This Week in History

USPA NEWS - Battles during WWI and WWII, numerous nuclear tests, the siege in Waco, and Russia invading Crimea are just some of the events that happened this week in history.

February 28: 1909 – The 1st National Women’s Day observed in the United States. 1947 – An anti-government uprising began in Taiwan, violently suppressed by the Kuomintang-led Republic of China government, kills thousands of civilians. 1954 – United States tests hydrogen bomb on Bikini Island. 1956 – Wright Forrester awarded a patent for computer core. 1975 and 1980 – Nuclear tests in Nevada, United States. 1984 – Singer Michael Jackson receives eight Grammy Awards. 1991 – The Gulf War ends. 1993 – The Waco, Texas siege began between the United States ATF and Branch Davidians. 1998 – The Kosovo War began. 2014 - Russia invaded and subsequently annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine.

March 1: 1896 - Henri Becquerel discovers radioactivity. 1912 – United States Army Captain, Albert Berry, performs first parachute jump. 1916 – Germany attacks ships in the Atlantic Ocean during WWI. 1941 – German troops invade Bulgaria and Himmler inspects Auschwitz. 1945 – United States President Franklin Roosevelt Address to Congress on the Yalta Conference. 1954 – Castle Bravo, the first in a series of high-yield thermonuclear weapon design tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll. 1970 – End of United States commercial whale hunting. 1971 – Bomb attack on the Capital in Washington, D.C. 1984 – USSR performs nuclear tests. 1985 – Pentagon accepts theory that atomic war would cause nuclear winter. 2002 – United States invasion of Afghanistan. 2014 – United States President Barack Obama warns Russian President Vladimir Putin over involvement in Ukraine. 2018 – Vladimir Putin claims Russia has an “invincible” intercontinental cruise missile. 2020 – First known COVID-19 case identified in New York, a health care worker returning from Iran.

March 2: 1776 – American troops begin shelling the British in Boston, Massachusetts. 1807 – United States Congress bans the slave trade within the US, effective January 1, 1808. 1855 – Aleksandr Romanov becomes Tsar of Russia. 1882 – Queen Victoria escapes assassination attempt by Roderick Maclean while boarding a train in Windsor. 1888 – The Convention of Constantinople signed, guaranteeing free maritime passage through the Suez Canal during war and peace. 1919 - 1st congress of Communist International opens at the Kremlin. 1933 – The movie “King Kong” starring Fay Wray, premieres in New York City. 1933 – Sanriku earthquake of 8.4 and tsunami hit Japan. 1940 – Soviet armies conquer Tuppura Island, Finland. 1944 – Fumes of a stalled locomotive in a tunnel suffocate 521 in Italy. 1945 – United States 8th Air Force bomb Dresden, Germany. 1946 – Ho Chi Minh elected President of North Vietnam 1962 – President John F. Kennedy announces the US will resume above ground nuclear testing. 1965 – The movie “The Sound of Music” is released. 1965 – US Air Force begins Operation Rolling Thunder, a three year sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam. 1967 – US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site. 1968 – USSR launches space probe Zond 4. It fails to leave Earth orbit. 1969 – First test flight of the supersonic Concorde. 1970 – American Airline’s first flight of a Boeing 747. 1972 – NASA launches its Pioneer 10 space probe to Jupiter. 1974 – Grand jury concludes US President Richard Nixon is involved in Watergate cover-up. 1978 – Soyuz 28 carries two cosmonauts to Salyut 6. 1983 – Compact Disc recordings developed by Phillips and Sony introduced. 1983 – USSR performs underground nuclear test. 1985 – FDA in the US approves screening test for AIDS antibody for all blood banks. 2004 – Rosetta space probe is launched by the European Space Agency. 2014 – President Vladimir Putin receives unanimous approval from Russia’s parliament to send troops to the Ukraine. 2021 – Six books by Dr. Seuss will cease publication because of racist and insensitive imagery.

March 3: 1855 – US Congress approves $30,000 to test camels for military use. 1863 – Abraham Lincoln approves charter for National Academy of Sciences. 1887 – Anne Sullivan begins teaching 6 year old blind-deaf Helen Keller. 1904 – Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany becomes the first person to make a sound recording of a political document, using Thomas Edison’s cylinder. 1913 – Woman suffrage procession through Washington D.C. 1918 – Facing internal counterrevolutionary pressures and external German offensive, Bolsheviks forced to sign Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany and Austria. 1934 – John Dillinger breaks out of jail using a wooden pistol. 1943 – Battle of the Bismarck Sea: Australian and American air forces devastate Japanese navy convoy. 1945 – RAF bombing error hits The Hague, killing 511. 1955 – Elvis Presley makes his first television appearance on the broadcast of “Louisiana Hayride.” 1956 – Elvis Presley’s first hit in Billboard’s top 10: “Heartbreak Hotel.” 1959 – First US probe to enter solar orbit, Pioneer 4, launched. 1965 – US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site. 1965 – USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR. 1967 – US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site. 1969 – Apollo 9 launched for 151 Earth orbits. 1974 – Turkish Airlines Flight 981 crashes in the Ermenonville Forest outside Paris, killing all 346 people onboard. 1991 – The beginning of riots in Los Angeles after police severely beat motorist Rodney King. 1992 – Gas explodes in coal mine at Zonguldak Turkey, 263 die. 2017 – Mass grave of 800 children and infants confirmed at a former Catholic care home in Tuam, Ireland. 2019 – SpaceX’s Dragon capsule successfully docks with the International Space Station during its demonstration run.

