26 Bahman 1384

Events

• 1214 (812 years ago) During the Anglo-French War (1213–1214), an English invasion force led by John, King of England, lands at La Rochelle in France.
• 1493 (533 years ago) While on board the Niña, Christopher Columbus writes an open letter (widely distributed upon his return to Portugal) describing his discoveries and the unexpected items he came across in the New World.
• 1798 (228 years ago) The Roman Republic is proclaimed after Louis-Alexandre Berthier, a general of Napoleon, had invaded the city of Rome five days earlier.
• 1852 (174 years ago) The Helsinki Cathedral (known as St. Nicholas' Church at time) is officially inaugurated in Helsinki, Finland.
• 1898 (128 years ago) The battleship USS Maine explodes and sinks in Havana harbor in Cuba, killing about 274 of the ship's roughly 354 crew. The disaster pushes the United States to declare war on Spain.
• 1923 (103 years ago) Greece becomes the last European country to adopt the Gregorian calendar.
• 1989 (37 years ago) Soviet–Afghan War: The Soviet Union officially announces that all of its troops have left Afghanistan.
• 2012 (14 years ago) Three hundred and sixty people die in a fire at a Honduran prison in the city of Comayagua.

Births

• 1564 (462 years ago) Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer, physicist, and mathematician (died 1642)
• 1710 (316 years ago) Louis XV of France,
• 1748 (278 years ago) Jeremy Bentham, English jurist and philosopher (died 1832)
• 1820 (206 years ago) Susan B. Anthony, American suffragist and activist (died 1906)
• 1861 (165 years ago) Alfred North Whitehead, English mathematician and philosopher (died 1947)
• 1861 (165 years ago) Charles Édouard Guillaume, Swiss-French physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1938)
• 1874 (152 years ago) Ernest Shackleton, Anglo-Irish captain and explorer (died 1922)
• 1952 (74 years ago) Tomislav Nikolić, Serbian politician, 4th President of Serbia

Deaths

• 1781 (245 years ago) Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, German philosopher, author, and critic (born 1729)
• 1857 (169 years ago) Mikhail Glinka, Russian composer (born 1804)
• 1869 (157 years ago) Ghalib, Indian poet and educator (born 1796)
• 1928 (98 years ago) H. H. Asquith, English lawyer and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (born 1852)
• 1959 (67 years ago) Owen Willans Richardson, English physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1879)
• 1965 (61 years ago) Nat King Cole, American singer and pianist (born 1919)
• 1988 (38 years ago) Richard Feynman, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1918)
• 2026 Robert Duvall, American actor and filmmaker (born 1931)

All 325 events, births and deaths of February 15