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February 29: Today in History – Historical Events
Early Centuries – February 29 Historic Events – Before the 1700s
1. 29th Feb 1288: Scottish parliament on this day passed the leap year act whereby women could propose to men.
2. 29th Feb 1504: Columbus used a lunar eclipse to threaten hostile Jamaican Indians.
3. 29th Feb 1692: Five people were on this day accused of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts.
18th Century – What Happened on February 29 – The 1700s
4. 29th Feb 1796: President Washington on this day proclaimed Jay’s treaty, settling some outstanding differences with Great Britain.
19th Century – February 29 This Day That Year – The 1800s
5. 29th Feb 1856: This day marks the end of hostilities in the Russo-Turkish war.
6. 29th Feb 1868: British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli on this day formed his first cabinet.
20th Century – Important Events On This Day February 29th – The 1900s
7. 29th Feb 1904: A seven-member commission was appointed by President Roosevelt to hasten the completion of the Panama Canal.
8. 29th Feb 1908: Solid Helium was produced by a Dutch Scientist.
9. 29th Feb 1913: The airplane patent by the Wright Brothers’ regarding the use of ailerons in a suit against Glen Curtis was on this day upheld by a US Judge.
10. 29th Feb 1920: In an attempt to maintain its freedom from Germany and the USSR, Czechoslovakia, on this day adopted a new constitution.
11. 29th Feb 1932: Eccentric politician “Alfalfa” Murray was featured on the cover page of Time Magazine after he announced that he would run for US President.
12. 29th Feb 1933: The New York Evening Post reported on its front page the famine in Russia. The famine was engineered by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
13. 29th Feb 1936: US President Franklin D Roosevelt on this day signed the 2nd Neutrality Act.
14. 29th Feb 1940: Hattie McDaniel won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She was the first African American to win the Academy Award.
15. 29th Feb 1940: The movie “Gone with the Wind” won eight Academy Awards, including the best picture award in 1939.
16. 29th Feb 1944: Pope John Paul II was on this day run down and injured by a Nazi truck in Krakow.
17. 29th Feb 1944: Five leaders of the Indonesian Communist Party were sentenced to death.
18. 29th Feb 1944: Dorothy Vredenburgh became the first woman secretary of a national political party, the Democratic National Committee.
19. 29th Feb 1944: The US forces caught Japanese troops off-guard and took control of the Admiralty Island in Papua in New Guinea.
20. 29th Feb 1948: The Cairo-Haifa train was bombed by the Stern group. 27 British soldiers died in the bombing.
21. 29th Feb 1952: “Walk/Don’t Walk” signs were first installed at 44th Street, Broadway at Time Square.
22. 29th Feb 1956: The Islamic Republic forms in Pakistan.
23. 29th Feb 1956: President Dwight Eisenhower announced on this day that he would seek a second term.
24. 29th Feb 1960: John F Kennedy made the “missile gap” a presidential campaign issue.
25. 29th Feb 1960: The comic strip “Family Circus” created by Bill Keane made its debut today.
26. 29th Feb 1960: The first Play Boy Club featuring a waitress clad in Bunny outfits opened in Chicago today.
27. 29th Feb 1960: The town of Agadir was destroyed when an earthquake of magnitude 5.7 struck Morocco’s South West Atlantic coast. The quake killed 12,000 people.
28. 29th Feb 1964: President Lyndon B Jonson on this day revealed that the United States had secretly developed the Lockheed A-11 Jet Fighter.
29. 29th Feb 1968: The US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara resigned from office today as a result of the Tet disaster. He was succeeded by Clark Clifford.
30. 29th Feb 1968: Beatles “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” wins the Grammy award.
31. 29th Feb 1968: The US on this day performed a nuclear test at its Nevada test site.
32. 29th Feb 1968: The US on this day put an end to regular flights with nuclear bombs.
33. 29th Feb 1968: President Lyndon B Johnson’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, also known as the Kerner Commission warned that racism was causing America to move “towards two societies, one black one white – separate and unequal”.
34. 29th Feb 1968: Dr. Jocelyn Bell Burnell of Cambridge University announced on this day the discovery of the first “pulsar” the star that emits regular radio waves.
35. 29th Feb 1972: Henry “Hank” Aaron became the first baseball player to sign a contract of $200,000 per year.
36. 29th Feb 1980: Michael Bracey was rescued after being trapped for 59 hours and 55 minutes in an elevator.
37. 29th Feb 1980: President Carter on this day signed a law that renamed “Arctic National Wildlife Range” to “Arctic National Wildlife Refuge”, doubling its size. The law directed the Interior Department to assess oil potential in the 1.5 million acres of coastal plain. A ban was imposed on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Range.
38. 29th Feb 1984: Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau on this day announced that he would be stepping down from office. He was in power for more than 15 years.
39. 29th Feb 1984: Liberace’s palimony suit was on this day thrown out of court.
40. 29th Feb 1984: One of the largest battles in the Iran-Iraq war began on this day. The clash of the two armies resulted in fatalities of more than 25,000.
41. 29th Feb 1988: Desmond Tutu the Archbishop of South Africa and other religious leaders were on this day arrested for kneeling near the parliament with a petition against government bans on anti-apartheid groups. They were however freed later.
42. 29th Feb 1988: A Nazi document which was discovered today, implicated the participation of Austrian President and former UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim in World War II deportation.
43. 29th Feb 1996: About 30 executives from the TV and entertainment industry met President Clinton in the White House and promised to devise a TV ratings system.
