What Happened on February 19th in History
30 historical events on this date
More than sixty tornadoes strike the Southern United States, one of the largest tornado outbreaks in U.S. history.
On February 19–20, 1884, a large tornado outbreak occurred over the Southeastern United States, known as the Enigma tornado outbreak due to the uncertain number of total tornadoes and fatalities....
Pedro Lascuráin becomes President of Mexico for 45 minutes; this is the shortest term to date of any person as president of any country.
Pedro José Domingo de la Calzada Manuel María Lascuráin Paredes was a Mexican politician and lawyer who served as the 38th president of Mexico for 45 minutes on 19 February 1913, the shortest...
World War I: The first naval attack on the Dardanelles begins when a strong Anglo-French task force bombards Ottoman artillery along the coast of Gallipoli.
World War I, or the First World War, also known as the Great War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Central Powers. Major areas of conflict included Europe and the...
Yekatit 12: During a public ceremony at the Viceregal Palace (the former Imperial residence) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, two Ethiopian nationalists of Eritrean origin attempt to kill viceroy Rodolfo Graziani with a number of grenades.
Yekatit 12, also known in Italy as the Addis Ababa massacre, is a date in the Ge'ez calendar which refers to the massacre and imprisonment of Ethiopians by the Italian occupation forces following an...
World War II: Nearly 250 Japanese warplanes attack the northern Australian city of Darwin, killing 243 people.
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: United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs executive order 9066, allowing the United States military to relocate Japanese Americans to internment camps.
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...
World War II: Battle of Kasserine Pass in Tunisia begins.
The Battle of Kasserine Pass was a series of engagements which took place from 19–24 February 1943 around Kasserine Pass, a 2-mile-wide (3.2 km) gap in the Grand Dorsal chain of the Atlas Mountains...
World War II: Battle of Iwo Jima: About 30,000 United States Marines land on the island of Iwo Jima.
The Battle of Iwo Jima was a major battle in which the United States Marine Corps (USMC), United States Navy (USN), and United States Army (USA) landed on and eventually captured the island of Iwo...
The Conference of Youth and Students of Southeast Asia Fighting for Freedom and Independence convenes in Calcutta.
The Conference of Youth and Students of Southeast Asia Fighting for Freedom and Independence, also referred to as the Southeast Asian Youth Conference, was an international youth and students event...
Ezra Pound is awarded the first Bollingen Prize in poetry by the Bollingen Foundation and Yale University.
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a collaborator in Fascist Italy and the Salò Republic during World War II. His...
Transfer of Crimea: The Soviet Politburo of the Soviet Union orders the transfer of the Crimean Oblast from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR.
In 1954, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union transferred the Crimean Oblast from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR. The territory had been recognized within the Soviet Union...
The United Kingdom grants Cyprus independence, which is formally proclaimed on August 16, 1960.
Cyprus, officially the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, located off the coast of the Levant mainland in West Asia. The island of Cyprus, which is the third...
China successfully launches the T-7, its first sounding rocket.
The T-7 was China's first sounding rocket. A test rocket, dubbed the T-7M, was first successfully launched on 19 February 1960 in Nanhui, Shanghai, and a full-scale rocket was launched on 13...
The publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique reawakens the feminist movement in the United States as women's organizations and consciousness raising groups spread.
Betty Friedan was an American feminist writer and activist. A leading figure in the women's movement in the United States, her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the...
Colonel Phạm Ngọc Thảo of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, and a communist spy of the North Vietnamese Viet Minh, along with Generals Lâm Văn Phát and Trần Thiện Khiêm, all Catholics, attempt a coup against the military junta of the Buddhist Nguyễn Khánh.
Phạm Ngọc Thảo, also known as Albert Thảo, was a Vietnamese military officer and spy. He was a sleeper agent of the Việt Minh who infiltrated the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and also...
Executive Order 9066, which led to the relocation of Japanese Americans to internment camps, is rescinded by President Gerald Ford's Proclamation 4417.
Executive Order 9066 was a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942. According to the...
