February 20
Events
Pre-1600
- 1339 - The Milanese army and the St. George's Mercenaries of Lodrisio Visconti clash in the Battle of Parabiago; Visconti is defeated.
- 1472 - Orkney and Shetland are pawned by Norway to Scotland in lieu of a dowry for Margaret of Denmark.
- 1521 - Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León sets out from San Juan, Puerto Rico, for Florida with about 200 prospective colonists.
- 1547 - Edward VI of England is crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey.
- 1553 - Yohannan Sulaqa professes his Catholic belief and is ordained as bishop shortly after; this marks the beginning of the Chaldean Catholic Church.
1601–1900
- 1685 - René-Robert Cavelier establishes Fort St. Louis at Matagorda Bay thus forming the basis for France's claim to Texas.
- 1792 - The Postal Service Act, establishing the United States Post Office Department, is signed by United States President George Washington.
- 1798 - Louis-Alexandre Berthier removes Pope Pius VI from power.
- 1813 - Manuel Belgrano defeats the royalist army of Pío de Tristán during the Battle of Salta.
- 1816 - Rossini's opera The Barber of Seville premieres at the Teatro Argentina in Rome.
- 1824 - William Buckland formally announces the name Megalosaurus, the first scientifically validly named non-avian dinosaur species.
- 1835 - The 1835 Concepción earthquake destroys Concepción, Chile.
- 1846 - Polish insurgents lead an uprising in Kraków to incite a fight for national independence.
- 1864 - American Civil War: Battle of Olustee: The largest battle fought in Florida during the war.
- 1865 - End of the Uruguayan War, with a peace agreement between President Tomás Villalba and rebel leader Venancio Flores, setting the scene for the destructive War of the Triple Alliance.
- 1872 - The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens in New York City.
- 1877 - Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake receives its premiere at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.
- 1894 - 20 February bombings by Désiré Pauwels during the Ère des attentats.
1901–present
- 1901 - The legislature of Hawaii Territory convenes for the first time.
- 1905 - The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of Massachusetts's mandatory smallpox vaccination program in Jacobson v. Massachusetts.
- 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.
- 1920 - An earthquake kills between 114 and 130 in Georgia and heavily damages the town of Gori.
- 1931 - The U.S. Congress approves the construction of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge by the state of California.
- 1931 - An anarchist uprising in Encarnación, Paraguay briefly transforms the city into a revolutionary commune.
- 1933 - The U.S. Congress approves the Blaine Act to repeal federal Prohibition in the United States, sending the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution to state ratifying conventions for approval.
- 1933 - Adolf Hitler secretly meets with German industrialists to arrange for financing of the Nazi Party's upcoming election campaign.
- 1935 - Caroline Mikkelsen becomes the first woman to set foot in Antarctica.
- 1939 - Madison Square Garden Nazi rally: The largest ever pro-Nazi rally in United States history is convened in Madison Square Garden, New York City, with 20,000 members and sympathizers of the German American Bund present.
- 1942 - World War II: Lieutenant Edward O'Hare becomes America's first World War II flying ace.
- 1943 - World War II: American movie studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor movies.
- 1943 - The Saturday Evening Post publishes the first of Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms in support of United States President Franklin Roosevelt's 1941 State of the Union address theme of Four Freedoms.
- 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 Atoll.
- 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.
- 1956 - The United States Merchant Marine Academy becomes a permanent Service Academy.
- 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 becomes the first American to orbit the Earth, making three orbits in four hours, 55 minutes.
- 1965 - Ranger 8 crashes into the Moon after a successful mission of photographing possible landing sites for the Apollo program astronauts.
- 1968 - The China Academy of Space Technology, China's main arm for the research, development, and creation of space satellites, is established in Beijing.
- 1971 - The United States Emergency Broadcast System is accidentally activated in an erroneous national alert.
- 1979 - An earthquake cracks open the Sinila volcanic crater on the Dieng Plateau, releasing poisonous H2S gas and killing 149 villagers in the Indonesian province of Central Java.
- 1986 - The Soviet Union launches its Mir spacecraft. Remaining in orbit for 15 years, it is occupied for ten of those years.
- 1988 - The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast votes to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia, triggering the First Nagorno-Karabakh War.
