This is a list of selected February 20 anniversaries that appear in the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases, you can be bold and edit this page. Before doing so, please review the selected anniversaries guidelines. If your suggestion is potentially controversial or relates to a day currently or soon to appear on the Main Page, post it on the talk page instead.
Please note:
- Events listed on the Main Page are selected based on article quality and to provide a diverse range of topics, rather than solely on the importance or significance of the events.
- Only four or five events are featured each day; therefore, not all important or significant events can be included.
- An event is generally excluded if it is already the subject of the scheduled featured article or picture of the day.
To report an error in content currently on the Main Page, see Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors. If a listed event is inaccurate, please first seek consensus and update the corresponding article before making changes here.
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Images
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Shetland
Andreas Hofer
John George Diefenbaker
John Glenn
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Robert de la Salle
A Ranger spacecraft (NASA)
Photo of the moon taken by Ranger 8
Parícutin
Avro CF-105 Arrow
Ineligible
| Blurb | Reason |
|---|---|
| 1472 – James III of Scotland officially annexed Orkney and Shetland from Christian I of Denmark as part of a dowry payment Christian owed after his daughter Margaret married James. | Orkney: refimprove; Shetland: unreferenced section |
| 1810 – Andreas Hofer, a Tyrolean patriot and the leader of a rebellion against Napoleon's forces, was executed by firing squad. | no footnotes |
| 1913 – Australian politician King O'Malley drove in the first survey peg to mark the commencement of work on the construction of Canberra, a planned city designed by American architect Walter Burley Griffin. | Featured on March 12 |
| 1942 – World War II: American flying ace Edward O'Hare shot down five enemy planes during a single sortie defending the aircraft carrier USS Lexington, and earned himself the Medal of Honor. | refimprove section |
| 1944 – Second World War: Allied forces began a bombing campaign that became known as Big Week, launching massive attacks on the German aircraft industry in an attempt to lure the Luftwaffe into a decisive battle. | unreferenced section |
| 1962 – Aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, circling the planet three times in 4 hours, 55 minutes. | refimprove section, John Glenn featured on October 29 |
| 2005 – Spanish voters passed a referendum on the ratification of the proposed Constitution of the European Union, despite the lowest turnout in any election since the transition to democracy in the 1970s. | unreferenced section |
| Alfred Escher |b|1819 | birthday not cited |
Eligible
- 1685 – The French colonization of Texas began with the landing of colonists led by Robert de La Salle near Matagorda Bay.
- 1835 – An earthquake registering approximately 8.5 Mw devastated Concepción, Chile, and triggered a tsunami that destroyed neighbouring Talcahuano.
- 1864 – American Civil War: The Union Army suffered a one-in-three casualty rate at the Battle of Olustee near Lake City, Florida.
- 1872 – The Metropolitan Museum of Art , today the largest art museum in the United States with a collection of more than two million works, opened in New York.
- 1943 – A fissure opened in a cornfield in the Mexican state of Michoacán and continued to erupt for nine years, forming the cinder cone Parícutin .
- 1959 – Canadian prime minister John Diefenbaker cancelled the Avro CF-105 Arrow (pictured) interceptor-aircraft program amid much political debate.
- 1962 - The Project Mercury stamp, designed by Charles R. Chickering, was released to commemorate the successful space flight of Colonel John Glenn.
- 1970 – Wat Phra Dhammakaya, one of the largest Buddhist temples in Thailand, was founded in Pathum Thani.
- 1988 – The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast voted to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia, triggering the First Nagorno-Karabakh War.
- 1992 – Appearing on the talk show Larry King Live, U.S. industrialist Ross Perot announced that he would begin a presidential campaign if "ordinary people" wanted him to run for office.
- 1998 – At the age of 15, American figure skater Tara Lipinski became the then-youngest winner of an Olympic gold medal in the history of the Winter Olympic Games.
- 2009 – The Tamil Tigers attempted to crash two aircraft laden with C-4 in suicide attacks on Colombo, Sri Lanka, but the planes were shot down before they reached their targets.
- 2010 – Severe flooding and mudslides on the island of Madeira, Portugal, killed 51 people.
- Born/died this day: |Wulfric of Haselbury |d|1154|Laura Bassi |d|1778| Hod Stuart |b|1879| Elizabeth Holloway Marston |b|1893| P. G. T. Beauregard |d|1893| Ivan Albright |b|1897| Ansel Adams |b|1902|Johnny Checketts |b|1912| Maria Goeppert Mayer |d|1972|Gail Kim |b|1977|Jiah Khan |b|1988| Tōru Takemitsu |d|1996
Notes
- Four Freedoms appears on January 6, so Rockwell's Four Freedoms should appear in the same year.
February 20: Day of the Heavenly Hundred Heroes in Ukraine (2014)
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Depiction of the Kraków Uprising
- 1816 – The Barber of Seville, an opera buffa composed by Gioachino Rossini, premiered at the Teatro Argentina in Rome to jeers from the audience.
- 1846 – Polish insurgents in the Free City of Kraków led an uprising (depicted) attempting to incite a fight for national independence that was put down by the Austrian Empire nine days later.
- 1931 – Paraguayan anarchists briefly seized the city of Encarnación as part of a larger plan to initiate a social revolution in the country.
- 1943 – The Saturday Evening Post published the first of Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms, among the most widely distributed paintings ever produced, in support of U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt's Four Freedoms.
- 1965 – The NASA spacecraft Ranger 8 spacecraft transmitted 7,137 photographs of the Moon in the final 23 minutes of its mission before crashing as planned into Mare Tranquillitatis.
- Judith Montefiore (b. 1784)
- Forbes Burnham (b. 1923)
- Percy Grainger (d. 1961)
- Audrey Munson (d. 1996)
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