Egyptian forces raid Larnaca International Airport in an attempt to intervene in a hijacking, without authorisation from the Republic of Cyprus authorities. The Cypriot National Guard and Police forces kill 15 Egyptian commandos and destroy the Egyptian C-130 transport plane in open combat.
On 19 February 1978, Egyptian special forces raided Larnaca International Airport near Larnaca, Cyprus, in an attempt to intervene in a hijacking. Earlier, two assassins had killed prominent...
William J. Schroeder becomes the first recipient of an artificial heart to leave the hospital.
William J. Schroeder, was one of the first recipients of an artificial heart. Schroeder was born in Jasper, Indiana, and was a Sergeant in the United States Air Force from 1952 to 1966. On November...
A Boeing 727 operating as Iberia Flight 610 crashes Mount Oiz in Spain, killing 148; it is the deadliest accident to occur in Iberia's history and the deadliest to occur in Basque County.
The Boeing 727 is an American narrow-body trijet that was developed and produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. After the heavier 707 quadjet was introduced in 1958, Boeing addressed the demand for...
China Airlines Flight 006 experiences an aircraft upset over the Pacific Ocean, injuring 24.
China Airlines Flight 006 was a daily non-stop international passenger flight from Taipei to Los Angeles International Airport. On February 19, 1985, the Boeing 747SP operating the flight was...
Akkaraipattu massacre: the Sri Lankan Army massacres 80 Tamil farm workers in eastern Sri Lanka.
Akkaraipattu massacre happened on 19 February 1986 when approximately 80 Tamil farm workers were killed by the Sri Lankan Army personnel and their bodies burned in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka....
A Fairchild Swearingen Metroliner operating as AVAir Flight 3378 crashes in Cary, North Carolina, killing 12.
The Fairchild Swearingen Metroliner is a 19-seat, pressurized, twin-turboprop airliner first produced by Swearingen Aircraft and later by Fairchild Aircraft at a plant in San Antonio, Texas.
Flying Tiger Line Flight 066 crashes into a hill near Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport in Malaysia, killing four.
Flying Tiger Line Flight 066 was a scheduled international cargo flight from Singapore's Changi Airport to British Hong Kong's Kai Tak Airport via a stopover at Kuala Lumpur International Airport,...
NASA's Mars Odyssey space probe begins to map the surface of Mars using its thermal emission imaging system.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the United States' civil space program and for research in aeronautics and...
An Ilyushin Il-76 military aircraft crashes near Kerman, Iran, killing 275.
The Ilyushin Il-76 is a multi-purpose, fixed-wing, four-engine turbofan strategic airlifter designed by the Soviet Union's Ilyushin design bureau as a commercial freighter in 1967, to replace the...
A methane explosion in a coal mine near Nueva Rosita, Mexico, kills 65 miners.
Methane is a chemical compound that has the chemical formula CH4. It is a group-14 hydride, the simplest alkane, and the main constituent of natural gas. The abundance of methane on Earth makes it...
The debut exhibition of the Belitung shipwreck, containing the largest collection of Tang dynasty artifacts found in one location, begins in Singapore.
The Belitung shipwreck is the wreck of an Arabian dhow that sank around 830 AD. The ship completed its outward journey from Arabia to China but sank on the return voyage from China, approximately...
Forty-four people are killed in a prison brawl in Apodaca, Nuevo León, Mexico.
The Apodaca prison riot occurred on 19 February 2012 at a prison in Apodaca, Nuevo León, Mexico. Mexico City officials stated that at least 44 people were killed, with another twelve injured. The...
Nine people are killed in two domestic terrorist shootings in Hanau, Hesse, Germany.
The Hanau shootings occurred on 19 February 2020, when ten people were killed and five others wounded in a terrorist shooting spree by a far-right extremist targeting three bars and a kiosk in...
Mya Thwe Thwe Khine, a 19-year-old protester, becomes the first known casualty of anti-coup protests that formed in response to the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état.
Mya Thwe Thwe Khine was a young Burmese woman who became the first known casualty of the 2021 Myanmar protests, which formed in the aftermath of the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état. Pro-democracy...