• 1500 - Battle of Hemmingstedt.
• 1600 - Philosopher Giordano Bruno is burned alive at Campo de' Fiori in Rome, charged of heresy.
• 1621 - Myles Standish is appointed as first commander of Plymouth colony.
• 1753 - February 17 is followed by March 1 as Sweden moves from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar.
• 1801 - An electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr is resolved when Jefferson is elected President of the United States and Burr Vice President by the United States House of Representatives.
• 1814 - Battle of Mormans.
• 1819 - The United States House of Representatives passes the Missouri Compromise.
• 1854 - The British recognizes the independence of the Orange Free State.
• 1864 - American Civil War: The H. L. Hunley becomes the first submarine to engage and sink a warship, the USS Housatonic.
• 1865 - American Civil War: Columbia, South Carolina is burned as Confederate forces flee from advancing Union forces.
• 1867 - The first ship passes through the Suez Canal.
• 1871 - The victorious Prussian Army parades though Paris, France after the end of the Siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War.
• 1904 - Madama Butterfly premiers at La Scala in Milan.
• 1913 - The Armory Show opens in New York City, displaying works of artists who are to become some of the most influential painters of the early 20th century.
• 1924 - In Miami, Florida, Johnny Weissmuller sets a new world record in the 100-yard freestyle swimming competition with a time of 52-2/5 seconds.
• 1925 - Harold Ross and Jane Grant found The New Yorker magazine; the debut issue is dated February 21, 1925.
• 1933 - The magazine Newsweek is published for the first time.
• 1933 - The Blaine Act ends Prohibition in the United States.
• 1936 - The world's first superhero, The Phantom, makes his first appearance in comics.
• 1944 - World War II: Battle of Eniwetok Atoll begins. The battle ends in an American victory on February 22.
• 1944 - World War II: Operation Hailstone begins. U.S. naval air, surface, and submarine attack against Truk (Chuuk), Japan's main base in the central Pacific, in support of the Eniwetok invasion.
• 1947 - The Voice of America begins to transmit radio broadcasts into the Soviet Union.
• 1957 - A fire at a home for the elderly in Warrenton, Missouri kills 72 people.
• 1958 - Pope Pius XII declares Saint Clare of Assisi (1193~1253) the patron saint of television.
• 1959 - Project Vanguard: Vanguard 2 - The first weather satellite launched to measure cloud-cover distribution.
• 1962 - A storm kills more than 300 people in Hamburg, West Germany.
• 1964 - In Wesberry v. Sanders the Supreme Court of the United States rules that congressional districts have to be approximately equal in population.
• 1968 - In Springfield, Massachusetts the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame opens.
• 1972 - Sales of the Volkswagen Beetle model exceed those of Ford Model-T.
• 1974 - Robert K. Preston, a disgruntled U.S. Army private, buzzes the White House with a stolen helicopter.
• 1979 - The Sino-Vietnamese War begins.
• 1992 - A court in Milwaukee, Wisconsin sentences serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer to life in prison.
• 1995 - Colin Ferguson is convicted of six counts of murder for the December 1993 Long Island Rail Road shootings and later receives a 200+ year sentence.
• 1995 - The Cenepa War between Peru and Ecuador ends on a cease-fire brokered by the UN.
• 1996 - In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, world champion Garry Kasparov beats the Deep Blue supercomputer in a chess match.
• 2003 - The London Congestion Charge scheme begins.
• 2006 - A massive mudslide occurs in Southern Leyte, Philippines; the official death toll is set at 1,126.
• 2008 - Kosovo declares independence from Serbia.

Births