altmark is boarded by sailors from the British destroyer HMSÂ Cossack. A total of 299 British prisoners are freed.
World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated. Tanks and aircraft played major...
World War II: In Athens, the Greek People's Liberation Army is established
Athens is the capital and largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica region and is the southernmost capital on the...
World War II: Attack on Aruba, first World War II German shots fired on a land based object in the Americas.
The attack on Aruba was an attack on oil installations and tankers by Axis submarines during World War II. On 16 February 1942, a German U-boat attacked the small Dutch island of Aruba. Other...
World War II: In the early phases of the Third Battle of Kharkov, Red Army troops re-enter the city.
The Third Battle of Kharkov was a series of battles on the Eastern Front of World War II, undertaken by Nazi Germany's Army Group South against the Soviet Red Army, around the city of Kharkov from...
World War II: American forces land on Corregidor Island in the Philippines.
The Battle of Corregidor, which occurred from 16 to 26 February 1945, pitted American forces against the defending Japanese garrison on the island fortress. The Japanese had captured the bastion...
The Alaska Equal Rights Act of 1945, the first anti-discrimination law in the United States, was signed into law.
In the history of discrimination in the United States, the Alaska Equal Rights Act of 1945 was the first state or territorial anti-discrimination law enacted in the United States in the 20th...
Fidel Castro becomes Premier of Cuba after dictator Fulgencio Batista was overthrown on January 1.
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was a Cuban politician and revolutionary who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as prime minister from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 2008....
The U.S. Navy submarine USSÂ Triton begins Operation Sandblast, setting sail from New London, Connecticut, to begin the first submerged circumnavigation of the globe.
USS Triton (SSRN/SSN-586), the only member of her class, was a nuclear powered radar picket submarine in the United States Navy. She was the only Western submarine powered by two nuclear reactors....
Explorer program: Explorer 9 (S-56a) is launched.
The Explorers Program is a NASA exploration program that provides flight opportunities for physics, geophysics, heliophysics, and astrophysics investigations from space. Launched in 1958, Explorer 1...
The Great Sheffield Gale impacts the United Kingdom, killing nine people; the city of Sheffield is devastated, with 150,000 homes damaged.
The Great Sheffield Gale is the name given to an intense European windstorm which crossed the United Kingdom in mid-February 1962, devastating the city of Sheffield in the West Riding of Yorkshire....
Flooding in the coastal areas of West Germany kills 315 and destroys the homes of about 60,000 people.
The North Sea flood of 1962 was a natural disaster affecting mainly the coastal regions of West Germany and in particular the city of Hamburg in the night from 16 February to 17 February 1962. In...
In Haleyville, Alabama, the first 9-1-1 emergency telephone system goes into service.
Haleyville is a city in Winston and Marion counties in the U.S. state of Alabama. It incorporated on February 28, 1889. Most of the city is located in Winston County, with a small portion of the...
Civil Air Transport Flight 010 crashes near Shongshan Airport in Taiwan, killing 21 of the 63 people on board and one more on the ground.
Civil Air Transport Flight 10 was a scheduled passenger flight from the now-closed Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong to Songshan Airport in Taipei, Taiwan. The flight, designated CT-010, was operated by...
The first computer bulletin board system is created (CBBS in Chicago).
A bulletin board system (BBS), also called a computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal or a terminal...
The Ash Wednesday bushfires in Victoria and South Australia kill 75.
The Ash Wednesday bushfires, known in South Australia as Ash Wednesday II, were a series of bushfires that occurred in south-eastern Australia in 1983 on 16 February. Within twelve hours, more than...
Iran launches Operation Dawn 5, a major offensive during the IranâIraq War targeting the BasraâBaghdad highway, resulting in heavy casualties on both sides.
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...
Hezbollah is founded.
Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party with an active paramilitary wing that has been banned by the Lebanese government since March 2026, amid Israel's war on Lebanon. Hezbollah's...
The Soviet liner MSÂ Mikhail Lermontov runs aground in the Marlborough Sounds, New Zealand.
The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until its dissolution in 1991. It was the world's...
China Airlines Flight 2265 crashes into the Pacific Ocean near Penghu Airport in Taiwan, killing all 13 aboard.
On 16 February 1986, a Boeing 737-281 operating a charter flight as China Airlines Flight 2265 went missing after executing a go-around after touching down at Penghu Airport, Taiwan. It was...
Nicaraguan Contras leader Enrique BermĂșdez is assassinated in Managua.
Nicaragua, officially the Republic of Nicaragua, is the geographically largest country in Central America, comprising 130,370 square kilometres (50,340 sq mi). With a population of 7,142,529 as of...
A Chicago-bound Amtrak train, the Capitol Limited, collides with a MARC commuter train bound for Washington, D.C., killing 11 people.
The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak, is the national passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates intercity rail service in every contiguous U.S....
China Airlines Flight 676 crashes into a road and residential area near Chiang Kai-shek International Airport in Taiwan, killing all 196 aboard and six more on the ground.
China Airlines Flight 676 was a scheduled international passenger flight. On 16 February 1998, the Airbus A300B4-622R jet airliner operating the flight crashed into a road and residential area in...
Emery Worldwide Airlines Flight 17 crashes near Sacramento Mather Airport in Rancho Cordova, California, killing all three aboard.
Emery Worldwide Airlines Flight 17 was a regularly scheduled United States domestic cargo flight, flying from Reno, Nevada to Dayton, Ohio with an intermediate stopover at Sacramento Mather Airport....
The Kyoto Protocol comes into force, following its ratification by Russia.
The Kyoto Protocol (Japanese: äșŹéœè°ćźæž, Hepburn: KyĆto Giteisho) was an international treaty which extended the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits state...
The National Hockey League cancels the entire 2004â05 regular season and playoffs.
The National Hockey League is a professional ice hockey league in North America composed of 32 teams, 25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. The NHL is one of the major professional sports leagues...
The last Mobile army surgical hospital (MASH) is decommissioned by the United States Army.
Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals (MASH) were U.S. Army field hospital units conceptualized in 1946 as replacements for the obsolete World War II-era Auxiliary Surgical Group hospital units. MASH units...
A bomb blast at a market in Hazara Town, Quetta, Pakistan kills more than 80 people and injures 190 others.
On 16 February 2013, at least 91 people were killed and 190 injured after a bomb hidden in a water tank exploded at a market in Hazara Town on the outskirts of Quetta, the capital city of...
Five thousand people gathered in the town of Kherrata, Bejaia Province to mark the second anniversary of the Hirak protest movement. Demonstrations had been suspended because of the COVID-19 pandemic in Algeria.
Kherrata is a commune in northern Algeria in the BĂ©jaĂŻa Province.