44. 29th Feb 1996: All the 123 people on board a Peruvian commercial jetliner lost their lives when it crashed in the Andes.
45. 29th Feb 1996: Spacecraft Soyuz TM-23 landed on this day.
46. 29th Feb 1996: In the cricket world cup, Kenya defeated West Indies (93 all out).
47. 29th Feb 1996: Daniel Green was on this day convicted and sentenced to life in prison on charges of murdering James R. Jordan, father of basketball star Michael Jordan, in a roadside hold-up.
21st Century – February 29 This Day In History – The 2000s
48. 29th Feb 2000: George W Bush beat John McCain in Virginia, Washington, and North Dakota primaries.
49. 29th Feb 2000: Doris Haddock (90), known as “Granny D”, completed a trek of 3200 miles from Washington to California today to urge Congress to enact reforms.
50. 29th Feb 2000: The Indian government on this day announced a 28.2% increase in military spending, tax increase on higher income people, and cuts in government payrolls.
51. 29th Feb 2000: In Nigeria, the government agreed with the northern leaders to stop enforcing Shariah where it was in effect and not to adopt it in other regions for the time being due to recent clashes.
52. 29th Feb 2004: In an election depicting pent-up anger over his push to cut cherished state benefits, voters in Hamburg elections handed a stinging defeat to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s party.
53. 29th Feb 2004: A bus carrying migrant workers to faraway factory jobs plunged off a mountain road. 12 people died and 35 others were injured.
54. 29th Feb 2004: Israel’s Supreme Court on this day ordered the suspending of work for one week on a section of the West Bank security barrier.
55. 29th Feb 2004: A senior poultry industry executive on this day was slammed by the agriculture minister of Japan for not reporting the death of tens of thousands of chickens on the farm where the officials confirmed the third outbreak of bird flu in the country.
56. 29th Feb 2004: Haiti’s President Jean-Bertrand Aristide resigned today and went into exile creating Chaos in the capital.
57. 29th Feb 2004: A bombing by the Basque separatist group ETA was averted in Spain when a civil guard stopped a small truck and found about 1100 pounds of bomb-making chemicals.
58. 29th Feb 2008: The Defense Department officials in the US announced on this day that they had formally agreed to implement the long Distance Defense Telephone Link (DTL) with China. The US and China established a hotline between their defense ministries.
59. 29th Feb 2008: It was on this day ruled by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals that the US Navy must protect endangered whales from the potentially lethal effects of sonar during the submarine training off Southern California Coast.
60. 29th Feb 2008: Algerian security forces chased some 30 Islamic insurgents planting roadside bombs back into their refuge east of Algiers.
61. 29th Feb 2008: Taliban militants blew up a telecommunication tower in Afghanistan following their warning to phone companies to shut down their towers at night or face attack.
62. 29th Feb 2008: The nation’s first felony conviction was affirmed by Virginia’s Supreme Court today for illegal spamming, ruling that Virginia’s anti-spamming law does not violate free-speech rights.
63. 29th Feb 2008: The British military on this day decided to pull Prince Harry out of Afghanistan “immediately” after the news of his deployment was leaked in the foreign media.
64. 29th Feb 2008: In Brazil six alleged drug gang members were shot by the police in Rio de Janeiro while a bodyguard of the state security chief was shot dead in what appeared to be an attempt of robbery.
65. 29th Feb 2008: An overcrowded bus plunged off the road and rolled into a gully in Guatemala, killing 45 and injuring more than 20.
66. 29th Feb 2008: China agreed to release sensitive information about missing soldiers and establish a hotline with the Pentagon.
67. 29th Feb 2008: The UN refugee agency said that 3000 refugees from Darfur have arrived in Chad in the last week, taking the total number of refugees to over 12,000 in February alone.
68. 29th Feb 2008: A suspected Tamil Tiger’s suicide bomber blew himself up in Sri Lanka injuring 7 people as the police were trying to search his house in the heavily guarded Sri Lankan Capital. In a search carried out shortly afterward, the police recovered several powerful Claymore mines.
69. 29th Feb 2008: Peruvian officials today arrested seven members of the Coordinadora Continental Bolivariana, a Venezuela-based leftist movement, including its leader.
70. 29th Feb 2008: In a series of bombings in Pakistan a suicide bomber killed at least 44 people and injured about 90 people in Peshawar, in Pakistan. In the Swat Valley, a police officer was killed. Three people were killed in the Lakki Marwat district in a bomb blast. A suicide bomber rammed his car into a security vehicle during the funeral ceremonies in the evening, killing a civilian, and a security official and injuring several others.
71. 29th Feb 2008: Italian company Eni SpA signed a major oil production agreement with Venezuela
72. 29th Feb 2008: In Ghana 9 Nigerians were sentenced to 5 years in prison each for faking e-mails and letters, which included one from the President of Ghana, to dupe a Frenchman of $185,000/.
73. 29th Feb 2008: France and South Africa on this day signed three economic accords including one for the construction of a coal fuel-powered thermal power plant by French energy giant Alsthom.
74. 29th Feb 2008: Hundreds of Serb police personnel in Kosovo vowed not to follow orders issued by Albanian-dominated forces after its territory split from Serbia.
75. 29th Feb 2008: A fire swept through a passenger train in Bulgaria, killing at least three and injuring many others. The cause of the fire was not known.
76. 29th Feb 2012: After participating in talks with the United States. North Korea has agreed to a moratorium on nuclear missile tests and uranium enrichment. In return, the United States will send 240,000 tons of food to North Korea.
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