Historical Events on 20 Feb

Historical Events on 20 Feb

1472 - Orkney and Shetland are left by Norway to Scotland, due to a dowry payment.
1547 - Edward VI of England is crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey.
1792 - The Postal Service Act, establishing the United States Post Office Department, is signed by President George Washington.
1798 - Louis Alexandre Berthier removes Pope Pius VI from power.
1810 - Andreas Hofer, Tyrolean patriot and leader of rebellion against Napoleon's forces, was executed.
1816 - Gioachino Rossini's The Barber of Seville debuts at Teatro Argentina, with a fiasco.
1835 - Concepción, Chile is destroyed by an earthquake.
1864 - American Civil War: Battle of Olustee occurs - the largest battle fought in Florida during the war.
1872 - In New York City the Metropolitan Museum of Art opens.
1873 - The University of California opens its first medical school in San Francisco, California.
1901 - The legislature of Hawaii Territory convenes for the first time.
1909 - Publication of the Futurist Manifesto in the French journal Le Figaro.
1913 - King O'Malley drives in the first survey peg to mark commencement of work on the construction of Canberra.
1931 - California gets the go-ahead by the U.S. Congress to build the San Francisco - Oakland Bay Bridge.
1933 - The Congress of the United States proposes the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution, which would end Prohibition in the United States.
1935 - Caroline Mikkelsen becomes the first woman to set foot in Antarctica.
1942 - Lieutenant Edward O'Hare becomes America's first World War II flying ace.
1943 - American movie studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor movies.
1943 - The Parícutin volcano begins to form in Parícutin, Mexico.
1944 - World War II: The "Big Week" began with American bomber raids on German aircraft manufacturing centers.
1944 - World War II: The United States takes Eniwetok Island.
1947 - State of Prussia ceases to exist.
1952 - Emmett Ashford becomes the first African-American umpire in organized baseball by being authorized to be a substitute umpire in the Southwestern International League.
1959 - The Avro Arrow program to design and manufacture supersonic jet fighters in Canada is cancelled by the Diefenbaker government amid much political debate.
1962 - Mercury program: While aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn orbits the earth three times in 4 hours, 55 minutes, becoming the first American to orbit the earth.
1965 - Ranger 8 crashes into the moon after a successful mission of photographing possible landing sites for the Apollo program astronauts.
1976 - The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization disbands.
1987 - Unabomber: In Salt Lake City, Utah, a bomb explodes in a computer store.
1991 - A gigantic statue of Albania's long-time dictator, Enver Hoxha, is brought down in the Albanian capital, Tirana, by mobs of angry protesters.
1998 - American figure skater Tara Lipinski becomes the youngest gold-medalist at the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.
2002 - In Reqa Al-Gharbiya, Egypt, a fire on a train injures over 65 and kills at least 370.
2005 - 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.