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February 7

Patch observing the landing of troops and supplies

The Battle of Mount Austen, the Galloping Horse, and the Sea Horse took place from 15 December 1942 to 23 January 1943 and was primarily an engagement between United States and Imperial Japanese forces in the hills near the Matanikau River on Guadalcanal during the Guadalcanal campaign. The U.S. forces were under the overall command of Major General Alexander Patch (pictured), and the Japanese under the overall command of Lieutenant General Harukichi Hyakutake. U.S. soldiers and Marines, assisted by native Solomon Islanders, attacked Imperial Japanese Army forces defending well-entrenched positions on several hills and ridges. With difficulty the U.S. succeeded in taking Mount Austen, in the process reducing a strongly defended position called the Gifu, as well as the Galloping Horse and the Sea Horse. In the meantime, the Japanese decided to abandon Guadalcanal and withdrew; most of the surviving Japanese troops were successfully evacuated. (This article is part of a featured topic: Guadalcanal Campaign.)

February 7: Independence Day in Grenada (1974)

Painting by Louis-Philippe Crépin

• 1365 – Albert, King of Sweden, granted a town charter to Ulvila, the third-oldest city in Finland.
• 1813 – Napoleonic Wars: Two evenly matched frigates, the French Aréthuse and the British Amelia, battled to a stalemate (depicted) at the Îles de Los off the Guinean coast.
• 1865 – The trustees of Seattle enacted an ordinance that expelled Native Americans from the newly incorporated town.
• 1900 – Second Boer War: British troops made a third unsuccessful attempt to lift the siege of Ladysmith in the Battle of Vaal Krantz.
• 2014 – Researchers announced the discovery of the Happisburgh footprints in Norfolk, England, the oldest known hominid footprints outside Africa, at more than 800,000 years old.

February 7

Daniel Risch

General elections in Liechtenstein have been held since the ratification of the 1862 constitution, in which the Landtag of Liechtenstein was established. Political parties did not exist in Liechtenstein until they were formed in 1918. Before the ratification of the 1921 constitution, the head of government was appointed by the prince of Liechtenstein; elections were thus held only to elect members of the Landtag. Under the current constitution, general elections are held to elect members of the Landtag, who then elect the prime minister of Liechtenstein. Forty-eight general elections have been held in Liechtenstein, most recently in 2021, which resulted in Daniel Risch (pictured) becoming prime minister. The 2025 general election is scheduled to take place on 9 February. (Full list...)

February 7

The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. The core lineup of the band comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. Widely regarded as the most influential band of all time, they were integral to the development of 1960s counterculture and the recognition of popular music as an art form. Rooted in skiffle, beat, and 1950s rock and roll, their sound incorporated elements of classical music and traditional pop in innovative ways. The band also explored music styles ranging from folk and Indian music to psychedelia and hard rock. As pioneers in recording, songwriting, and artistic presentation, the Beatles revolutionized many aspects of the music industry and were often publicized as leaders of the era's youth and sociocultural movements. This photograph shows the Beatles – from left to right, Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr – waving to a crowd of fans after arriving at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City on 7 February 1964, at the start of their first visit to the United States. Their visit marked the beginning of the British Invasion, a cultural phenomenon of the mid-1960s when rock and pop-music acts from the United Kingdom and other aspects of British culture became popular in the United States. The band's widespread popularity and the intense reception that greeted them was termed "Beatlemania". Photograph credit: United Press International; retouched by Yann Forget Recently featured: Orange-lined triggerfish Sojourner Truth Very Large Telescope Archive More featured pictures

February 8

Lise Meitner (1878–1968) was an Austrian-Swedish nuclear physicist who was instrumental in the discovery of nuclear fission and protactinium. In 1905, she became the second woman from the University of Vienna to earn a doctorate in physics. She spent much of her scientific career at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin. In 1938 she fled Nazi Germany and moved to Sweden. That year, chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann demonstrated that isotopes of barium could be formed by neutron bombardment of uranium. Meitner and her nephew Otto Robert Frisch correctly interpreted their results and worked out the physics of this process, which they named "fission". The discovery led to the development of atomic bombs and nuclear reactors during World War II. Meitner did not share the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of fission, which was awarded to Hahn alone, but she received many other honours, including the posthumous naming of element 109 as meitnerium in 1997. (Full article...)

