February 7, 2013: Mississippi officially certifies the Thirteenth Amendment, becoming the last state to approve the abolition of slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment was formally ratified by Mississippi in 1995.
February 7, 1812: The strongest of the three major New Madrid earthquakes occurs. Estimates put this earthquake at an astonishing 8.6 on the Richter scale, making it the strongest earthquake ever recorded in the lower 48 states. The earthquake causes the Mississppi River to flow backwards and creates Reelfoot Lake.
February 8, 1945: Mikhail Devyataev escapes with nine other Soviet inmates from a Nazi concentration camp in Peenemünde on the island of Usedom by hijacking the camp commandant’s Heinkel He 111.
February 9, 1964: The Beatles make their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, performing before a “record-busting” audience of 73 million viewers across the U.S.
February 10, 1996: IBM supercomputer Deep Blue defeats Garry Kasparov in chess for the first time.
February 11, 1938: BBC Television produces the world’s first ever science fiction TV program, an adaptation of a section of the Karel Čapek play R.U.R., that coined the term “robot”.
February 12, 1924: George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue received its premiere in a concert titled “An Experiment in Modern Music”, in Aeolian Hall, New York, by Paul Whiteman and his band, with Gershwin playing the piano.
February 12, 1935: The Macon , the last U.S. Navy dirigible, crashes off the coast of California, killing two people.
February 13, 1961: An allegedly 500,000-year-old rock is discovered near Olancha, California, that appears to anachronistically encase a “1920s-style spark plug”.
February 14, 1924: The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company changes its name to International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).
February 15, 1992: Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer (aka The Milwaukee Cannibal) is sentenced in Milwaukee to life in prison. On November 28, 1994, Dahmer was beaten to death by Christopher Scarver, a fellow inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution.
February 15, 1898: At approximately 9:45 PM (local time) this date, the 6680-ton battleship USS Maine is destroyed by an unexplained explosion while in harbor in Havana, Cuba, kiling 266 members of its approximately 355-man crew. Initially reports placed the blame on Spain, greatly increasing tensions between that country and the US; after further investigation the explosion was officially declared as “of unknown causes” but suspected an underwater mine, which did little to alleviate the suspicion that it was done by the Spanish and would eventually lead to the Spanish-American War.
-“BB”-
February 16, 1923: Howard Carter unseals the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun.
February 17, 1801: An electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr is resolved when Jefferson is elected President of the United States, and Burr Vice President, by the United States House of Representatives.
February 18, 1930: Elm Farm Ollie becomes the first cow to fly in a fixed-wing aircraft, and also the first cow to be milked in an aircraft.
February 19, 1942: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs executive order 9066, allowing the United States military to relocate Japanese Americans to internment camps.
And 34 years later,
February 19, 1976: Executive Order 9066 is rescinded by President Gerald Ford.
February 20, 1962: John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the earth, making three orbits in four hours, 55 minutes.
February 21, 1918: The last Carolina parakeet dies in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo.
February 22, 1997: Scottish scientists announce that an adult sheep named Dolly has been successfully cloned.
February 23, 1898: Émile Zola is imprisoned in France after writing “J’accuse”, a letter accusing the French government of antisemitism and wrongfully imprisoning Captain Alfred Dreyfus.