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.
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 -
Salman Rushdie -
Rafik Hariri -
Signing of Arizona Statehood Bill -
The Pale Blue Dot photograph of Earth
Ineligible
| Blurb | Reason |
|---|---|
| 1804 – Karađorđe Petrović became the leader of the First Serbian Uprising. | refimprove section, contradictory |
| 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 |
| 1929 – St. Valentine's Day Massacre: Seven people, six of them gangster rivals of Al Capone's gang, were murdered in Chicago, Illinois. | refimprove |
| 1949 – Asbestos miners began a labour strike around Asbestos, Quebec, Canada, considered one of the causes of the Quiet Revolution. | more footnotes |
| 1989 – The first of at least twenty-four Medium Earth Orbit satellites in the satellite constellation of the Global Positioning System was launched into orbit. | refimprove sections, duplication |
Eligible
- 1779 – American Revolutionary War: A militia force of Patriots decisively defeated and scattered a Loyalist militia force that was on its way to British-controlled Augusta, Georgia.
- 1912 – Arizona became the 48th and last of the contiguous United States to be admitted.
- 1924 – The Computing Tabulating Recording Company renamed itself to International Business Machines, which grew into one of the world's largest companies by market capitalization.
- 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.
- 1961 – Lawrencium, the metallic radioactive synthetic element with atomic number 103, was first made 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.
- 1989 – A fatwa was issued for the execution of Salman Rushdie for authoring The Satanic Verses, a novel Islamic fundamentalists considered blasphemous.
- 1990 – The Voyager 1 space probe took an iconic photograph of planet Earth that later became famous as Pale Blue Dot.
- 2005 – The video-sharing web site YouTube by three former PayPal employees.
- 2005 – Former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri was assassinated when explosives were detonated as his motorcade drove past the St. George Hotel in Beirut, sparking the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon.
- 2007 – The first of several bombings in Zahedan, Iran, claimed the lives of 18 members of the Revolutionary Guards.
- 2008 – Steven Kazmierczak opened fire into a crowded lecture hall on the campus of Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois, killing 6 and injuring 21.
Notes
- Bloody Thursday (2011) appears on February 17, so Bahraini uprising should not be used in the same year.
February 14: Valentine's Day; Feast of St. Brigit of Kildare (Eastern Christianity)
- 1779 – English explorer James Cook was killed near Kealakekua when he tried to kidnap Kalaniʻōpuʻu, the ruling chief of the Island of Hawaii.
- 1835 – The members of the original Quorum of the Twelve of the Latter Day Saint movement were selected by the Three Witnesses.
- 1919 – The first serious armed conflict of the Polish–Soviet War took place near present-day Biaroza, Belarus.
- 1943 – World War II: General Hans-Jürgen von Arnim's Fifth Panzer Army launched a concerted attack against Allied positions in Tunisia.
- 1991 – Upon the death of Carrie C. White, Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment became the world's oldest living person, and she went on to have the longest confirmed human life span in history, dying in 1997 at the age of 122 years and 164 days.
- 2011 – A "Day of Rage" (pictured) marked the beginning of the Bahraini uprising, part of the Arab Spring.