February 8: Feast day of Saint Josephine Bakhita (Catholicism); Military Foundation Day in North Korea (1948)

South Carolina Highway Patrolmen before the Orangeburg Massacre

• 421 – Honorius declared Constantius III to be his co-emperor of the Western Roman Empire.
• 1250 – Seventh Crusade: The Ayyubid Sultanate of Egypt defeated and captured King Louis IX of France at the Battle of Fariskur.
• 1575 – William of Orange founded Leiden University, the oldest university in the Netherlands.
• 1960 – The official groundbreaking of the Walk of Fame took place in Hollywood, Los Angeles, in California.
• 1968 – Law enforcement officers in Orangeburg, South Carolina (pictured), fired into a crowd of college students who were protesting segregation, killing three and injuring twenty-seven others.

February 8

February 9

The Japanese battleship Tosa was a planned battleship of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Designed by Yuzuru Hiraga, Tosa was to be the first of two Tosa-class ships. Displacing 39,900 long tons (40,540 tonnes) and armed with ten 410 mm (16.1 in) guns, these warships would have brought Japan closer to its goal of an "eight–four" fleet (eight battleships and four battlecruisers). Compared with earlier designs the ships would have had higher steaming speed despite increased tonnage, flush decks, and inclined armor. Tosa was ordered in 1918, laid down in February 1920 in Nagasaki and launched in December 1921. All work on the ship was halted in February 1922 after the Washington Naval Conference and the signing of the Washington Naval Treaty. As the vessel had to be destroyed in accordance with the terms of the treaty, it was subjected to various tests to gauge the effectiveness of Japanese weaponry before being scuttled on 9 February 1925. (This article is part of a featured topic: Battleships of Japan.)

February 9: Feast day of Apollonia in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy

John Quincy Adams

• 1825 – After no candidate received a majority of electoral votes in the previous year's presidential election, the United States House of Representatives chose John Quincy Adams (pictured) as president in a contingent election.
• 1945 – World War II: Allied aircraft unsuccessfully attacked a German destroyer in Førde Fjord, Norway.
• 1950 – U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy accused 205 employees of the State Department of being communists, sparking a period of strong anti-communist sentiment known as McCarthyism.
• 1975 – The spacecraft and crew of the Soviet Soyuz 17 mission returned to earth after 29 days in orbit at the Salyut 4 station.
• 2020 – Japanese figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu won the Four Continents Championships to become the only man to complete a Super Slam.

February 9

Fragaria vesca, commonly called the wild strawberry among other names, is a perennial herbaceous plant in the rose family that grows naturally throughout much of the Northern Hemisphere. The wild strawberry produces edible fruits, which have been consumed by humans since the Stone Age. The fruit is strongly flavored, and is still collected and grown for domestic use and on a small scale commercially as an ingredient for commercial jam, sauces, liqueurs, cosmetics and alternative medicine. This focus-stacked photograph shows a wild strawberry fruit in a garden in Bamberg, Germany. Photograph Reinhold Möller Recently featured: The Lost World The Beatles Orange-lined triggerfish Archive More featured pictures

February 10

The siege of Baghdad took place in early 1258 when a large army under Hulegu, a prince of the Mongol Empire, attacked Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. Hulegu had been sent by his brother, the Mongol khan Möngke, to conquer Persia. He expected Baghdad's ruler, Caliph al-Musta'sim, to reinforce his army, but this did not happen. Provoked by al-Musta'sim's arrogance, Hulegu decided to overthrow him. The Mongol army routed a sortie by flooding their camp, and besieged the city. After Mongol siege engines breached Baghdad's walls, al-Musta'sim surrendered on 10 February, and was later executed. The Mongol army pillaged the city for a week. The number of deaths was inflated by epidemics of disease, but Hulegu estimated his soldiers killed 200,000. The siege, often seen as the end of the Islamic Golden Age, was in reality not era-defining: Baghdad later prospered under Hulegu's Ilkhanate. (Full article...)

February 10: Feast day of Saint Scholastica (Christianity); Chinese New Year (2024); National Memorial Day of the Exiles and Foibe in Italy

Delegates at the Inter-Allied Women's Conference

• 1355 – A tavern dispute between University of Oxford students and townspeople became a riot that left about 90 people dead.
• 1919 – The Inter-Allied Women's Conference opened as a counterpart to the Paris Peace Conference, marking the first time that women were allowed formal participation in an international treaty negotiation.
• 1939 – Spanish Civil War: The Nationalists concluded their conquest of Catalonia and sealed the border with France.
• 2009 – The first accidental hypervelocity collision between two intact satellites in low Earth orbit took place when Iridium 33 and Kosmos 2251 destroyed each other.