March 4: 1665 – English King Charles II declares war on Netherlands. 1699- Jews are expelled from Lubeck, Germany. 1789- First US Congress meets and declares constitution in effect. 1791- First Jewish member of US Congress, Israel Jacobs (PA), takes office. 1798 – Catholic women force to do penance for kindling sabbath fire for Jews. 1861 – Abraham Lincoln is inaugurated as the 16th US President. 1877 – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet “Swan Lake” has its world premiere, performed by the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow. 1894 – Great fire in Shanghai. Over 1,000 buildings destroyed. 1923 – Lenin’s last article in Pravada, about Soviet bureaucracy. 1927 – Babe Ruth becomes the highest paid player in MLB history when he signs 3 year, $70,000 per season contract with the New York Yankees. 1936 – First flight of the airship Hindenburg at Friedrichshafen, Germany. 1943 – Transport #50 departs with French Jews to Maidanek/Sobibor. 1944 – First US bombing of Berlin. 1945 – Finland declares war on Nazi Germany. 1966 – John Lennon says “We (the Beatles) are more popular than Jesus.” 1977 – Earthquake in Romania kills 1,541. 1979 – US Voyager I photo reveals Jupiter’s rings. 1989 – The Louvre Pyramid designed by I.M. Pei is inaugurated by French President Francois Mitterrand. 1994 – Four Arab terrorist found guilty of bombing the World Trade Center. 1997 – US President Clinton bans federally funded human cloning research. 2002 – Canada bans human embryo cloning but permits government funded scientists to use embryos left over from fertility treatment or abortions. 2012 – Vladimir Putin wins Russian presidential election amid allegations of voter fraud. 2018 – Former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal, are poisoned by nerve agent in Salisbury, England. 2019 – US Democrats announce a wide ranging corruption investigation into President Donald Trump.

March 5: 1616 – Astronomical work “de Revolutionibus” by Nicholaus Copernicus placed on Catholic Forbidden index. 1820 – Dutch city of Leeuwarden forbids Jews to go to synagogues on Sundays. 1836 – Samuel Colt manufactures first pistol, the 34-caliber “Texas” model. 1842 – Over 500 Mexican troops led by Rafael Vasquez invade Texas, briefly occupy San Antonio and then head back to the Rio Grande. 1868 – Stapler patented in England by C.H. Gould. 1904 – Nikola Tesla describes the process of the ball lightning formation in Electrical World and Engineer. 1907 – First radio broadcast of a musical composition aired. 1912 – Spanish steamer “Principe de Asturias” sinks northeast of Spain, 500 die. 1924 – Computing-Tabulating-Recording Corp becomes IBM. 1933 – Germany’s Nazi Party wins majority in parliament (43.9% - 17.2 million votes). 1943 – RAF bombs Essen, Germany. 1945 – Allies bomb The Hague, Netherlands. 1945 – World War II: The Battle of the Ruhr begins. 1946 – Hungarian Communists and Social Democrats co-found the Left Bloc. 1962 – US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site. 1966 – US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site. 1968 – US launches Solar Explorer 2 to study the Sun. 1971 – “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin first played live at Ulster Hall, Belfast. 1982 – Russian spacecraft Venera 14 lands on Venus, sends back data. 1995 – Graves of Tsar Nicholas II and family found in St. Petersburg. 2013 – Willcom announces the world’s smallest mobile phone, weighing 32 grams. 2018 – North Korean leader Kim Jong-un meets South Korean officials for the first time since taking office, hosting a dinner in Pyongyang.

March 6: 1799 – Napoleon Bonaparte captures city of Jaffa, Palestine, after a 5 day siege, defeating the Ottoman Empire. 1816- Jews are expelled from the Free city of Lubeck, Germany. 1831- Edgar Allan Poe removed from West Point military academy. 1836 – Battle of the Alamo: After 13 days of fighting, as many as 3,000 Mexican soldiers overwhelm the Texan defenders, killing up to 250. 1853 – Giuseppe Verdi’s Opera “La Traviata” premieres in Venice. 1869 – Dmitri Mendeleev presents the first periodic table of the elements to the Russian Chemical Society. 1899 – “Aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) patented by Felix Hoffmann at German company Bayer. 1904 – The Japanese fleet bombard Vladivostok, the major Russian port on the Pacific. 1918 – US naval boat “Cyclops” disappears in Bermuda Triangle. 1944 – US Air Force begin daylight bombing of Berlin. 1951 – The trial of Soviet spies Julius Rosenberg and his wife Ethel Rosenberg begin. 1953 – Georgy Malenkov becomes chairman of the USSR. 1967 – Joseph Stalin’s daughter Svetlana Allilujeva approaches the US Embassy in New Delhi, India and asks for political asylum. 1981 – France performs nuclear test at Mururoa atoll. 1997 – Picasso’s painting Tete de Femme is stolen from a London gallery and is recovered a week later. 2014 – Crimean parliament votes unanimously to make Crimea part of Russia.

I hope you found some of these facts interesting and worth getting some more information on. I found it fascinating that the invasion of Ukraine last week mirrors some of Putin’s actions in the past during this same time period.

I use only verified sources. No fake news here. You can follow me on Instagram at @wendywesthoven or on Twitter at @wendy_westhoven.

Wendy writes for the United States Press Agency and is a former columnist with the Fulton County Expositor, Wauseon, Ohio.