2009 - Ingemar Johansson, 76, Swedish world heavyweight boxing champion (1959–1960), complications from pneumonia.
2009 - Safar Iranpak, 61, Iranian footballer, lung cancer.
2009 - John Gordy, 73, American football player (Detroit Lions), cancer.
2009 - Bill Frindall, 69, British cricket statistician, Legionnaire's disease.
2009 - Mike Francis, 47, Italian pop musician, lung cancer.
2009 - Connie Buckley, 93, Irish hurler (death announced on this date).
2011 - John Barry, British film score composer (b. 1933)
Events
1648 - Eighty Years' War: The Treaty of Münster and Osnabrück is signed, ending the conflict between the Netherlands and Spain.
1661 - Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England is ritually executed after having been dead for two years.
1790 - The first boat specializing as a lifeboat is tested on the River Tyne.
1806 - The original Lower Trenton Bridge (also called the Trenton Makes the World Takes Bridge), which spans the Delaware River between Morrisville, Pennsylvania and Trenton, New Jersey, is opened.
1820 - Edward Bransfield sights the Trinity Peninsula and claims the discovery of Antarctica.
1826 - The Menai Suspension Bridge, considered the world's first modern suspension bridge, connecting the Isle of Anglesey to the north West coast of Wales is opened.
1835 - In the first assassination attempt against a President of the United States, Richard Lawrence attempts to shoot president Andrew Jackson.
1841 - A fire destroys two-thirds of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico.
1847 - Yerba Buena, California is renamed San Francisco.
1858 - The first Hallé concert is given in Manchester, England, marking the official founding of the Hallé Orchestra as a full-time, professional orchestra.
1862 - The first American ironclad warship, the USS Monitor is launched.
1889 - Archduke Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian crown, is found dead with his mistress Baroness Mary Vetsera in Mayerling.
1911 - The destroyer USS Terry (DD-25) makes the first airplane rescue at sea saving the life of James McCurdy 10 miles from Havana, Cuba.
1911 - The Canadian Naval Service becomes the Royal Canadian Navy.
1913 - The United Kingdom's House of Lords rejects the Irish Home Rule Bill.
1930 - The world's first radiosonde is launched in Pavlovsk, USSR.
1933 - Adolf Hitler is sworn in as Chancellor of Germany.
1943 - World War II: Second day of the Battle of Rennell Island. TheUSS Chicago (CA-29) is sunk and a U.S. destroyer is heavily damaged by Japanese torpedoes.
1943 - Holocaust in Letychiv, Ukraine: The Nazi Gestapo commences mass shootings of Jews from Letychiv Ghetto. 200 surviving Jews from Letychiv slave labor camp are ordered to undress and are shot with a machine-gun into a ravine. Some 7,000 Jews were murdered in Letychiv.
1944 - World War II: United States troops land on Majuro.
1945 - The Wilhelm Gustloff, overfilled with refugees, sinks in the Baltic Sea after being torpedoed by a Soviet submarine, leading to the deadliest maritime disaster in known history, killing roughly 9,000 people.
1945 - World War II: Raid at Cabanatuan: 126 American Rangers and Filipino resistance liberate 500 prisoners from the Cabanatuan POW camp.
1945 - World War II: Hitler gives his last ever public address, a radio address on the 12th anniversary of his coming to power. (A subsequent address on February 24 was not read by Hitler.)
1948 - Indian pacifist and leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is assassinated by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu extremist.
1956 - American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.'s home is bombed in retaliation for the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
1960 - The African National Party is founded in Chad, through the merger of traditionalist parties.
1962 - Two of the high-wire Flying Wallendas are killed when their seven-person pyramid collapses during a performance in Detroit, Michigan.
1968 - Vietnam War: The Tet Offensive begins when Viet Cong forces launch a series of surprise attacks in South Vietnam.
1969 - The Beatles' last public performance, on the roof of Apple Records in London. The impromptu concert is broken up by the police.
1972 - Bloody Sunday: British Paratroopers kill fourteen civil rights/anti internment marchers in Northern Ireland.
1972 - Pakistan withdraws from the Commonwealth of Nations.
1976 - George H. W. Bush becomes the 11th director of the CIA.
1982 - Richard Skrenta writes the first PC virus code, which is 400 lines long and disguised as an Apple boot program called "Elk Cloner".
1989 - The American embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan closes.
1994 - Péter Lékó becomes the youngest chess grand master.
1995 - Workers from the National Institutes of Health announce the success of clinical trials testing the first preventive treatment for sickle-cell disease.
1996 - Gino Gallagher, the suspected leader of the Irish National Liberation Army, is killed while waiting in line for his unemployment benefit.
1996 - Comet Hyakutake is discovered by Japanese amateur astronomer Yuji Hyakutake.
2000 - Off the coast of Ivory Coast, Kenya Airways Flight 431 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean, killing 169.
