Events on February 20 45
Year 1339
The Milanese army and the St. George's (San Giorgio) Mercenaries of Lodrisio Visconti clashed in the Battle of Parabiago.
Year 1472
Orkney and Shetland are pawned by Norway to Scotland in lieu of a dowry for Margaret of Denmark.
Year 1685
René-Robert Cavelier establishes Fort St. Louis at Matagorda Bay thus forming the basis for France's claim to Texas.
Year 1792
The Postal Service Act, establishing the United States Post Office Department, is signed by United States President George Washington.
Year 1810
Andreas Hofer, Tirolean patriot and leader of rebellion against Napoleon's forces, is executed.
Year 1813
Manuel Belgrano defeats the royalist army of Pío de Tristán during the Battle of Salta.
Year 1816
Rossini's opera The Barber of Seville premieres at the Teatro Argentina in Rome.
Year 1846
Polish insurgents lead an uprising in Kraków to incite a fight for national independence.
Year 1864
American Civil War: Battle of Olustee: The largest battle fought in Florida during the war.
Year 1865
End of the Uruguayan War, with a peace agreement between President Tomás Villalba and rebel leader Venancio Flores, setting the scene for the destructive War of the Triple Alliance.
Year 1877
Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake receives its premiere at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.
Year 1913
King O'Malley drives in the first survey peg to mark commencement of work on the construction of Canberra.
Year 1931
The Congress of the United States approves the construction of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge by the state of California.
Year 1933
The Congress of the United States proposes the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution that will end Prohibition in the United States.
Year 1933
Adolf Hitler secretly meets with German industrialists to arrange for financing of the Nazi Party's upcoming election campaign.
Year 1943
American movie studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor movies.
Year 1943
The Saturday Evening Post publishes the first of Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms in support of United States President Franklin Roosevelt's 1941 State of the Union address theme of Four Freedoms.
Year 1944
World War II: The "Big Week" began with American bomber raids on German aircraft manufacturing centers.
Year 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.
Year 1959
The Avro Arrow program to design and manufacture supersonic jet fighters in Canada is cancelled by the Diefenbaker government amid much political debate.
Year 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.
Year 1965
Ranger 8 crashes into the Moon after a successful mission of photographing possible landing sites for the Apollo program astronauts.
Year 1971
The United States Emergency Broadcast System is accidentally activated in an erroneous national alert.
Year 1979
Earthquake cracks Sinila volcanic crater in Dieng Plateau, releases poisonous H2S gas and kills 149 villagers in Indonesian province of Central Java.
Year 1986
The Soviet Union launches its Mir spacecraft. Remaining in orbit for 15 years, it is occupied for ten of those years.
Year 1988
The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast votes to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia, triggering the Nagorno-Karabakh War.
Year 1991
In the Albanian capital Tirana, a gigantic statue of Albania's long-time leader, Enver Hoxha, is brought down by mobs of angry protesters.
Year 1998
American figure skater Tara Lipinski becomes the youngest gold-medalist at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.
Year 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.
Year 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.
Year 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.
Year 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.
Year 2014
Dozens of Euromaidan anti-government protesters died in Ukraine's capital Kiev, many reportedly killed by snipers.
Year 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.
Year 2016
Six people are killed and two injured in multiple shooting incidents in Kalamazoo County, Michigan.