What Happened on February 20th in History
30 historical events on this date
The U.S. Congress approves the construction of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge by the state of California.
The United States Congress is the legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a bicameral legislature, including a lower body, the U.S. House of Representatives, and an...
The U.S. Congress approves the Blaine Act to repeal federal Prohibition in the United States, sending the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution to state ratifying conventions for approval.
The United States Congress is the legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a bicameral legislature, including a lower body, the U.S. House of Representatives, and an...
Adolf Hitler secretly meets with German industrialists to arrange for financing of the Nazi Party's upcoming election campaign.
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Germany during the Nazi era from 1933 until his suicide in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party,...
Caroline Mikkelsen becomes the first woman to set foot in Antarctica.
Caroline Mikkelsen was a Danish-Norwegian explorer who on 20 February 1935 was the first woman to set foot on Antarctica, although whether this was on the mainland or an island is a matter of dispute.
Madison Square Garden Nazi rally: The largest ever pro-Nazi rally in United States history is convened in Madison Square Garden, New York City, with 20,000 members and sympathizers of the German American Bund present.
On February 20, 1939, a Nazi rally took place at Madison Square Garden, organized by the German American Bund. More than 20,000 people attended, and Fritz Julius Kuhn was a featured speaker. The...
World War II: Lieutenant Edward O'Hare becomes America's first World War II flying ace.
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: American movie studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor movies.
A film studio is a major entertainment company that makes films. Today, studios are mostly financing and distribution entities. In addition, they may have their own studio facility or facilities;...
The Saturday Evening Post publishes the first of Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms in support of United States President Franklin Roosevelt's 1941 State of the Union address theme of Four Freedoms.
The Saturday Evening Post is an American magazine published six times a year. It was first published in 1821, and published weekly from 1897 until 1963. It was published every other week until 1969....
World War II: The "Big Week" begins with American bomber raids on German aircraft manufacturing centers.
Operation Argument, after the war dubbed Big Week, was a sequence of raids by the United States Army Air Forces and RAF Bomber Command from 20 to 25 February 1944, as part of the Combined Bomber...
World War II: The United States takes Eniwetok Atoll.
Enewetak Atoll is a large coral atoll of 40 islands in the Pacific Ocean and with its 296 people forms a legislative district of the Ralik Chain of the Marshall Islands. With a land area total less...
Emmett Ashford becomes the first African-American umpire in organized baseball by being authorized to be a substitute umpire in the Southwestern International League.
Emmett Littleton Ashford, nicknamed Ash, was an umpire in Major League Baseball (MLB), working in the American League from 1966 to 1970. He was MLB's first African American umpire.
The United States Merchant Marine Academy becomes a permanent Service Academy.
The United States Merchant Marine Academy is a United States service academy in Kings Point, New York. It trains its midshipmen to serve as officers in the United States Merchant Marine, branches of...
The Avro Arrow program to design and manufacture supersonic jet fighters in Canada is cancelled by the Diefenbaker government amid much political debate.
The Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow was an interceptor aircraft designed and built by Avro Canada. The CF-105 held the promise of Mach 2 speeds at altitudes exceeding 50,000 feet (15,000 m) and was...
Mercury program: While aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth, making three orbits in four hours, 55 minutes.
Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States, running from 1958 through 1963. An early highlight of the Space Race, its goal was to put a man into Earth orbit and...
Ranger 8 crashes into the Moon after a successful mission of photographing possible landing sites for the Apollo program astronauts.
Ranger 8 was a lunar probe in the Ranger program, a robotic spacecraft series launched by NASA in the early-to-mid-1960s to obtain the first close-up images of the Moon's surface. These pictures...
The China Academy of Space Technology, China's main arm for the research, development, and creation of space satellites, is established in Beijing.
The China Academy of Space Technology is a research institute affiliated with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), located in Haidian, Beijing, China. The institute was...
The United States Emergency Broadcast System is accidentally activated in an erroneous national alert.
The Emergency Broadcast System (EBS), sometimes called the Emergency Action Notification System (EANS), was an emergency warning system used in the United States. It was the most commonly used,...
An earthquake cracks open the Sinila volcanic crater on the Dieng Plateau, releasing poisonous H2S gas and killing 149 villagers in the Indonesian province of Central Java.
An earthquake, also called a quake, tremor, or temblor, is the shaking of the Earth's surface resulting from a sudden release of energy in the lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can...
The Soviet Union launches its Mir spacecraft. Remaining in orbit for 15 years, it is occupied for ten of those years.
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...
The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast votes to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia, triggering the First Nagorno-Karabakh War.
The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) was an autonomous oblast within the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic that was created on July 7, 1923. Its capital was the city of Stepanakert. The...
In the Albanian capital Tirana, a gigantic statue of Albania's long-time leader, Enver Hoxha, is brought down by mobs of angry protesters.
Tirana is the capital and largest city of Albania. It is located in the centre of the country, enclosed by mountains and hills, with Dajti rising to the east and a slight valley to the northwest...
American figure skater Tara Lipinski, at the age of 15, becomes the youngest Olympic figure skating gold-medalist at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.
Tara Kristen Lipinski is an American sports commentator and former competitive figure skater. A former competitor in women's singles, she was the 1997 U.S. national champion and world champion, a...
A cooking gas cylinder explodes on board an Egyptian National Railways train in El Ayyat, causing a fire and killing over 370 people.
The El Ayyat train disaster occurred at 2 a.m. on 20 February 2002 in an eleven-carriage passenger train traveling from Cairo to Luxor. A cooking gas cylinder exploded in the fifth carriage, causing...
During a Great White concert in West Warwick, Rhode Island, a pyrotechnics display sets the Station nightclub ablaze, killing 100 and injuring over 200 others.
Great White is an American hard rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1977. The band is named after both the shark with the same name, and guitarist Mark Kendall's former stage nickname. In August...
Spain becomes the first country to vote in a referendum on ratification of the proposed Constitution of the European Union, passing it by a substantial margin, but on a low turnout.
A referendum on the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe was held in Spain on Sunday, 20 February 2005. The question asked was "Do you approve of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for...
Two Tamil Tigers aircraft packed with C4 explosives en route to the national airforce headquarters are shot down by the Sri Lankan military before reaching their target, in a kamikaze style attack.
On February 20, 2009, the air wing of the Tamil Tigers separatist militia launched a suicide attack against military locations in and around Colombo, Sri Lanka, using two weaponized light aircraft....
In Madeira Island, Portugal, heavy rain causes floods and mudslides, resulting in at least 43 deaths, in the worst disaster in the history of the archipelago.
Madeira, officially the Autonomous Region of Madeira, is an autonomous region of Portugal, in the Atlantic Ocean about 805 km southwest of mainland Portugal. Together with the Azores, it is one of...
Dozens of Euromaidan anti-government protesters die in Ukraine's capital Kyiv, many reportedly killed by snipers.
Euromaidan, or the Maidan Uprising, was a wave of demonstrations and civil unrest in Ukraine, which began on 21 November 2013 with large protests in Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kyiv. The protests were...
Two trains collide in the Swiss town of Rafz resulting in as many as 49 people injured and Swiss Federal Railways cancelling some services.
The Rafz train crash occurred at approximately 6.43 am on 20 February 2015. An S-Bahn and an Interregio express train collided at Rafz railway station in Rafz, Canton of Zürich, Switzerland.
Six people are killed and two injured in multiple shooting incidents in Kalamazoo County, Michigan.
On the night of February 20, 2016, a spree shooting took place at an apartment complex, a Kia car dealership, and outside a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Kalamazoo County, Michigan. Six people were...