February 10

Andrew Luck

The 2012 NFL draft was the 77th annual meeting of National Football League (NFL) franchises to select newly eligible American football players for their rosters. The draft was held at Radio City Music Hall in New York City from April 26 to April 28, 2012. There were 253 draft selections: 221 regular selections and 32 compensatory selections. The Indianapolis Colts, who compiled the league's worst season in 2011 with a 2–14 record, had the right to the first selection. They chose quarterback prospect Andrew Luck (pictured), who was highly touted as one of the best quarterback prospects in years and widely regarded as the top overall prospect in the draft. The draft was highly regarded for its quarterback talent, with six of the eleven quarterbacks selected named to at least one Pro Bowl. Besides its quarterbacks, the draft overall is considered one of the best of all-time with numerous prospects showing Hall of Fame talent throughout their careers. (Full list...)

February 10

Male Female The Alpine ibex (Capra ibex), also known as the steinbock, is a species of goat that lives in the Alps of Europe. Its closest living relative is the Iberian ibex. They have brownish-grey coats and sharp hooves adapted to steep, rough terrain. Found at elevations as high as 3,300 metres (10,800 ft), they are active throughout the year, primarily feeding on grass in open alpine meadows. Adult males, which are larger than the females, segregate from them for most of the year, coming together only during the breeding season, when they fight for access to the females using their long horns. The Alpine ibex has been successfully reintroduced to parts of its historical range, but all individuals living today descend from a population bottleneck of fewer than 100 individuals from Gran Paradiso National Park in Italy. The species has few predators and is not threatened, but it has very low genetic diversity. These Alpine ibex were photographed at Creux du Van in Switzerland. Photograph credit: Giles Laurent Recently featured: Fragaria vesca The Lost World The Beatles Archive More featured pictures

February 11

Northern Bank Headquarters on Donegall Square, Belfast

On 20 December 2004, £26.5 million was stolen from the Northern Bank in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Having taken family members of two bank officials hostage, an armed gang forced the workers to help them steal banknotes. It was one of the largest bank robberies in the United Kingdom. The police and the British and Irish governments claimed that the Provisional Irish Republican Army was responsible, which was denied. Police forces made inquiries and arrests in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. A sum of £2.3 million was impounded from a financial adviser, Ted Cunningham, in County Cork; he was convicted in 2009. Chris Ward, one of the bank officials, was arrested in November 2005 and charged with robbery. The prosecution offered no evidence at trial and he was released. Northern Bank replaced its own bank notes. The robbery adversely affected the Northern Ireland peace process and hardened the relationship between the Taoiseach and Sinn Féin. No individual or group has ever been held directly responsible for the robbery. (Full article...)

February 11: National Foundation Day (Japan) (660 BC)

UCL Main Building

• 1826 – London University, later University College London (pictured), was founded as the first secular university in England.
• 1851 – As part of celebrations marking the separation of Victoria from New South Wales, the inaugural first-class cricket match in Australia began at the Launceston Racecourse in Tasmania.
• 1976 – The Frente de Liberación Homosexual made their final public appearance, shortly before the group's dissolution due to political repression after the 1976 Argentine coup d'état.
• 2001 – The computer worm Anna Kournikova, which would affect millions of users worldwide, was released by a 20-year-old Dutch student.

February 11

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February 12

Ragnar Garrett (12 February 1900 – 4 November 1977) was Chief of the General Staff in the Australian Army from 1958 to 1960. He completed staff training in England just as the Second World War broke out, joined the Second Australian Imperial Force, and commanded the 2/31st Battalion in England before seeing action with Australian brigades during the German invasion of Greece and the Battle of Crete in 1941. Promoted to colonel the following year, he held senior positions with I Corps in New Guinea and II Corps on Bougainville in 1944–1945. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his staff work. After the war, he served two terms as commandant of the Staff College, Queenscliff, in 1946–1947 and 1949–1951. Between these appointments he was posted to Japan with the British Commonwealth Occupation Force. He took charge of Western Command in August 1951, became Deputy Chief of the General Staff in January 1953, and took over Southern Command as a lieutenant general in October 1954. He was knighted in 1959. (Full article...)

February 12: Lantern Festival in China (2025); Lincoln's Birthday in some parts of the United States; Red Hand Day

Edvard Munch's The Scream

• 1691 – A papal conclave convened to select a new pope after the death of Pope Alexander VIII.
• 1924 – George Gershwin's composition Rhapsody in Blue premiered at Aeolian Hall in New York.
• 1994 – Edvard Munch's painting The Scream (pictured) was stolen from the National Gallery of Norway.
• 2003 – Protesters in La Paz and the Bolivian government brokered a deal to end two days of rioting against a proposed salary tax.

