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February 4,

1783  England proclaimed the formal end to the hostilities with the United States.

1787  Shay's Rebellion, an uprising of Massachusetts farmers, was defeated.

1789  George Washington and John Adams are elected the President and Vice President of the United States.

1861  Delegates from six southern states met in Montgomery, AL to form the Confederate States of America.

1945  Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met at the Yalta Conference.

1948  Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) gained independence from the United Kingdom.

1969  The Palestine National Congress appointed Yasir Arafat head of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

1974  Patricia Hearst, granddaughter of newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army.

1976  Benjamin Britton, British composer died.

2003  The country of Yugoslavia disappeared, to be replaced by the loose federation of Serbia and Montenegro.

2004  The Massachusetts Supreme Court declared that gays had the right to marry.

February 6

1788  Massachusetts ratified the U.S. Constitution, becoming the sixth state to join the Union.

1804  Joseph Priestley, British chemist, died.  His work on the isolation of gases led him to discover oxygen in 1774.

1889  The Spanish-American War ended when a peace treaty between Spain and the United States was signed.

1933  The 20th Amendment to the Constitution, which set the date for the President's inauguration on January 20, was adopted.

1935  The popular board game Monopoly went on sale for the first time.

1944  The first fertilization of a human egg in a test tube was performed.

1952  Princess Elizabeth became Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain.

1971  Astronaut Alan B. Shepard hit a golf ball and Edgar Mitchell threw a "javelin" on the moon.  They landed in the same crater and remain on the moon today.

2001  Ariel Sharon was elected Prime Minister of Israel.

February 8

1587  Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded.

1693  College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA, received its charter, becoming the second institution of learning in the United States.

1870  The National Weather Service was established under the U.S. Army Signal Corps.

1904  The Russo-Japanese War began when the Japanese launched a surprise attack  on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur in Northeast China.

1915  D.W. Griffith's controversial epic, The Birth of a Nation premiered in Los Angeles.

1924  The gas chamber was used for the first time as a method of execution in the United States.  Gangster Gee Jon was put to death at the Nevada State prison in Carson City.

1928  Scottish inventor J. Blaird demonstrated color television on the same day the first television signal was sent transatlantically.

1960  The payola (pay for broadcast airplay) hearings opened in the U.S. House of Representatives.  Dick Clark would testify in April.

1980  President Jimmy Carter  revealed his plan to reinstate selective service draft registration.

February 10

1763  Treat of Paris signed, ending the French and Indian War.  France ceded Canada and all it's North American territories east of the Mississippi to Great Britain.

1837  Russian poet and novelist Alexander Pushkin was killed in a duel.

1840  Queen Victoria married Prince Albert.

1942  Glenn Miller received the first ever gold record  for selling a million copies of "Chattanooga Choo Choo".

1962  The Soviet Union exchanged captured American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers for Rudolph Abel, a Soviet spy held by the United States.

1967  The 25th Amendment was ratified, establishing presidential succession.

1996  IBM's computer, Deep Blue, beat the world chess champion, Garry Kasparov, in the first game of their match.

2005  Pulitzer prize winner Arthur Miller died.

2005  North Korea boasted for the first time that it possessed nuclear weapons.

February 12

1554  Lady Jane Grey, queen of England for nine days (in 1553), was executed for high treason.

1773  Let by philanthropist James Edward Oglethorpe, the first English colonists arrived in Georgia, at the site of Savannah.

1809  Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born.

1818  Chile formally proclaimed its independence from Spain.

1870  The Utah Territory granted women the right to vote (revoked in 1887).

1909  The National Association for the Advancement for Colored People (NAACP).

1912  Pu Yi, the last Emperor of the Manchu (Ch'ing) Dynasty in China, renounced his throne following the establishment of the republic under Sun Yat-Sen.

1973  The first release of American prisoners of war from the Vietnam War took place.

1999  The Senate voted to acquit President Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

2002  Yugoslavian ex-President Slobodan Milosevic went on trial for war crimes.

February 13

1635  Boston Latin School, the oldest public school in the United States, was founded.

1866  The gang that included Jesse James and Cole Younger committed their first bank robbery in Liberty, MO.

1867  Johann Strauss' Blue Danube Waltz premiered in Vienna

1935  Bruno Hauptmann was found guilty of murder in the Lindbergh kidnapping case.

1960  France exploded its first atomic bomb.

1974  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who won the 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature, was deported from the Soviet Union.

2002  The French judge was accused of throwing the pairs skating decision to the Russians at the Olympics.

February 15

1564  Galileo Galilei was born.

1764  St. Louis, MO was founded as a French fur trading post.

1879  President Rutherford Hayes signed a bill allowing female attorneys to argue cases before the Supreme Court.

1898  The USS Maine blew up in Havana Harbor, touching off the Spanish-American War.

1913  The New York Armory Show opened, introducing America to Picasso, Duchamp, and Matisse.

1933  Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak was killed in an assassination attempt on President-Elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in Miami.

1965  The Maple Leaf flag officially became the new national flag of Canada.

1989  More than 100,000 Soviet Troops withdrew from Afghanistan almost 10 years after the USSR invaded the country.

2002  Olympics officials resolved the judging scandal by awarding Canadian pairs figure skaters Jamie Sale and David Pelletier a gold medal while allowing the Russians, Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, to keep their medal.

