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“A man is not idle, because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labour and there is an invisible labour.”
~ Victor Hugo in Les Miserables
Wikipedia (Victor Hugo (February 26, 1802 – May 22, 1885) is recognized as the most influential French Romantic writer of the 19th century and is often identified as the greatest French poet.)
February 26th, 747 BC
Epoch (origin) of Ptolemy's Nabonassar Era.
Wikipedia Image: Babel Tower, Babylon. by Imagem.Mundo. "The Tower of Babylon".
February 26th, 364
Roman Empire:
364 - Valentinian I is proclaimed Emperor
Wikipedia Image: Relief from a 3rd-century sarcophagus depicting a battle between Romans and Germanic warriors; the central figure is perhaps the emperor Hostilian / Depiction of the Menorah on the Arch of Titus in Rome.
February 26th, 1266
Battle of Benevento An army led by Charles of Anjou, defeats a combined German and Sicilian force led by King Manfred of Sicily. Manfred is killed in the battle and Pope Clement IV invests Charles as king of Sicily and Naples.
Wikipedia Painting: Battle of Benevento.
February 26th, 1658
Treaty of Roskilde: After a devastating defeat in the Northern Wars (1655–1661), the King of Denmark-Norway is forced to give up nearly half his territory to Sweden to save the rest.
Wikipedia Photo: Rondane National Park (Norwegian: Rondane nasjonalpark) is the oldest national park in Norway, established on 21 December 1962; Norwegian fjords; Norwegian Praise of Winter; Polar bears, credit National Geographics.
February 26th, 1815
French Revolutionary Wars / Napoleonic Wars:
1815 - Napoleon Bonaparte escapes from Elba.
Wikipedia Painting: Battle of Trafalgar: The British HMS Sandwich fires to the French flagship Bucentaure (completely dismasted) in the battle of Trafalgar;
Napoleon in Berlin (Meynier). After defeating Prussian forces at Jena, the French Army entered Berlin on 27 October 1806;
Battle of the Bridge of Arcole Napoleon Bonaparte leading his troops over the bridge of Arcole, by Horace Vernet;
Napoleon as King of Italy (Appiani);
Napoleon Crossing the Alps (David). In 1800 Bonaparte took the French Army across the Alps, eventually defeating the Austrians at Marengo;
Charge of the Russian Imperial Guard cavalry against French cuirassiers at the Battle of Friedland, 14 June 1807;
Battle of Borodino as depicted by Louis Lejeune. The battle was the largest and bloodiest single-day action of the Napoleonic Wars;
Napoleon's withdrawal from Russia, a painting by Adolph Northen;
Wellington at Waterloo by Robert Alexander Hillingford;
Napoleon is often represented in his green colonel uniform of the Chasseur à Cheval, with a large bicorne and a hand-in-waistcoat gesture.
Battle of the Nile (Battle of Aboukir Bay).
February 26th, 1876
Japan and Korea sign a treaty granting Japanese citizens extraterritoriality rights, opening three ports to Japanese trade, and ending Korea's status as a tributary state of Qing Dynasty China.
Wikipedia Image: Japan - Korea Satellite image: shows North and South Korea (upper left) as well as the Japanese island of Shikoku, between Kyushu to the southwest and Honshu to the north. credit Earth Observatory, NASA.
February 26th, 1909
Kinemacolor, the first successful color motion picture process, is first shown to the general public at the Palace Theatre in London.
Wikipedia Image: Kinemacolor was the first successful color motion picture process, used commercially from 1908 to 1914. It was invented by George Albert Smith of Brighton, England in 1906: Kinemacolor poster ● 1911 Kinemacolor recreated from original materials.
February 26th, 1914
World War I:
1914 - HMHS Britannic, sister to the RMS Titanic, is launched at Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast.
Wikipedia Photo: Trenches on the Western Front; a British Mark IV Tank crossing a trench; Royal Navy battleship HMS Irresistible sinking after striking a mine at the Battle of the Dardanelles; a Vickers machine gun crew with gas masks, and German Albatros D.III biplanes. National Archives and Records Administration.
February 26th, 1917
Original Dixieland Jass Band records the first jazz record, for the Victor Talking Machine Company.
Wikipedia Original Dixieland Jass Band - 1917 ● Victor Talking Machine Company (The Gramophone Company) and its later RCA incarnation. (The dog (part Bull Terrier, part Fox Terrier) did not find a home with Edison, but he did go on to become one of the most recognizeable images in the history of advertising.)
February 26th, 1919
United States President Woodrow Wilson signs an act of the Congress establishing most of the Grand Canyon as a United States National Park (see Grand Canyon National Park).
Wikipedia Photo: Grand Canyon National Park; A view from the South Rim; An aerial view of the Little Colorado River Gorge near East Rim of Grand Canyon; View of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon; South rim in winter.
February 26th, 1929
United States President Calvin Coolidge signs an Executive Order establishing the 96,000 acre Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.
Wikipedia Photo: Grand Teton National Park; a United States National Park in northwestern Wyoming. (The park includes the major peaks of the 40-mile (64 km) long Teton Range as well as most of the northern sections of the valley known as Jackson Hole) ● Panoramic view from Jackson Hole Valley ● Viewed from Jackson Hole valley looking west, the high peaks of the Teton Range rise more than 7,000 feet (2,135 m) above the valley floor ● The "Sleeping Indian" is a series of rock formations on Sheep Mountain in the Gros Ventre Range on the east side of Jackson Hole ● Oxbow Bend on the Snake River
February 26th, 1935
Adolf Hitler orders the Luftwaffe to be re-formed, violating the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles.
