They confronted me in the day of my disaster,
but the LORD was my support. NIV


Psalm   18:18

1076: Emperor Henry IV defies Rome and Pope Gregory VII

1198: Pope Innocent III ordained as a priest

1508: Michaelangelo's "Pope Julius" put in place

1534: Anabaptists sieze Muenster

1554: Hieronymus Bock, German doctor, founder of modern botany, dies

1595: Hanging of Robert Southwell, Jesuit poet, for being a Catholic priest, at Tyburn, England

1598: Election of Boris Godenov as Czar of Muscovy

1631: Michael Romanov, son of the Patriarch of Moscow, is elected Russian Tsar.

1630: Peter Paul Rubens knighted in England

1744: The British blockade of Toulon is broken by 27 French and Spanish warships attacking 29 British ships.

1797: Trinidad, West Indies surrenders to the British.

1804: 1st self-propelled locomotive on rails demonstrated, in Wales.

1828: The first issue of the Cherokee Phoenix is printed, both in English and in the newly invented Cherokee alphabet.

1838: The first burglar alarm is installed in the United States. It is installed in Boston, Massachusetts by E. T. Holmes.

1842: John J. Greenough of Washington, DC. patented the sewing machine.

1846: Sara Bagley of Lowell, Massachusetts, becomes the first female telegraph operator.

1849: In the Second Sikh War, Sir Hugh Gough’s well placed guns win a victory over a Sikh force twice the size of his at Gujerat on the Chenab River, assuring British control of the Punjab for years to come.

1862: The Texas Rangers win a Confederate victory in the Battle of Val Verde, New Mexico.

1866: Lucy B. Hobbs became the first woman to graduate from a dental school, the Ohio College of Dental Surgery in Cincinnati.

1874: Oakland Daily Tribune begins publication.

1878: The first telephone directory was issued, by the District Telephone Company of New Haven, Connecticut.

1885: The Washington Monument was dedicated.

1905: The Mukden campaign of the Russo-Japanese War, begins.

1916: The World War One Battle of Verdun began in France.

1918: The last known green and yellow Carolina parakeet dies.

1925: "The New Yorker" magazine made its debut.

1931: Alka Seltzer is introduced. Oh, what a relief it is!

1932: William N. Goodwin of Newark, New Jersey, patented the camera exposure meter.

1940: The Germans begin construction of a concentration camp at Auschwitz. The hunt for Nazi war criminals spans more than half a century and continues to this day.

1943: German tanks and two infantry battalions break the Allied line and take Kasserine Pass in North Africa.

1944: Hideki Tojo becomes chief of staff of the Japanese army.

1947: Edwin H. Land publicly demonstrated his Polaroid Land camera, which could produce a black-and-white photograph in 60 seconds.

1949: Nicaragua and Costa Rica sign a friendship treaty ending hostilities over their borders.

1950: The United States formally breaks relations with Bulgaria.

1956: A Grand Jury in Montgomery, Alabama, indicts 115 in a Negro bus boycott.

1960: Havana places all Cuban industry under direct control of the government.

1965: Former Black Muslim leader Malcolm X, 39, was shot to death in New York by assassins identified as Black Muslims.

1967: Ford recalls 217,000 cars to check brakes and steering.

1972: President Nixon began his historic visit to China. The first American president to visit China and the first president to visit a country not oficially recognized by the United States.

1973: Israeli fighter planes shot down a Libyan Airlines jet over the Sinai Desert, killing more than 100 people.

1974: A report claims that the use of defoliants by the U.S. has scarred Vietnam for century. Defoliation was meant to save lives by denying the enemy cover. But for some the 'cure' was worse than the problem.

1976: Florence Ballard, one of the original Supremes, died in Detroit, Michigan. She was 32. Ballard had said that she never received a royalty check prior to 1967 for any of her work with the Supremes, who featured Diana Ross and included Mary Wilson.

1981: Dolly Parton reached the top spot on the pop music charts with "9 to 5", from the movie of the same name, in which Dolly starred with Lili Tomlin and Jane Fonda.

1982: Legendary disc jockey, Murray The K died in Los Angeles.

1988: TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart tearfully confessed to his congregation in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, that he was guilty of an unspecified sin, and said he was leaving the pulpit temporarily. (Reports linked Swaggart to an admitted prostitute, Debra Murphree.)

1989: President Bush called Ayatollah Khomeini's death warrant against "Satanic Verses" author Salman Rushdie "deeply offensive to the norms of civilized behavior."

1990: Addressing the U.S. Congress, Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel said his nation welcomed U.S. help after decades of Soviet domination, but also said Europe should eventually "decide for itself" how long American and Soviet troops should remain.

1991: The Soviet Union announced that Iraq had agreed to a proposal for ending the Persian Gulf War but the Bush administration called the plan unacceptable. 

1991: Ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn died in Panama City at age 71. 

1992: Kristi Yamaguchi of the United States won the gold medal in women's figure skating at the Albertville Olympics; Midori Ito of Japan won the silver, Nancy Kerrigan of the US the bronze.

1993: Four days after suspending Bosnian relief operations because of interference from Serbs, Muslims and Croats, the UN high commissioner for refugees (Sadako Ogata) ordered full resumption of the aid effort, following a rebuke from UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

1994: With Bosnian Serbs complying with a NATO ultimatum to remove its heavy guns from around Sarajevo, President Clinton promised renewed US efforts to help "reinvigorate the peace process."

1995: The United States and Mexico signed an agreement to unlock $20 billion in U.S. support to stabilize the peso, but under tough conditions.

1995: Chicago stockbroker Steve Fossett became the first person to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon, landing in Leader, Saskatchewan, Canada.

The Space Telescope Science Institute announced that photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope confirmed the existence of a "black hole" equal to the mass of two billion suns in a galaxy some 30 million light-years away. 

1997: Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr reversed his decision to resign.

1997: The space shuttle "Discovery" returned to earth after a mission to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope.

1997: A bomb exploded at a gay and lesbian nightclub in Atlanta, injuring five people.

1998: UN Secretary-General Koei Annan began formal talks with Iraqi officials in the standoff over weapons inspections.

1998: New flash flood warnings went up in northern California, as a powerful storm lashed the region with heavy rains and strong winds. The storm dumped a half inch more of rain on San Francisco, which has logged the wettest February since records began in 1849.

1998: Russia and Japan signed a breakthrough treaty giving Japanese fishermen access to waters around the Kurile islands, which lie at the heart of half a century of disputes between Moscow and Tokyo.

1998: The UN reported that heavy rains intensified in Peru as a result of the El Nino freak weather condition that battered Peru since mid-December. Bridges and roads were distroyed isolating towns and villages and bringing disease and an outbreak of malaria. Mudslides and floods killed more than 200 Peruvians and left some 200,000 homeless. 

1999: Secretary of State Madeleine Albright reported little progress toward a Kosovo peace settlement during talks in Rambouillet, France.

2000: Consumer advocate Ralph Nader announced his entry into the presidential race, bidding for the nomination of the Green Party.