February 20 Historical Events

The following events took place on February 20. The list is arranged in chronological order.

Found 51 events. Showing 31 - 51.

• 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.
• 1971
  The United States Emergency Broadcast System is accidentally activated in an erroneous national alert.
• 1978
  The last Order of Victory is bestowed upon Leonid Brezhnev.
• 1986
  The Soviet Union launches its Mir spacecraft. Remaining in orbit for 15 years, it is occupied for ten of those years.
• 1987
  Unabomber: In Salt Lake City, a bomb explodes in a computer store.
• 1988
  The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast votes to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia, triggering the Nagorno-Karabakh War.

• 1989
  An IRA bomb destroys a section of a British Army barracks in Ternhill, England.
• 1991
  A gigantic statue of Albania’s long-time leader, Enver Hoxha, is brought down in the Albanian capital Tirana, by mobs of angry protesters.
• 1998
  American figure skater Tara Lipinski becomes the youngest 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.
• 2006
  In South Korea the United Liberal Democrats, the three top political parties was merged into Grand National Party.
• 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.
• 2013
  The smallest extrasolar planet, Kepler-37b is discovered.
• 2014
  Dozens of Euromaidan anti-government protesters died in Ukraine’s capital Kiev, 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.