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God bless the King! (I mean our faith's defender!)
God bless! (No harm in blessing) the Pretender.
But who Pretender is, and who is King,
God bless us all! That's quite another thing!
~ John Byrom
Wikipedia (John Byrom (February 29, 1692 – September 26, 1763) was an English poet.)
LEAP YEAR
Most years of the modern calendar have 365 days. A complete revolution around the sun takes approximately 365 days and 6 hours. Every four years, during which an extra 24 hours have accumulated, one extra day is added to keep the count coordinated with the sun's apparent position.
A better approximation, derived from the Alfonsine tables, is that the Earth makes a complete revolution around the sun in 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 16 seconds. As required by the Gregorian calendar, to compensate for the difference, an end-of-century year is not a leap year unless it is also exactly divisible by 400. This means that the years 1600 and 2000 were leap years, as will be 2400 and 2800, but the years 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not, nor will 2100, 2200, and 2300.
February 29th, 1504
1504 - Christopher Columbus uses his knowledge of a lunar eclipse that night to convince Native Americans to provide him with supplies.
Wikipedia Paintings: Christopher Columbus' fleet of three ships sets sail from Spain in 1492. credit Kean Collection / Hulton Archive / Getty Images; Christopher Columbus pointing to land in the New World; Romantic Painting of Christopher Columbus arriving to the Americas Primer desembarco de Cristóbal Colón en América, by Dióscoro Puebla 1862.
February 29th, 1644
Dutch explorer Abel Tasman's second Pacific voyage begins.
Wikipedia Photo: Australian satellite (Tasmania, the 26th largest island in the world, and the surrounding 334 islands) and scenery.
Image: The Charlotte Jane and the Randolph bring the first of the Canterbury Pilgrims to Lyttelton, New Zealand, credit Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, New Zealand.
February 29th, 1712
February 29 is followed by February 30 in Sweden, in a move to abolish the Swedish calendar for a return to the Old style (Julian calendar).
Wikipedia Image: Detail of the tomb of Pope Gregory XIII celebrating the introduction of the Gregorian calendar.
February 29th, 1796
Jay's Treaty between the United States and Kingdom of Great Britain, which attempts to resolve some of the lingering problems left over from the American Revolutionary War, comes into force, facilitating ten years of peaceful trade between the two nations.
Wikipedia Painting: Chief Justice John Jay portrait by Gilbert Stuart; Jay's Treaty.
February 29th, 1864
American Civil War:
1864 - Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid; fails – plans to free 15,000 Union soldiers being held near Richmond, Virginia are thwarted.
Wikipedia Image: ● Lincoln Memorial; an American national monument built to honor the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln - located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. across from the Washington Monument.
● The northern army led by George McClellan and the southern army led by Robert E. Lee met at Antietam Creek, Maryland in September, 1862. It was a bloody battle where 13,000 Confederates and 12,000 Union troops died in just one day. McClellan had hesitated to attack before the battle thus letting the southern troops regroup. Also, he had saved reserves and refused to use them at the end of the battle thinking that Lee was holding reserves for a counterattack, even though those reserves didn't exist. The Union victory stopped Lee's northward advance and was a turning point in the war.
● Battle of Antietam / Stone Bridge at Antietam Battlefield - Sharpsburg, Maryland
● Battle of Mobile Bay (1890) by Xanthus Russell Smith.
● Although photography was still in its infancy, war correspondents produced thousands of images, bringing the harsh realities of the frontlines to those on the home front in a new and visceral way. The Atlantic.
February 29th, 1916
Child labor: In South Carolina, the minimum working age for factory, mill, and mine workers is raised from twelve to fourteen years old.
Wikipedia Photo: Child labour refers to the employment of children in any work that deprives children of their childhood, interferes with their ability to attend regular school, and that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful.
Two girls protesting child labour (by calling it child slavery) in the 1909 New York City Labour Day parade.
February 29th, 1936
Baby Snooks, played by Fanny Brice, debuts on the radio program The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air.
Wikipedia Image: Promotional artwork for 1912 Ziegfeld Follies; Ziegfeld Girl 1920s; Marjorie Leet She performed in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1923 - 1925 and 1927.; Albertina Vitak was born in Chicago in 1907 to Czech parents. As a girl she became a prize swimmer and diver, winning competitions throughout the Midwest. At age 12 she secretly enrolled in dance with instructors at the Chicago Opera ballet to avoid her mother’s displeasure. She drilled in classical ballet and the new pantomimic style of dance introduced by the Ballet Russe. She debuted in the Follies of 1922 at age 15. creedit Ziegfeld-Follies.tumblr.
February 29th, 1936
1936 - February 26 Incident; ends - 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 29th, 1940
For her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind, Hattie McDaniel becomes the first African American to win an Academy Award.
Wikipedia Digital Image: Gone with the Wind movie poster with Clark Gable, 1939; Vivien Leigh from 'Gone With the Wind,' 1939; Poster featuring Leslie Howard as Ashley Wilkes; Poster of Olivia de Havilland as Melanie Hamilton, courtesy Herb Bridges.