- 1991 - In the Albanian capital Tirana, a gigantic statue of Albania's long-time leader, Enver Hoxha, is brought down by mobs of angry protesters.
- 1998 - American figure skater Tara Lipinski, at the age of 15, becomes the youngest Olympic figure skating gold-medalist at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.
- 2003 - During a Great White concert in West Warwick, Rhode Island, a pyrotechnics display sets the Station nightclub ablaze, killing 100 and injuring over 200 others.
- 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.
- 2009 - Two Tamil Tigers aircraft packed with C4 explosives en route to the national airforce headquarters are shot down by the Sri Lankan military before reaching their target, in a kamikaze style attack.
- 2010 - In Madeira Island, Portugal, heavy rain causes floods and mudslides, resulting in at least 43 deaths, in the worst disaster in the history of the archipelago.
- 2014 - Dozens of Euromaidan anti-government protesters died in Ukraine's capital Kyiv, many reportedly killed by snipers.
- 2015 - Two trains collide in the Swiss town of Rafz resulting in as many as 49 people injured and Swiss Federal Railways cancelling some services.
- 2016 - Six people are killed and two injured in multiple shooting incidents in Kalamazoo County, Michigan.
Births
Pre-1600
- 1358 - Eleanor of Aragon, queen of John I of Castile
- 1469 - Thomas Cajetan, Italian philosopher
- 1523 - Jan Blahoslav, Czech writer
- 1549 - Francesco Maria II della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, last Duke of Urbino
- 1552 - Sengoku Hidehisa, Daimyō
1601–1900
- 1608 - Arthur Capell, 1st Baron Capell of Hadham
- 1631 - Thomas Osborne, 1st Duke of Leeds, English politician, Treasurer of the Navy
- 1633 - Jan de Baen, Dutch painter
- 1705 - Nicolas Chédeville, French musette player and composer
- 1726 - William Prescott, American colonel
- 1744 - William Cornwallis, English admiral and politician
- 1745 - Henry James Pye, English poet and politician
- 1748 - Luther Martin, American politician
- 1751 - Johann Heinrich Voss, German poet, translator, and academic
- 1753 - Louis-Alexandre Berthier, French general and politician, French Minister of Defence
- 1756 - Angelica Schuyler Church, American socialite, sister-in-law to Alexander Hamilton
- 1759 - Johann Christian Reil, German physician, physiologist, and anatomist
- 1774 - Vicente Sebastián Pintado, Spanish cartographer, engineer, military officer and land surveyor of Spanish Louisiana and Spanish West Florida
- 1784 - Judith Montefiore, British linguist, travel writer, philanthropist
- 1792 - Eliza Courtney, French daughter of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire
- 1794 - William Carleton, Irish author
- 1802 - Charles Auguste de Bériot, Belgian violinist and composer
- 1819 - Alfred Escher, Swiss businessman and politician
- 1839 - Benjamin Waugh, English activist, founded the NSPCC
- 1844 - Ludwig Boltzmann, Austrian physicist and philosopher
- 1844 - Joshua Slocum, Canadian sailor and adventurer
- 1848 - E. H. Harriman, American businessman and philanthropist
- 1857 - A. P. Lucas, English cricketer
- 1866 - Carl Westman, Swedish architect, designed the Stockholm Court House and Röhsska Museum
- 1867 - Louise, Princess Royal of England
- 1870 - Jay Johnson Morrow, American engineer and politician, 3rd Governor of the Panama Canal Zone
- 1874 - Mary Garden, Scottish-American soprano and actress
- 1879 - Hod Stuart, Canadian ice hockey player
- 1880 - Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen, French author and poet
- 1882 - Elie Nadelman, Polish-American sculptor
- 1887 - Vincent Massey, Canadian lawyer and politician, 18th Governor General of Canada
- 1888 - Georges Bernanos, French soldier and author
- 1889 - Hulusi Behçet, Turkish dermatologist and physician
- 1893 - Elizabeth Holloway Marston, American psychologist and author
- 1895 - Louis Zborowski, English race car driver and engineer
- 1897 - Ivan Albright, American painter
- 1898 - Ante Ciliga, Croatian politician, writer and publisher
- 1899 - Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, American businessman and philanthropist