8th February 1867: The Ausgleich, or the Austro-Hungarian Compromise, establishes the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary
The empire was reorganised into two legally distinct states governed from Vienna and Budapest. Each possessed its own parliament and domestic administration, but they shared a single monarch who ruled...
8 Feb 0s
7th February 1495: Savonarola’s Bonfire of the Vanities
Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola led the burning of thousands of objects in the Bonfire of the ...
7 Feb 0s
6th February 1958: Munich Air Disaster kills 23 members of the Manchester United football team after BEA flight 609 crashes at Munich-Riem airport
Flight 609 hit slush on the runway, causing the plane to skid off the end of the runway before crashing through the airport fence, speeding across a road, and losing its port wing after catching on a ...
6 Feb 0s
5th February 1597: The Twenty-Six Martyrs of Japan executed in Nagasaki
The group, which included six foreign Franciscan friars, three Japanese Jesuits, and seventeen Japanese lay Christians, was sentenced to death by Toyotomi Hideyoshi after statements from a shipwrecked...
5 Feb 0s
4th February 1945: Yalta Conference begins, attended by the ‘Big Three’ of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin
The conference saw Allied leaders United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin meet to discuss the government of post-war .....
4 Feb 0s
3rd February 1961: Operation Looking Glass begins its 29-year Cold War flight above the USA
Operation Looking Glass began flying an Airborne Command Post above the United States 24 hours a ...
3 Feb 0s
2nd February 1887: First officially recorded Groundhog Day observance takes place in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania
The custom of predicting the weather using an animal drew on older beliefs brought to North America by German-speaking immigrants, whose tradition stated that clear weather on that date suggested a pr...
2 Feb 0s
1st February 1960: Start of the Greensboro sit-ins to protest segregation
The Greensboro sit-ins began when four black students sat at the ‘whites only’ lunch counter in the Woolworth department ...
1 Feb 0s