Hattie McDaniel;
● Vivien Leigh and Hattie McDaniel are shown in a publicity still for the 1939 film "Gone with the Wind," which swept the Academy Awards on Feb. 29, 1940. Best Supporting Actress Hattie McDaniel was the first African American actress to win an Oscar. (Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)
● Hattie McDaniel (shown receiving her Academy Award from Fay Bainter)
February 29th, 1940
World War II:
1940 - Winter War; Finland initiates peace negotiations.
1940 - Because of the war, physicist Ernest Lawrence receives the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics from Sweden's Consul General in San Francisco.
1944 - The Admiralty Islands are invaded in Operation Brewer led by American General Douglas MacArthur.
Post World War II:
1952 - The island of Heligoland is restored to German authority.
Wikipedia Photo: Bombing of Dresden in World War II; August Schreitmüller's sculpture 'Goodness' surveys Dresden after a firestorm started by Allied bombers in 1945.
USS Bunker Hill was hit by kamikazes piloted by Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa and another airman on 11 May 1945. 389 personnel were killed or missing from a crew of 2,600; Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa, who flew his aircraft into the USS Bunker Hill during a Kamikaze mission on 11 May 1945; Kamikaze Missions - Lt Yoshinori Yamaguchi's Yokosuka D4Y3 (Type 33 Suisei) "Judy" in a suicide dive against USS Essex. The dive brakes are extended and the non-self-sealing port wing tank is trailing fuel vapor and/or smoke 25 November 1944.
German V1 flying-bomb and V2 Rockets - Preparations for a Salvo Launch of V-2 Rockets in the Heidelager near Blizna (Poland) (1944), credit German History in Documents and Images GHDI.
Eastern Front (World War II); Germans race towards Stalingrad. August 1942; Soviet children during a German air raid in the first days of the war, June 1941, by RIA Novosti archive; Soviet sniper Roza Shanina in 1944. About 400,000 Soviet women served in front-line duty units Caucasus Mountains, winter 1942/43; Finnish ski patrol: the invisible enemy of the Soviet Army with an unlimited supply of skis; Men of the German Engineers Corps cross a river which is swollen after the first autumn rains, to strengthen bridges linking the German positions on the central front in Russia. by Keystone / Getty Images. October 1942; Russian snipers fighting on the Leningrad front during a blizzard. Photo by Hulton Archive / Getty Images, 1943; German soldiers surrendering to the Russians in Stalingrad, the soldier holding the white flag of surrender is dressed in white so that there could be no doubt of his intentions, a Russian soldier is on the right of the photograph. by Keystone / Getty Images, January 1943.
Invasion of Leyte, October 1944 - General Douglas MacArthur (right) and Philippine President Sergio Osmeña (center) on board a landing craft en route to the Leyte landing beaches, October 20-23, 1944. credit History.navy.mil
February 29th, 1960
Earthquake:
1960 - An earthquake in Morocco kills over 3,000 people and nearly destroys Agadir kills around 1,100 people.
Wikipedia Image: Preliminary Determination of Epicenters / Aleppo Syria; Anchorage, Alaska - March 28, 1964 Prince William Sound USA earthquake and tsunami; 8.9 Mega Earthquake Strikes Japan; Tsunami Swirls Japan's Ibaraki Prefecture March 12 2011. credit NOAA / NGDC, NOAA National Geophysical Data Center, USGS, National Geographics.
February 29th, 1972
Vietnam War:
1972 - Vietnamization; United States withdraws 11,000 of its 48,000 troops from 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 29th, 1980
Gordie Howe of the then Hartford Whalers makes National Hockey League history as he scores his 800th goal.
Wikipedia Image: On the Cover: Gordie Howe, Hockey, Detroit Red Wings, credit: Richard Meek, Sports Illustrated.
February 29th, 1996
Aviation accidents and incidents:
1996 - Faucett Flight 251; crashes in the Andes, all 123 passengers and crew died.
Wikipedia Photo: ● Pan AM 747 ● U.S. Airways flight 1549 also known as the "Miracle on the Hudson" navigates an exit ramp near Burlington, New Jersey, June 5, 2011 ● Passengers stand on the wings of a U.S. Airways plane as a ferry pulls up to it after it landed in the Hudson River in New York, Reuters ● US Airways plane crashes into New York Hudson River, Photo: AP
February 29th, 2012
Tokyo Sky Tree construction completed. Now it is the tallest tower in the world 634 meters high, and second tallest (man-made) structure on Earth, next to Burj Khalifa.
Wikipedia Photo: Tokyo Sky Tree ● Buildings are seen from an observatory at the Tokyo Sky Tree in Tokyo, Japan. The broadcasting tower which is the tallest structure in Japan at 634 meters, opens to the public on May 22. (Tomohiro Ohsumi / Bloomberg)