2 Esfand 1399

Events

• 1872 (154 years ago) The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens in New York City.
• 1933 (93 years ago) Adolf Hitler secretly meets with German industrialists to arrange for financing of the Nazi Party's upcoming election campaign.
• 1942 (84 years ago) World War II: Lieutenant Edward O'Hare becomes America's first World War II flying ace.
• 1962 (64 years ago) Mercury program: While aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth, making three orbits in four hours, 55 minutes.
• 1968 (58 years ago) The China Academy of Space Technology, China's main arm for the research, development, and creation of space satellites, is established in Beijing.
• 1979 (47 years ago) 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.
• 1988 (38 years ago) The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast votes to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia, triggering the First Nagorno-Karabakh War.
• 1991 (35 years ago) In the Albanian capital Tirana, a gigantic statue of Albania's long-time leader, Enver Hoxha, is brought down by mobs of angry protesters.

Births

• 1844 (182 years ago) Ludwig Boltzmann, Austrian physicist and philosopher (died 1906)
• 1925 (101 years ago) Robert Altman, American director and screenwriter (died 2006)
• 1927 (99 years ago) Sidney Poitier, Bahamian-American actor, director, and diplomat (died 2022)
• 1945 (81 years ago) George Smoot, American astrophysicist and cosmologist, shared the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics (died 2025)
• 1951 (75 years ago) Gordon Brown, Scottish politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
• 1967 (59 years ago) Kurt Cobain, American musician (died 1994)
• 1988 (38 years ago) Rihanna, Barbadian singer, songwriter, businesswoman, and actress
• 2003 (23 years ago) Olivia Rodrigo, American actress and singer

Deaths

• 1054 (972 years ago) Yaroslav the Wise, grand prince of Veliky Novgorod and Kyiv (born 978)
• 1431 (595 years ago) Pope Martin V,
• 1790 (236 years ago) Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor (born 1741)
• 1895 (131 years ago) Frederick Douglass, American author and activist (born c. 1818)
• 1907 (119 years ago) Henri Moissan, French chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1852)
• 1966 (60 years ago) Chester W. Nimitz, American admiral (born 1885)
• 1972 (54 years ago) Maria Goeppert-Mayer, German-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1906)
• 2005 (21 years ago) Hunter S. Thompson, American journalist and author (born 1937)

All 309 events, births and deaths of February 20