Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/February 20
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. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition might be controversial or on a day that is or will soon be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.
Please note that the events listed on the Main Page are chosen based more on relative article quality and to maintain a mix of topics, not based solely on how important or significant their subjects are. Only four to five events are posted at a time and thus not everything that is "most important and significant" can be listed. In addition, an event is generally not posted this year if it is also the subject of the scheduled featured article, featured list or picture of the day.
To report an error when this appears on the Main Page, see Main Page errors. Please remember that this list defers to the supporting articles, so it is best to achieve consensus and make any necessary changes there first.
Images
Use only ONE image at a time
-
Shetland -
King O'Malley -
Andreas Hofer -
John George Diefenbaker -
John Glenn -
A Ranger spacecraft (NASA) -
Robert de la Salle
Ineligible
| Blurb | Reason |
|---|---|
| Lundi Gras | no footnotes |
| 1810 – Andreas Hofer, a Tyrolean patriot and the leader of a rebellion against Napoleon's forces, was executed by firing squad. | no footnotes |
| 1816 – Italian composer Gioachino Rossini's opera buffa The Barber of Seville, based on the first Figaro play by French playwright Pierre Beaumarchais, debuted at the Teatro Argentina in Rome. | refimprove section |
| 1872 – New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, today containing a collection of over two million works of art, opened. | unreferenced section, linkrot |
| 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. | Save for 12 March |
| 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. | Tagged with {{refimprove}}, John Glenn featured on October 29 |
| 1965 – NASA's Ranger 8 spacecraft successfully transmitted 7,137 photographs of the Moon in the final 23 minutes of its mission before crashing into Mare Tranquillitatis. | no footnotes |
| 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. | no footnotes |
Eligible
- 1685 – French colonists, led by Robert de La Salle, landed at Matagorda Bay in present-day Texas, which later allowed the United States to claim the region as part of the Louisiana Purchase.
- 1864 – American Civil War: The Union suffered one of its bloodiest losses at the Battle of Olustee near Lake City, Florida.
- 1943 – The Saturday Evening Post published the first of Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms, some of the most widely distributed paintings ever produced, in support of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms".
- 1959 – The Canadian government under Prime Minister John Diefenbaker cancelled the Avro CF-105 Arrow interceptor aircraft program amid much political debate.
- 1992 – Texas industrialist Ross Perot's U.S. presidential campaign began when he opened up the possibility of running as an independent candidate while appearing on the talk show Larry King Live.
- 2009 – The Tamil Tigers attempted to crash two aircraft packed with C-4 in suicide attacks on Colombo, Sri Lanka, but the planes were shot down before they reached their targets.
February 20: Shrove Monday (Western Christianity, 2012); Family Day in various regions of Canada (2012); Washington's Birthday/Presidents' Day in the United States (2012)
- 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.
- 1943 – A fissure opened in a cornfield in the Mexican state of Michoacán and turned into the cinder cone volcano Parícutin (pictured), growing 424 m (1,391 ft) in eight years.
- 1988 – The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast voted to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia, triggering the Nagorno-Karabakh War.
- 1998 – At the age of 15, American figure skater Tara Lipinski became the youngest gold medal winner in the history of the Winter Olympic Games.
- 2010 – Severe flooding and mudslides on the island of Madeira, Portugal, killed 42 people.