February 28: What Happened on This Day in History (High_school Level)?

(Page last edited 10/12/2017)

1. 202 BC - coronation ceremony of Liu Bang as Emperor Gaozu of Han takes place, initiating four centuries of the Han Dynasty's rule over China.
2. 1525 - The Aztec king Cuauhtémoc is executed by Hernán Cortés's forces.
3. 1827 - The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad is incorporated, becoming the first railroad in America offering commercial transportation of both people and freight.
4. 1885 - The American Telephone and Telegraph Company is incorporated in New York Stateas the subsidiary of American Bell Telephone. (American Bell would later merge with its subsidiary.)
5. 935 - DuPont scientist Wallace Carothers invents nylon.
6. 1953 - James D. Watson and Francis Crick announce to friends that they have determined the chemical structure of DNA; the formal announcement takes place on April 25 following publication in April's Nature (pub. April 2).
7. 1959 - Discoverer 1, an American spy satellite that is the first object intended to achieve apolar orbit, is launched. It failed to achieve orbit.
8. 1997 - GRB 970228, a highly luminous flash of gamma rays, strikes the Earth for 80 seconds, providing early evidence that gamma-ray bursts occur well beyond the Milky Way.
9. 1998 - First flight of RQ-4 Global Hawk, the first unmanned aerial vehicle certified to file its own flight plans and fly regularly in U.S. civilian airspace.
10. 2013 - Pope Benedict XVI resigns as the pope of the Catholic Church becoming the first pope to do so since 1415.
11. Famous Birthdays: John Pearson (English bishop, theologian, and scholar), Benjamin Wadsworth (American clergyman and academic), Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov (Russian poet and playwright), Philip Showalter Hench (American physician, Nobel Prize laureate), Linus Pauling (American chemist and activist, Nobel Prize laureate)

For famous birthdays and other daily events in history, visit our Daily Dose Activities.

Click Here for Yesterday in History: February 27

Click Here for Tomorrow in History: March 1

For more history resources on Internet 4 Classrooms, visit our Social Studies and History index. For Pre K-8th Grade Level History and Social Studies Resources, visit our Grade Level Index.