Wikipedia Photo: Hitler and the Brownshirts; German Nazi activist Horst Wessel (left) at the head of a parade of S.A. stormtroopers, or “brownshirts”, in Nuremberg, Germany, 1929.
February 26th, 1935
Robert Watson-Watt carries out a demonstration near Daventry which leads directly to the development of RADAR in the United Kingdom.
Wikipedia Photo: Long-range radar antenna, known as ALTAIR, used to detect and track space objects in conjunction with ABM testing at the Ronald Reagan Test Site on Kwajalein Atoll. (Brightness can indicate reflectivity as in this 1960 weather radar image (of Hurricane Abby) - The radar's frequency, pulse form, polarization, signal processing, and antenna determine what it can observe.) Doppler radar tower.
February 26th, 1936
1936 - February 26 Incident; young Japanese military officers attempt to stage a coup against the government.
Wikipedia Photo: February 26 Incident; 1st Lieutenant Niu Yoshitada and his company on February 26, 1936 ● Flier “Directive to Soldiers” February 29, 1936 ● Takahashi Korekiyo (left) and Saitō Makoto (right) on February 20, 1936.
February 20th, 1966
Apollo Program: Launch of AS-201, the first flight of the Saturn IB.
Wikipedia Photo: Apollo Program: Apollo 11 first manned Moon landing and the first walk on the surface on the moon. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin walks on the surface of the moon near the leg of the lunar module Eagle. Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface camera. Armstrong and Aldrin explored the Sea of Tranquility for two and a half hours while crewmate Michael Collins orbited above in the command module Columbia.
The Blue Marble is a famous photograph of the Earth, taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft, at a distance of about 45,000 kilometres (28,000 mi).
February 26th, 1966
Vietnam War:
1966 - Go Dai massacre; The ROK Capital Division of the South Korean Army massacres 380 unarmed civilians in South Vietnam.
Wikipedia Photo: Vietnam_War; Side view of an HH-53 helicopter of the 40th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron as seen from the gunner's position on an A-1 of the 21st Specialist Operations Squadron. (USAF Photo by Ken Hackman), Boston Globe;
Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, credit Free Republic;
Vietnam War: The Big Picture / Boston Globe.
February 26th, 1971
The United Nations proclamation of the vernal equinox as Earth Day.
Wikipedia Photo: Earth Day originally celebrated at Spring Equinox around March 20, is an annual day on which events are held worldwide to increase awareness and appreciation of the Earth's natural environment. (Now Earth Day is coordinated globally by the Earth Day Network)
November 26th, 1987
Iran-Contra Affair:
1987 - The Tower Commission rebukes United States President Ronald Reagan for not controlling his national security staff.
Wikipedia Photo: Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, December 22, 1986; Oliver North testifying at the Iran-Contra hearings in Washington, D.C., 1987. credit Associated Press.
February 26th, 1991
Gulf War - Iraq War:
1991 - Battle of Al Busayyah; United States Army forces capture the town of Al Busayyah.
Wikipedia Photo: USAF F-15Es, F-16s, and a USAF F-15 flying over burning Kuwaiti oil wells; Iraqi Army T-72 main battle tanks. The T-72 tank was a common Iraqi battle tank used in the Gulf War; F-15Es parked during Operation Desert Shield; The oil fires caused were a result of the scorched earth policy of Iraqi military forces retreating from Kuwait; Aerial view of destroyed Iraqi T-72 tank, BMP-1 and Type 63 armored personnel carriers and trucks on Highway 8 in March 1991.
February 26th, 1992
Khojaly Massacre: about 613 civilians are killed by Armenian armed forces during the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan.
Wikipedia Image: Khojaly Massacre: was the killing of hundreds of ethnic Azerbaijani civilians from the town of Khojaly on February 25–26, 1992 by the Armenian and, partially, by CIS armed forces during the Nagorno-Karabakh War.
February 26th, 1993
World Trade Center bombing: In New York City, a truck bomb parked below the North Tower of the World Trade Center explodes, killing 6 and injuring over a thousand.
Wikipedia Photo: The World Trade Center is a site for various buildings in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States (The original World Trade Center was a complex of seven buildings - it featured landmark twin towers, which opened on April 4, 1973 and were destroyed in the September 11 attacks of 2001).
February 26th, 1995
The United Kingdom's oldest investment banking institute, Barings Bank, collapses after a securities broker, Nick Leeson, loses $1.4 billion by speculating on the Singapore International Monetary Exchange using futures contracts.
Wikipedia Image: Time Magazine Cover ● Sir Francis Baring (left), with brother John Baring and son-in-law Charles Wall, in a painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence.
February 26th, 2008
The The New York Philharmonic performs in Pyongyang, North Korea; this is the first event of its kind to take place in North Korea.
Wikipedia Image: The The New York Philharmonic performs in Pyongyang, North Korea; this is the first event of its kind to take place in North Korea. (Chang W. Lee/The New York Times)