2003  Millions of protestors around the world demonstrated against the threat of a U.S. war on Iraq.

February 17

1600  Italian philosopher, alchemist, and Copernican theory advocate Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for heresy by the Inquisition.

1801  The electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr was broken by the House of Representatives who elected Jefferson President.

1817  Baltimore became the first U.S. lit by gas.

1863  The Red Cross was founded in Switzerland.

1864  The Confederate submarine Hunley, equipped with an explosive at the end of a protruding spar, rammed and sank the Union ship Housatonic off the coast of Charleston, SC

1904  Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly premiered in Milan.

1972  President Richard Nixon left on his trip to China.

1996  Chess champion Garry Kasparov beat the IBM computer, Deep Blue, winning the six-game match.

February 19

1473  Nicolaus Copernicus was born.

1674  The Netherlands and England signed the Peace of Westminster, by which New Amsterdam passed to the Englislh (and was renamed New York).

1807  Aaron Burr, Vice President under Thomas Jefferson, was arrested for treason.  He was later acquitted.

1878  Thomas Edison patented the gramophone (photograph).

1942  President Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order that resulted in the internment of thousands of Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast.

1945  The U.S. Marines went ashore at Iwo Jima.

1959  Britain, Turkey, and Greece signed the agreement granting Cyprus independence.

1968  The first nationwide broadcast of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood aired on PBS.

1986  The U.S. Senate approved a treaty outlawing genocide, 37 years after the pact had first been submitted for ratification.

1997  Deng Xiaoping, Chinese Communist leader, died.

February 21

1613  Michael Romanov was elected czar of Russia, beginning the Romanov Imperial line.

1878  The first telephone book was issued.  (New Haven, CT)

1885  The Washington Monument was dedicated on the grounds of the Mall in Washington, D.C.

1916  Battle of Verdun, the longest and one of the bloodiest engagements of WWI, began.

1965  Black nationalist leader Malcolm X was assassinated

1972  President Nixon became the first U.S. President to visit China.

1995  Steve Fossett became the first person to cross the Pacific Ocean solo in a balloon.

2002  It was confirmed that Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was dead, allegedly murdered by Islamic militants.

February 23

1821  John Keats, English Romantic poet, died.

1836  Mexican General Santa Anna began the siege of the Alamo.

1896  The Tootsie Roll was introduced by Leo Hirshfield.

1898  French Novelist Emile Zola was convicted of libel and sentenced to jail for writing his "J'accuse" letter accusing the government of anti-Semitism and wrongly jailing Captain Alfred Dreyfus.

1942  The first axis shelling of  U.S. soil took place near Santa Barbara, CA.

1945  U.S. Marines raised the American flag on Iwo Jima on Mount Suribachi.

1997  Scottish scientists announced the successful cloning of a sheep, Dolly.

February 25

1570  Elizabeth !, Queen of England, was excommunicated by Pope Pius V.

1836  Samuel Colt patented the first revolving barrel multishot firearm.

1870  Hiram Revels became the first black United States Senator, taking over the term of Jefferson Davis.

1901  J.P. Morgan formed U.S. Steel Corporation, the first billion-dollar corporation in the world.

1948  Communists took control of the government in Czechoslavakia.

1964  Cassius Clay (Muhammed Ali) became world heavyweight boxing champion for the first time by knocking out Sonny Liston in Miami Beach.

1983  Tennessee Williams, American playwright, died.

1986  President Fernando Marcos fled the Phillipines; Corazon Aquino took over the office.

1990  Violeta Chamorro was elected President of Nicaragua, a victory for opponents of the Sandinistas.

February 27

1844  Dominican Republic gained independence from Haiti.

1922  The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld the 19th Amendment to the Constitution that guaranteed the right of women to vote.

1933  German Reichstag building in Berlin was restored by fire.

1951  The 22nd Amendment to the Consitution was ratified, limiting the President to two terms.

1973  Members of the American Indian Movement occupied the village of Wounded Knee, SD.

1991  Kuwait was liberated in the Gulf War.

2003  Fred Rogers, of Mister Rogers Neighborhood, died.

March 1

1781  The U.S. Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation.

1790  The U.S. Congress authorized the first census.

1803  Ohio became the 17th state in the United States.

1864  Rebecca Lee was the first black woman awarded a medical degree.

1867  Nebraska became the 37th state in the United States.

1872  Yellowstone became the world's first National Park.

1896  Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity.

1932  The 20-month-old son of Charles Lindbergh was kidnapped.

1961  President John F. Kennedy signed an executive order establishing the Peace Corps.

1981  IRA member Bobby Sands began a hunger strike in Mays Prison, he would die 65 days later.

March 3

1845  Florida became the 27th state in the United States.

1847  Alexander Graham Bell was born.

1845  The U.S. Senate passed legislation overriding a Presidential veto for the first time.

1875  Georges Bizet's opera Carmen debuted in Paris, to cool audience reception and panned by critics.

1879  Belva Ann Bennett Lockwood became the first woman lawyer to be admitted to appear before the Supreme Court of the United States.

1918  Germany, Austria, and Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

1931  The "Star-Spangled Banner " was adopted as the national anthem.

1991  Rodney King's vicious beating by Los Angeles police officers was caught on videotape.

2000  Former dictator Augusto Pinochet returned to Chile after being detained in Britain on torture charges.

2003  New embassies opened in Kenya and Tanzania, to replace those lost in the 1998 terrorist bombings.