Events on February 29 34
Year 1504
Christopher Columbus uses his knowledge of a lunar eclipse that night to convince Native Americans to provide him with supplies.
Year 1704
Queen Anne's War: French forces and Native Americans stage a raid on Deerfield, Massachusetts Bay Colony, killing 56 villagers and taking more than 100 captive.
Year 1712
February 29 is followed by February 30 in Sweden, in a move to abolish the Swedish calendar for a return to the Julian calendar.
Year 1720
Ulrika Eleonora, Queen of Sweden abdicates in favour of her husband, who becomes King Frederick I on 24 March.
Year 1796
The Jay Treaty between the United States and Great Britain comes into force, facilitating ten years of peaceful trade between the two nations.
Year 1864
American Civil War: Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid fails: Plans to free 15,000 Union soldiers being held near Richmond, Virginia are thwarted.
Year 1916
Child labor: In South Carolina, the minimum working age for factory, mill, and mine workers is raised from twelve to fourteen years old.
Year 1940
For her performance as "Mammy" in Gone with the Wind, Hattie McDaniel becomes the first African American to win an Academy Award.
Year 1940
In a ceremony held in Berkeley, California, because of the war, physicist Ernest Lawrence receives the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics from Sweden's Consul General in San Francisco.
Year 1944
World War II: The Admiralty Islands are invaded in Operation Brewer led by American General Douglas MacArthur.
Year 1960
The 5.7 Mw Agadir earthquake shakes coastal Morocco with a maximum perceived intensity of X (Extreme), destroying Agadir, and leaving 12,000 dead and another 12,000 injured.
Year 1964
In Sydney, Australian swimmer Dawn Fraser sets a new world record in the 100-meter freestyle swimming competition (58.9 seconds).
Year 1972
Vietnam War: Vietnamization: South Korea withdraws 11,000 of its 48,000 troops from Vietnam.
Year 1980
Gordie Howe of the then Hartford Whalers makes NHL history as he scores his 800th goal.
Year 1988
South African archbishop Desmond Tutu is arrested along with 100 clergymen during a five-day anti-apartheid demonstration in Cape Town.
Year 1988
Svend Robinson becomes the first member of the Canadian House of Commons to come out as gay.
Year 2000
Second Chechen War: Eighty-four Russian paratroopers are killed in a rebel attack on a guard post near Ulus Kert.
Year 2008
The United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence decides to withdraw Prince Harry from a tour of Afghanistan "immediately" after a leak led to his deployment being reported by foreign media.
Year 2008
Misha Defonseca admits to fabricating her memoir, Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years, in which she claimed to have lived with a pack of wolves in the woods during the Holocaust.
Year 2012
Tokyo Skytree construction completed. It is, as of 2017, the tallest tower in the world, 634 meters high, and second tallest (man-made) structure on Earth, next to Burj Khalifa.