February 12

Charles Darwin (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from a common ancestor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental scientific concept. In a joint presentation with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. Darwin published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species. By the 1870s, the scientific community and a majority of the educated public had accepted evolution as a fact. However, many initially favoured competing explanations that gave only a minor role to natural selection, and it was not until the emergence of the modern evolutionary synthesis from the 1930s to the 1950s that a broad consensus developed in which natural selection was the basic mechanism of evolution. Darwin's scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history and was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey. This photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron shows Darwin c. 1868. Photograph credit: Julia Margaret Cameron; restored by Adam Cuerden Recently featured: Alpine ibex Fragaria vesca Archive More featured pictures

February 13

Gao Qifeng (1889–1933) was a Chinese painter who co-founded the Lingnan School. He spent much of his early life following his older brother Gao Jianfu, learning the techniques of Ju Lian before travelling to Tokyo in 1907 to study Western and Japanese painting. While abroad, Gao joined the revolutionary organization Tongmenghui to challenge the Qing dynasty; after he returned to China, he published the nationalist magazine The True Record. He moved to Guangzhou in 1918, taking teaching positions that culminated with an honorary professorship at Lingnan University in 1925. Falling ill in 1929, Gao left for Ersha Island, where he established the Tianfang Studio. He blended traditional Chinese approaches to painting with Japanese techniques for light and shadow and Western understandings of geometry and perspective. Gao is best recognized for his paintings of animals, particularly eagles, lions, and tigers. (Full article...)

February 13: Shrove Tuesday (Western Christianity, 2024)

Coso artifact

• 1891 – Frances Coles was killed in the last of eleven unsolved murders of women that took place in or near the impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London.
• 1961 – Geode prospectors near Olancha, California, discovered what they claimed to be a 500,000-year-old rock with a 1920s-era spark plug encased within (pictured).
• 2017 – Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, was assassinated using VX nerve agent in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

February 13

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February 14

Adele

"My Little Love" is a song by English singer Adele (pictured) from her fourth studio album, 30 (2021). Adele wrote the song with its producer, Greg Kurstin. The song became available as the album's third track on 19 November 2021, when it was released by Columbia Records. "My Little Love" is a jazz, R&B, and soul song with a 1970s-style groove, gospel-music influences, late-night bar piano, and a funk bassline. The song incorporates voice notes of Adele's conversations with her son as she explains the effects of her divorce on his life and pleads for his understanding and forgiveness. Critics generally praised "My Little Love", comparing it to the work of Marvin Gaye, among other artists. Reviews highlighted the emotionalism and vulnerability displayed in the song, but some found the inclusion of the voice notes excessive. The track reached the top 20 in Australia, Canada, Iceland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Sweden, and entered the top 40 in several other countries. (This article is part of a featured topic: 30 (album).)

February 14: Valentine's Day; Ash Wednesday (Western Christianity, 2024)

Part of the Pale Blue Dot photograph

• 1655 – Arauco War: A series of coordinated Mapuche attacks took place against Spanish settlements and forts in colonial Chile, beginning a ten-year period of warfare.
• 1779 – Native Hawaiians killed the English explorer Captain James Cook after he attempted to kidnap Kalaniʻōpuʻu, the ruling chief of the island of Hawaii.
• 1990 – NASA's Voyager 1 space probe took the Pale Blue Dot photograph of Earth (cropped version pictured) from a record distance of 40.5 au (6.06 billion km; 3.76 billion mi).
• 2005 - YouTube is founded by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim.
• 2007 – The first of several bombings in Zahedan, Iran, killed 18 members of the Revolutionary Guards.

February 14

Map of Arizona's nine congressional districts for the United States House of Representatives since 2022

Since Arizona became a U.S. state in 1912, it has sent congressional delegations to the United States Senate and United States House of Representatives, beginning with the 63rd United States Congress in 1913. Before becoming a state, the Arizona Territory elected a non-voting delegate at-large to Congress from 1864 to 1912. Each state elects two senators to serve for six years, and varying numbers of members of the House, depending on state population, to two-year terms. Arizona has sent nine members to the House in each delegation since the 2010 United States census. A total of 59 people have served Arizona in the House and 15 have served Arizona in the Senate. The first woman to serve Arizona in the House was Isabella Greenway. Seven women have served Arizona in the House, including Kyrsten Sinema and Martha McSally, who also served Arizona in the Senate, the only women to do so. (Full list...)

February 14

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