Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/February 14
This is a list of selected February 14 anniversaries that appear in the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases, you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition might be controversial or on a day that is or will soon be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.
Please note that the events listed on the Main Page are chosen based more on relative article quality and to maintain a mix of topics, not based solely on how important or significant their subjects are. Only four to five events are posted at a time and thus not everything that is "most important and significant" can be listed. In addition, an event is generally not posted this year if it is also the subject of the scheduled featured article, featured list or picture of the day.
To report an error when this appears on the Main Page, see Main Page errors. Please remember that this list defers to the supporting articles, so it is best to achieve consensus and make any necessary changes there first.
Staging area
Images
Use only ONE image at a time
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Alexander Graham Bell -
Elisha Gray -
Karađorđe -
The Three Witnesses: Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, and David Whitmer -
Great Ormond Street Hospital -
Rafik Hariri -
Signing of Arizona Statehood Bill -
Protests in Bahrain -
Salman Rushdie -
Live at Leeds -
Ineligible
| Blurb | Reason |
|---|---|
| 1835 – The members of the original Quorum of the Twelve of the Latter Day Saint movement were selected by the Three Witnesses. | refimprove |
| 1876 – Inventor Alexander Graham Bell and electrical engineer Elisha Gray each filed a patent for the telephone, starting a controversy about who invented it first. | original research |
| 1879 – Chilean forces occupied the Bolivian port of Antofagasta, instigating the War of the Pacific. | featured on March 23 |
| 1912 – Arizona became the 48th and last of the contiguous United States to be admitted. | refimprove section |
| 1929 – St. Valentine's Day Massacre: Seven people, six of them gangster rivals of Al Capone's gang, were murdered in Chicago. | multiple issues |
| 1949 – Asbestos miners around Asbestos, Quebec, Canada, began a labour strike that is considered one of the causes of the Quiet Revolution. | needs more footnotes |
| 1949 – The Knesset, the legislature of Israel, convened for the first time, succeeding the Assembly of Representatives that had functioned as the Jewish community's parliament during the British Mandate Era. | refimprove section |
| 1970 - The Who performed at the University Refectory, University of Leeds, later released as Live at Leeds and cited as one of the best rock live albums of all time. | refimprove section |
| 1989 – The first of at least twenty-four medium Earth orbit satellites in the satellite constellation of the Global Positioning System was launched. | refimprove sections, duplication |
| 2005 – Former Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri was assassinated when explosives were detonated as his motorcade drove past a hotel in Beirut, sparking the Cedar Revolution. | Hariri: refimprove; Assassination: unreferenced section; Revolution: refimprove section |
| 2011 – Arab Spring: The Bahraini uprising began with youth-organized protests on the Day of Rage. | Uncited section, orange "single source only" banner |
| Singu Min |d|1782| | Deathdate not cited. |
| James Bond |d|1989| | Deathdate not cited. |
Eligible
- 1779 – American Revolutionary War: A militia of Patriots decisively defeated and scattered a Loyalist militia that was on its way to British-controlled Augusta, Georgia.
- 1804 – Serb chieftains elected Đorđe Petrović as their leader and began an uprising against the Ottoman Empire.
- 1852 – The Hospital for Sick Children, the first hospital in England to provide in-patient beds specifically for children, was founded in London.
- 1895 – Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, once described as the second most quoted English-language play after Hamlet, premiered in London.
- 1914 – The animated film Gertie the Dinosaur was released, later greatly influencing future animators such as the Fleischer brothers and Walt Disney.
- 1916 – World War I: Britain, France and Russia made the declaration of Sainte-Adresse, stating they would refuse to sign any peace tretay with the Central Powers that failed to ensure the political and economic independence of Belgium.
- 1919 – The Battle of Bereza Kartuska, the first serious armed conflict of the Polish–Soviet War, took place near present-day Biaroza, Belarus.
- 1924 – The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company was renamed as International Business Machines (IBM), later growing into one of the world's largest companies by market capitalization.
- 1938 – The Singapore Naval Base, the cornerstone of the Singapore strategy, a British naval defence policy, was opened.
- 1943 – World War II: General Hans-Jürgen von Arnim's 5th Panzer Army launched a concerted attack against Allied positions in Tunisia.
- 1961 – Lawrencium, the radioactive synthetic element with atomic number 103, was first synthesized at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley.
- 1979 – Adolph Dubs, United States Ambassador to Afghanistan, was kidnapped by unknown agents and killed during a gun battle between Afghan police and the perpetrators.
- 1981 - 48 people died when a fire broke out during a Valentine's Day dance at a Dublin nightclub.
- 1989 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa calling for the death of Salman Rushdie, the author of The Satanic Verses, a novel considered to be blasphemous by some Muslims.
- 1992 – Sri Temasek (pictured), the official residence of the prime minister of Singapore, was declared a national monument.
- 2005 – The video-sharing web site YouTube was founded by three former PayPal employees.
- 2008 – A gunman opened fire into a crowded lecture hall at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, killing five people and injuring twenty-one others.
- Born/died this day: | Rǫgnvaldr Guðrøðarson |d|1229| Domenico Ferrabosco |b|1513| John Wilkins |b|1614|William Blackstone |d|1780| Margaret E. Knight |b|1838| Anna Howard Shaw |b|1847| George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. |b|1859| Katherine Stinson |b|1891| Hazel McCallion |b|1921| William E. Holmes |d|1931| Keiji Nishioka|b|1933|Adnan Saidi |d|1942| Pam McConnell |b|1946| Val James |b|1957| Annalisa Buffa |b|1973| Franjo Mihalić |d|2015
Notes
- Second voyage of James Cook appears on January 17, so Cook himself should not be used in the same year
- Huilliche uprising of 1712 appears on February 10, so Mapuche uprising should not appear in the same year
- Bloody Thursday (2011) appears on February 17, so Bahraini uprising should not be used in the same year.
February 14: Valentine's Day; Ash Wednesday (Western Christianity, 2024)
Part of the Pale Blue Dot photograph
- 1655 – Arauco War: A series of coordinated Mapuche attacks took place against Spanish settlements and forts in colonial Chile, beginning a ten-year period of warfare.
- 1779 – Native Hawaiians killed the English explorer Captain James Cook after he attempted to kidnap Kalaniʻōpuʻu, the ruling chief of the island of Hawaii.
- 1990 – NASA's Voyager 1 space probe took the Pale Blue Dot photograph of Earth (cropped version pictured) from a record distance of 40.5 au (6.06 billion km; 3.76 billion mi).
- 2005 - YouTube is founded by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim.
- 2007 – The first of several bombings in Zahedan, Iran, killed 18 members of the Revolutionary Guards.
- Valentin Friedland (b. 1490)
- Eleanora Atherton (b. 1782)
- Nadezhda Krupskaya (b. 1869)
- Vito Genovese (d. 1969)
More anniversaries: