Today in History - February 28
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1066 Feb 28,
Westminster Abbey opened.
(HN, 2/28/98)
1533 Feb 28, Michel de Montaigne
(d.1592), was born near Bordeaux, France. He was the French
moralist who created the personal essay. Montaigne was brought up by
his father under peasant guidance and a German tutor for Latin. He
spent a lifetime of political service under Henry IV, and then composed
his "Essays." This was the first book to reveal with utter honesty and
frankness the author's mind and heart. Montaigne sought to reach beyond
his own illusions, to see himself as he really was, which was not just
the way others saw him. "Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least
know."
(WUD, 1994, p.928)(V.D.-H.K.p.144)(HN, 2/28/99)
1569 Feb 28, The Lithuanian
delegation pulled out of union talks with Poland and departed Liublin.
(LHC, 2/28/03)
1573 Feb 28, Elias Hill, German
architect, city builder (Augsburg), was born.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1574 Feb 28, On the orders of the
Holy Office of the Inquisition, two Englishmen and an Irishman were
burnt for heresy.
(HN, 2/28/99)
1609 Feb 28, Paul Sartorius (39),
composer, died.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1610 Feb 28, Thomas West, Baron de
La Mar, was appointed governor of Virginia.
(HN, 2/28/98)(MC, 2/28/02)
1626 Feb 28, Cyril Tourneur (c51),
English poet, dramatist, died.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1632 Feb 28, Jean-Baptiste Lully,
composer, was born in Florence, Italy. [see Nov 28]
(MC, 2/28/02)
1638 Feb 28, Scottish
Presbyterians signed the National Covenant at Greyfriars, Edinburgh.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1638 Feb 28, Henri duc de Rohan,
French soldier, Huguenot leader, died.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1646 Feb 28, Roger Scott was tried
in Massachusetts for sleeping in church.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1663 Feb 28, Thomas Newcomen,
English co-inventor of the steam engine, was born.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1692 Feb 28, The Salem witch hunts
began.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1704 Feb 28, Indians attacked
Deerfield, Mass., killing 40 and kidnapping 100.
(HN, 2/28/98)
1708 Feb 28, A slave revolt in
Newton, Long Island, NY, left 11 dead.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1728 Feb 28, Georg F. Handel’s
opera "Siroe, re di Persia," premiered in London.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1749 Feb 28, The 1st edition of
"The History of Tom Jones: A foundling" was published. Henry Fielding
(1707-1754) wrote the book and a film based on the novel was made in
1963. A TV production premiered in 1998.
(SFEM, 11/24/96, p.59)(SFC, 4/2/98, p.E1)(MC,
2/28/02)(ON, 9/03, p.9)
1759 Feb 28, Pope Clement XIII
allowed the Bible to be translated into various languages.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1778 Feb 28, Rhode Island General
Assembly authorized the enlistment of slaves.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1784 Feb 28, John Wesley
(1703-1791) chartered the Methodist Church. His teaching emphasized
field preaching along with piety, probity and respectability. In 2003
Roy Hattersley authored "A Brand from the Burning: The Life of John
Wesley."
(MC, 2/28/02)(WSJ, 6/13/03, p.W19)
1801 Feb 28, Motiejus
Valancius, Lithuanian educator, historian, writer and bishop, was born
in Nasrenai in the Kretinga region. He died May 29, 1875, in Kaunas.
His portrait is on the 2-litas note.
(LC, 1998, p.4,10)(LHC,2/28/03)
1810 Feb 28, The 1st US fire
insurance joint-stock company was organized in Philadelphia.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1813 Feb 28, Russia and
Prussia formed the Kalisz union against Napoleon.
(LHC,2/28/03)
1820 Feb 28, John Tenniel,
illustrator of "Alice in Wonderland," was born.
(HN, 2/28/98)
1823 Feb 28, Ernst Renan, French
philosopher, historian, scholar of religion, was born.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1824 Feb 28, Charles Blondin,
tightrope walker, was born.
(HN, 2/28/01)
1825 Feb 28, Quincy Adams Gillmore
(d.1888), Major General (Union volunteers), was born.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1827 Feb 28, The first U.S.
railroad chartered to carry passengers and freight, the Baltimore and
Ohio Railroad Co., was incorporated.
(AP, 2/28/98)
1844 Feb 28, A 12-inch gun aboard
the USS Princeton exploded, killing Secretary of State Abel P. Upshur,
Navy Secretary Thomas W. Gilmer and several others.
(AP, 2/28/98)
1847 Feb 28, Colonel Alexander
Doniphan and his ragtag Missouri Mounted Volunteers rode to victory at
the Battle of Sacramento during the Mexican War.
(HN, 2/28/99)
1849 Feb 28, The steamer
California, sounding the first steamship whistle on the SF Bay, arrived
in SF with San Francisco postmaster John W. Geary on board carrying
mail for the Pacific coast. Steamboat service began from Panama City to
SF. Pacific Mail Steamship Co. sent the side-wheel steamship California
to SF with American gold-seekers and 50 Peruvian miners. Also onboard
were preacher Osgood C. Wheeler (32) and his wife Elizabeth.
(SSFC, 3/1/09, DB
p.50)(www.maritimeheritage.org/PassLists/ca022849.htm)(AP,
2/28/98)(SFEC, 1/11/98, DB p.40)
1854 Feb 28, Some 50 slavery
opponents met in Ripon, Wis., to call for creation of a new political
group, which became the Republican Party. [see Mar 20, Jul 6]
(AP, 2/28/00)
1859 Feb 28, Arkansas legislature
required free blacks to choose exile or slavery.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1861 Feb 28, The territory of
Colorado was organized.
(AP, 2/28/98)(HN, 2/28/98)
1862 Feb 28, Karl Goldmark's opera
"The Queen of Sheba," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1863 Feb 28, Four Union gunboats
destroyed the CSS Nashville near Fort McAllister, Ga. Popular during
the Crimean War, the floating battery was revived by hard-pressed
Confederates because the popular gunboats were not capable of doing the
things that the batteries could do.
(HN, 2/28/98)
1864 Feb 28-Mar 3, A skirmish took
place at Albemarle County, Virginia (Burton's Ford).
(MC, 2/28/02)
1871 Feb 28, The 2nd Enforcement
Act set federal control of congressional elections.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1879 Feb 28, In the "Exodus of
1879" southern blacks fled political and economic exploitation.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1882 Feb 28, Geraldine Farrar, US
soprano, actress (Story of American Singer), was born.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1883 Feb 28, 1st US vaudeville
theater opened in Boston.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1888 Feb 28, Vincent d'Indy's
Wallenstein trilogy, premiered.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1890 Feb 28, Vaslav Nijinsky,
ballet dancer (3/12 NS), was born in Kiev, Ukraine. He was the
pre-eminent ballet artist of his day and at 20 became the protege and
lover of Sergei Diaghilev. He spent some time in psychotherapy during
which he made a number of abstract drawings. Nijinsky died in 1950 in
London. [see Mar 12]
(SFC, 9/29/97, p.E5)(MC, 2/28/02)
1893 Feb 28, Edward Acheson of
Pennsylvania, patented an abrasive he named "carborundum."
(MC, 2/28/02)
1894 Feb 28, Ben Hecht (d.1964),
American author and screenwriter, was born. "There’s one thing that
keeps surprising you about stormy old friends after they die -
their silence."
(AP, 11/17/00)(HN, 2/28/01)
1895 Feb 28, Guiomar Novaes,
pianist (Brazilian Order of Merit), was born in Brazil.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1895 Feb 28, Marcel Pagnol, French
playwright, director (Marchands de Gloire), was born.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1896 Feb 28, Philip Showalter
Hench, physician (cortisone-Nobel), was born in Pittsburgh.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1900 Feb 28, After a 119-day siege
by the Boers, the English defenders of Ladysmith, under General Sir
George White were relieved.
(HN, 2/28/98)
1901 Feb 28, Linus Pauling,
American chemist, was born in Portland, Oregon. He won the Nobel Prize
for chemistry (1954) and a Nobel Peace Prize (1962) for his arguments
for nuclear disarmament. He also advocated major doses of vitamin C to
maintain health.
(HN,
2/28/99)(http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1962/pauling-bio.html)
1904 Feb 28, Vincent d'Indy's 2nd
Symphony in B premiered.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1905 Feb 28, Jane Lathrop
Stanford, the wife of Leland Stanford, died of suspected arsenic
poisoning at the Moana Hotel in Honolulu. A coroner’s jury confirmed
the result. Her body was returned to the mainland under the care of
David Starr Jordan, the president of Stanford Univ. An examination by
Stanford physicians claimed no trace of strychnine and set heart attack
as cause of death. A will signed 19 months earlier had left the bulk of
her $30 million estate to Stanford Univ. In 2003 Robert Cutler authored
"The Mysterious Death of Jane Stanford." [see Jan 14]
(Ind, 5/26/01, 5A)(SFC, 11/20/03, p.A21)
1906 Feb 28, Bugsy Siegel,
gangster who created casinos in Las Vegas, was born.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1907 Feb 28, Milton Caniff,
cartoonist (Terry and the Pirates), was born in Hillsboro, Ohio.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1909 Feb 28, Stephen Spender
(d.1995), English poet, critic, was born.
(HN, 2/28/01)(Econ, 6/19/04, p.81)
1909 Feb 28, President Roosevelt
became the first U.S. president to visit the Austrian embassy.
(HN, 2/28/98)
1910 Feb 28, Vincente Minnelli,
director (American in Paris, Gigi), was born in Chicago, IL.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1911 Feb 28, Denis Burkitt,
British medical researcher, was born.
(HN, 2/28/01)
1915 Feb 28, Peter Medawar,
zoologist, immunologist (Nobel 1953), was born in England.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1915 Feb 28, Zero "Samuel" Mostel,
actor (Fiddler on the Roof), was born in Brooklyn.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1916 Feb 28, Haiti became the
first U.S. protectorate.
(HN, 2/28/98)
1916 Feb 28, Henry James (b.1843),
US-British writer (Bostonians), died in London. His books included “The
American“ (1877) and “The Golden Bowl” (1904). In 2004 Colm Toibin
authored “The Master,” a novel that explores James’ private life. In
2007 Peter Brooks authored “Henry James Goes to Paris.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_James)(SFC,
6/19/04, p.E1)(WSJ, 3/31/07, p.P11)
1917 Feb 28, AP reported that
Mexico and Japan would ally with Germany if US enters WW I.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1917 Feb 28, Russian Duma set up a
Provisional Committee; workers set up Soviets.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1920 Feb 28, Maurice Ravel's "Le
Tombeau de Couperin," premiered.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1922 Feb 28, Britain declared
Egypt a sovereign state, but British troops remained.
(HN, 2/28/98)(MC, 2/28/02)
1923 Feb 28, Charles Durning,
actor (Fury, Sting, Tootsie), was born in Highland Falls, NY.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1924 Feb 28, U.S. troops were sent
to Honduras to protect American interests during an election conflict.
(HN, 2/28/98)
1925 Feb 28, "Tea For Two" by
Marion Harris hit #1.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1926 Feb 28, Svetlana Alliluyeva,
daughter of Josef Stalin, author (My Life), was born.
(HN, 2/28/98)(MC, 2/28/02)
1928 Feb 28, Smokey the Bear was
created.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1931 Feb 28, Oswald Mosley founded
his New Party.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1933 Feb 28, Francis Perkins was
appointed Secretary of Labor, the 1st female in cabinet.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1933 Feb 28, German Pres. Von
Hindenburg abolished the free expression of opinion.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1933 Feb 28, Hitler disallowed the
German communist party (KPD).
(MC, 2/28/02)
1935 Feb 28, Nylon was discovered
by Dr. Wallace H. Carothers.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1936 Feb 28, Samuel Maverick Jr.
(99), San Antonio banker, died. During the Civil War he served in
Terry's Texas Rangers, a Confederate regiment, He was the last
surviving member of that organization. His father was the Texas pioneer
Samuel A. Maverick
(http://tinyurl.com/5jgmr2)
1936 Feb 28, The Japanese Army
restored order in Tokyo and arrested officers involved in a coup.
(HN, 2/28/99)
1939 Feb 28, Tommy Tune, dancer,
choreographer (Boyfriend), was born in Wichita Falls, Tx.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1939 Feb 28, Great Britain
recognized the Franco regime in Spain. [see Feb 27, 1938]
(MC, 2/28/02)
1940 Feb 28, Mario Andretti,
race-car driver (1969 Indianapolis 500), was born.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1940 Feb 28, The first televised
college basketball games were broadcast, by New York City station
W2XBS, as Pittsburgh defeated Fordham, 57-37, and New York University
beat Georgetown, 50-27, at Madison Square Garden.
(AP, 2/28/98)
1940 Feb 28, The Superliner Queen
Elizabeth was launched in Britain.
(HN, 2/28/98)
1940 Feb 28, In Egypt King Farouk
arrived at Tanis for the opening of the sarcophagus of the 21st Dynasty
King Psusennes I, recently discovered by French archeologist Pierre
Montet.
(Arch, 5/05, p.24)
1942 Feb 28, There was a race riot
at the Sojourner Truth Homes in Detroit.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1942 Feb 28, The German submarine
U-578 torpedoed and sank the US destroyer Jacob Jones off the New
Jersey coast. Only 11 of some 102 crew members survived.
(SFC, 1/15/05,
p.B8)(http://uboat.net/allies/warships/ship/2174.html)
1942 Feb 28, Japanese landed in
Java, the last Allied bastion in Dutch East Indies.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1943 Feb 28, "Porgy & Bess"
opened on Broadway with Anne Brown & Todd Duncan.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1943 Feb 28, In Operation
Gunnerside Norwegian commandos flown in from Britain destroyed the Nazi
heavy water plant near Rjukan. The raid was later depicted in the 1965
film "The Heroes of Telemark." The 9 commandos included Claus Helberg
(d.2003) and Knut Haukelid (d.1994).
(SFC, 3/14/03, p.A27)(ON, 4/07, p.4)
1945 Feb 28, U.S. tanks broke the
natural defense line west of the Rhine and crossed the Erft River.
(HN, 2/28/98)
1946 Feb 28, The U.S. Army
declared that it would use the V-2 rocket to test radar as an atomic
rocket defense system.
(HN, 2/28/98)
1947 Feb 28, Britain and France
signed a 50-year pact to curb Germany.
(HN, 2/28/98)
1947 Feb 28, There was an
anti-Kuomintang demonstration on Taiwan. As many as 20,000 civilians
were massacred by the Kuomintang (KMT). A riot was sparked by the
arrest of a woman selling contraband cigarettes in Taipei. Crowds
attacked the Nationalist Party institutions as Nationalist troops and
secret police struck back over the ensuing months. In 1996 a 69 cent
postage stamp was planned in commemoration of the “228 Incident.” In
2006 a team from UC Berkeley won a design competition for a 15-acre
“228 National Memorial Park.”
(SFC, 4/6/06, p.B3)(SFC, 12/26/96, p.B1)(SFC,
6/10/97, p.A8)(SFC, 4/6/06, p.B3)
1948 Feb 28, Mercedes Ruehl,
actress (Lost in Yonkers, Crazy People), was born in Queens NY.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1948 Feb 28, The last
British troops left India. The First Battalion of the Somerset Light
Infantry passed through the Gateway of India monument in a ceremony.
(AP, 8/26/03)
1950 Feb 28, The French Assembly
in Paris decided to limit the sale of Coca-Cola.
(HN, 2/28/98)
1951 Feb 28, The Senate committee
headed by Estes Kefauver, D-Tenn., Issued a preliminary report saying
at least two major crime syndicates were operating in the United
States.
(AP, 2/28/98)
1953 Feb 28, Francis Crick
(d.2004) and James Watson discovered the structure of DNA-molecule.
Watson and Crick managed to describe the structure of DNA as a double
helix consisting of two long strings coiled around one another. About
100,000 genes, short sections of DNA, tell the cells how to build
proteins, the building blocks of life. Rosalind Franklin made the 1st
x-ray image that revealed the double helix structure of DNA. In 2002
Brenda Maddox authored "Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA." In
2003 Watson co-authored "DNA: The Secret of Life." [see Sep 20,
Apr 25, 1953]
(V.D.-H.K.p.330)(TL, 1988, p.114)(Wired, 1/97,
p.161)(SSFC, 11/10/02, p.M2)(WSJ, 3/28/03, p.W8) (AP, 2/28/04)
1953 Feb 28, Greece, Turkey and
Yugoslavia signed a 5-year defense pact in Ankara.
(HN, 2/28/98)
1953 Feb 28, Stalin met with
Beria, Bulganin, Khrushchev and Malenkov.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1960 Feb 28, The Eighth Winter
Olympic Games formally closed in Squaw Valley, Calif.
(SSFC, 1/3/10, p.A13)
1967 Feb 28, In Mississippi 19
were indicted in the slayings of three civil rights workers in 1964.
Samuel H. Bowers and 6 others were convicted on federal charges in
1970. Bowers was released in 1976.
(HN, 2/28/98)(SFC, 8/18/98, p.A5)
1967 Feb 28, Art Davidson, Ray
Genet and Dave Johnston completed the first winter ascent of Alaska’s
Mount McKinley. On their descent they became trapped by a storm for 6
days at 18,500 feet in an ice-cave. In 1969 Art Davidson authored
“Minus 148°.”
(WSJ, 4/28/07,
p.P8)(www.summitpost.org/parent/150199/mount-mckinley-denali.html)
1967 Feb 28, Henry Luce (68),
American publisher, died in Phoenix. He and Briton Hadden (1898-1929)
published the first issue of Time magazine on March 3, 1923. In 2010
Alan Brinkley authored “The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American
Century.”
(AP,
2/28/07)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Luce)(Econ, 1/9/10, p.82)
1969 Feb 28, A Los Angeles court
refused Robert Kennedy assassin Sirhan Sirhan's request to be executed.
(HN, 2/28/98)
1970 Feb 28, Bicycles were
permitted to cross the Golden Gate Bridge.
(www.goldengatebridge.org/research/dates.php)
1971 Feb 28, The male electorate
in Lichtenstein refused to give voting rights to women.
(HN, 2/28/98)
1972 Feb 28, President Nixon and
Chinese Premier Chou En-lai signed the Shanghai Communique at the Jin
Jiang Hotel Assembly Hall on the last night of Nixon’s visit.
(WSJ, 3/5/97, p.A16)(AP, 2/28/07)
1974 Feb 28, The United States and
Egypt re-established diplomatic relations after a seven-year break.
(AP, 2/28/98)
1974 Feb 28, Labor Party won the
British parliamentary election.
(www.enotes.com/peoples-chronology/year-1974)
1975 Feb 28, AMC introduced the
Pacer, the first wide, small car.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv.
Supl)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMC_Pacer)
1975 Feb 28, The EU signed another
trade deal in Lome, Togo, to keep markets open to former European
colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific Islands (ACP).
(Econ, 5/28/05,
p.78)(http://europa.eu.int/abc/history/1975/index_en.htm)
1975 Feb 28, A London subway train
smashed into the end of a tunnel at Moorgate Underground station and 43
people were killed.
(AP, 1/23/06)
1977 Feb 28, Eddie "Rochester"
Anderson (b.1905), African-American comedian, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Anderson_(comedian))
1978 Feb 28, Louise Woodward, the
nanny who allegedly killed Matthew Eappen (1997) in Cambridge, Mass.,
was born in Elton, England.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Woodward)
1978 Feb 28, Robert Rowe (d.1997)
of Brooklyn killed his wife and 3 children with a baseball bat. He was
tried and later released from a mental institution and became a father
again. In 2001 Julie Salamon authored "Facing the Wind," a narrative of
the Rowe case.
(WSJ, 3/30/01, p.W8)
1978 Feb 28, Consuelo Kanaga
(b.1894), San Francisco photographer, died.
(SFEM, 6/30/96, p.20)(http://tinyurl.com/393wgc)
1979 Feb 28, Ernest Thompson's
play "On Golden Pond," premiered in NYC.
(www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=3923)
1982 Feb 28, The FALN, a Puerto
Rican Nationalist Group, bombed Wall Street. 4 powerful bombs detonated
in front of business institutions in New York's financial district.
(http://judiciary.senate.gov/oldsite/91599drw.htm)
1983 Feb 28, The last episode of
M*A*S*H was shown. A record 125 million made MASH the most watched TV
show.
(SFC, 9/9/96, p.A26)(SFEC, 4/19/98, DB
p.38)(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/2000-2/)
1984 Feb 28, New Hampshire held
its presidential primary. Ronald Reagan won with 86.1% of the total
vote. Gary Hart won the Democratic tally over Walter Mondale and John
Glenn.
(www.politicallibrary.org/TallState/1984rep.html)(SSFC, 1/25/04, p.A19)
1986 Feb 28, In the Philippines
Pres. Corazon Aquino singed executive order No. 1 creating the
Presidential Commission on Good Governance. It was created to trace and
recover assets stolen under the Marcos regime, estimated at up to $10
billion. By 2007 only a quarter of that number was retrieved.
(www.lawphil.net/executive/execord/eo1986/eo_1_1986.html)(Econ,
8/11/07, p.33)
1986 Feb 28, Olaf Palme, Swedish
Prime Minister (1969-76, 82-86), was shot to death in central
Stockholm. In 1996 South African former police officer Eugene de Kock
said that Craig Williamson, a South African spy, was involved in the
murder. In 1997 lawyer Pelle Svensson said that his client, Lars
Tingstrom, wrote a statement on his deathbed in prison in 1993 that he
committed the killing. the family was convinced that Christer
Pettersson, a drug addict and alcoholic, was the killer. In 1999
Abdullah Ocalan in Turkey suggested that a rival PKK organization
killed Olaf Palme.
(SFC, 9/27/96, p.A12)(SFC, 3/26/97, p.A12)(AP,
2/28/98)(SFEC, 8/23/98, p.A26)(SFC, 6/2/99, p.C2)
1988 Feb 28, The 15th Olympic
Winter Games held its closing ceremony in Calgary, Canada.
(AP, 2/28/98)
1988 Feb 28, Ethnic unrest broke
out between Armenians and Azerbaijanis in the city of Sumgait. There
was an anti-Armenian pogrom in the town of Sumgait. A national
awakening occurred in Azerbaijan when conflict erupted over the
Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, included by the Soviets in the
Republic of Azerbaijan. The Armenian population in Nagorno-Karabakh
began fighting for independence.
(WSJ, 8/7/96, p.A15)(AP, 2/28/98)(SFC, 11/27/96,
p.A13)(WSJ, 5/14/97, p.A22)
1989 Feb 28, In Chicago, Richard
M. Daley, son of Mayor Richard J. Daley who served as mayor for 21
years, defeated acting Mayor Eugene Sawyer in a Democratic primary
election.
(SFC, 2/24/99, p.A3)(AP, 2/28/99)
1989 Feb 28, Humorist-poet Richard
Armour (82) died in Claremont, Calif.
(AP, 2/28/99)
1990 Feb 28, Space shuttle
Atlantis blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla. on a secret mission to
place a spy satellite in orbit.
(AP, 2/28/00)
1991 Feb 28, A cease-fire was
announced in Kuwait. Allied and Iraqi forces suspended their attacks as
Iraq pledged to accept all United Nations resolutions concerning
Kuwait. In 1998 George Bush co-wrote "A World Transformed" with Brent
Scowcroft, his national security advisor. The book was a dialogue about
the foreign policy problems face by the US during the Bush
administration (1988-1992). In 1995 Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor
published "The General's War: The Inside Story of the Conflict in the
Gulf."
(SFC, 9/4/96, p.A8)(SFC, 5/4/99, p.D1)(AP, 2/28/01)
1992 Feb 28, Twenty-eight people
were injured when an IRA bomb exploded at London Bridge train station.
(AP, 2/28/02)
1992 Feb 29, La Lupe (53), Cuban
singer, died of a heart attack in the Bronx.
(www.si.umich.edu/CHICO/salsa/artists/lalupe.html)
1993 Feb 28, Agents of the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms raided the ranch of the Branch
Davidian sect under David Koresh in Waco, Texas. A shootout followed
when Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents tried to serve
warrants on the Branch Davidians; four agents and six Davidians were
killed as a 51-day standoff began. In 1997 the film "Waco: The Rules of
Engagement" was released that documented the story.
(SFC, 2/28/97, p.D3)(AP, 2/28/98)
1993 Feb 28, Three U.S. planes
carried out the first mission to drop relief supplies over
Bosnia-Herzegovina. The US Operations Deny Flight, Provide Promise,
Deliberate Force, Decisive Edge, Joint Endeavour and others began in
Bosnia and Macedonia. They cost $9.7 billion to date in 1999 and left 4
US casualties with 5 wounded.
(AP, 2/28/98)(WSJ, 9/22/99, p.A8)
1993 Feb 28, Ishiro Honda (81),
Japanese director, producer (Godzilla), died.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0393094/)
1994 Feb 28, Brady Law, imposing a
wait-period to buy a hand-gun, went into effect. It amended a 1968 law
that prohibited felons from buying guns and imposed a 5-day waiting
period for handgun purchases to allow for a criminal record check.
(SFC, 12/4/96, p.A5)(www.bradycenter.org/about/)
1994 Feb 28, Two U.S. F-16 fighter
jets downed four Serb warplanes that U.N. officials said had bombed an
arms plant run by Bosnia's Muslim-led government. This was the first
NATO use of force in the troubled area.
(AP, 2/28/99)(HN, 2/28/99)
1994 Feb 28, Pu Chieh (87),
brother of last Chinese emperor, Pu Yi (d.1967), died.
(www.msu.edu/~daggy/cop/bkofdead/obits-pu.htm)
1995 Feb 28, U.S. Marines swept
ashore in Somalia to protect retreating U.N. peacekeepers.
(AP, 2/28/00)
1995 Feb 28, Denver International
Airport opened after 16 months of delays and $3.2 billion in budget
overruns. A $250 million automated baggage handling system contributed
to the delays. United Airlines gave up on the system in 2005.
(AP, 2/28/98)(WSJ, 6/7/05, p.D5)
1995 Feb 28, In Mexico Raul
Salinas de Gortari was arrested for masterminding the murder of Jose
Francisco Ruiz Sep 28, 1994. He was imprisoned in Almaloya prison,
Mexico’s highest-security facility. In 1998 Raul Salinas was acquitted
of money laundering but remained in jail on murder and
illegal-enrichment charges.
(WSJ, 4/15/96, p.A-15)(SFC, 4/8/97, p.A6)(SFC,
5/22/98, p.D4)(SFC, 1/22/99, p.A10)
1995 Feb 28, Max Rudolf (92),
conductor, died.
(www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Rudolf-Max.htm)
1996 Feb 28, Alanis Morissette’s
"Jagged Little Pill" won best rock album and album of the year at the
Grammy Awards; Seal’s "Kiss from a Rose" won for record and song of the
year.
(AP, 2/28/01)
1996 Feb 28, President Clinton and
the Congress agreed on a sanctions bill aimed at driving foreign
investors from Cuba.
(AP, 2/28/01)
1996 Feb 28, The New Liberty
Baptist Church in Tyler, Ala., burned down. Arson was suspected and
investigations by the FBI and ATF were later begun.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A16)
1996 Feb 28, Britain’s Princess
Diana agreed to divorce Prince Charles.
(AP, 2/28/01)
1996 Feb 28, Russia joined the
Council of Europe and halted capital punishment. The Russian Federation
had applied to join the Council of Europe on 7 May 1992.
(SFC, 11/10/09, p.A2)(http://www.ena.lu/)
1997 Feb 28, Brushing aside
congressional calls for a tougher stance against Mexico, President
Clinton recertified the country as a fully cooperating ally in the
struggle against drug smuggling.
(AP, 2/28/98)
1997 Feb 28, Pres. Clinton and
Monica Lewinsky had another sexual encounter [after nearly 11 months]
following the taping of his weekly radio address.
(SFC, 9/12/98, p.A13)
1997 Feb 28, US Navy medium attack
aircraft were retired by order of Pres. Clinton. Any deep-strike
mission would be in the hands of the Air Force.
(WSJ, 2/28/97, p.A14)
1997 Feb 28, In North Hollywood,
Calif., two heavily armed masked robbers bungled a B of A bank heist
and came out firing, unleashing their arsenal on police, bystanders,
cars and TV choppers before they were killed. Police borrowed high
powered semiautomatic rifles from a local gun store to match the fire
power of the robbers.
(SFC, 3/1/97, p.A1,17)(AP, 2/28/98)
1997 Feb 28, Del Monte announced
that it would be sold to the Texas Pacific Group for about $800 million.
(SFC, 3/1/97, p.B1)
1997 Feb 28, Ford announced that
it planned to phase out production of the Thunderbird (b.1955) until a
new generation model in 2000.
(WSJ, 2/28/97, p.A3)
1997 Feb 28, A 6.1 earthquake at
Ardebil in northwest Iran struck at 4:27 p.m. local time. The quake
damaged 110 villages and killed some 3,000 people. A second 5.1 quake
followed in 2 days.
(SFC, 3/1/97, p.C1)(SFEC, 3/2/97, p.A15)(SFEC,
3/3/97, p.A12)
1997 Feb 28, From Malaysia it was
reported that the Dayaks were killing the Madurans in the rain forest
of West Kalimantan, Borneo. The indigenous Dayaks had killed as many as
300 Madurans in fierce hand combat after a peace treaty was broken. The
Madurans were moved in by the government from an overpopulated area.
(SFC, 2/28/97, p.A16)
1997 Feb 28, In Pakistan at 2:10
a.m. a 7.3 earthquake struck in the province of Baluchistan. At least 8
people were killed and many injured. Reports the next day indicated
that the 7.3 quake in Pakistan killed at least 80.
(WSJ, 2/28/97, p.A1)(SFC, 3/1/97, p.C1)
1998 Feb 28, In weekly radio
addresses, President Clinton and Republicans sparred over education,
with Clinton describing tests showing American high school students
lagging behind those of other industrial nations as a "wake-up call"
while the Republicans blamed the disappointing results on a "hungry
bureaucracy in Washington" that gobbles up education funds.
(AP, 2/28/99)
1998 Feb 28, Albert Lippert,
co-founder of the Weight Watchers diet program, died at age 72.
(SFC, 3/4/98, p.C4)
1998 Feb 28, The elections came to
a close. The BJP built its campaign around candidate for prime minister
Atal Bihari Vajpayee (71). The Congress Party was led by Sonia Gandhi.
Jayalalitha Jayaram led the All India Anna Dravida Munetra Kazhagam
party in Tamil Nadu won 18 seats in parliament.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.A18)
1998 Feb 28, In Likoshan two
Serbian police officers were killed. Police blamed the Kosovo
Liberation Army. The Serbian SAJ, an anti-terrorist unit, was
immediately called to the scene and rounded up 10 males who were
summarily shot. Another 15 villagers were also killed.
(SFC, 3/11/98, p.A8)
1999 Feb 28, A US air strike in
Iraq was said to have damaged an oil pipeline, stopped the flow of oil
and killed one Iraqi. The US denied the charges. Iraq claimed that a
communications center for a major oil pipeline into Turkey was struck.
(SFC, 3/1/99, p.A12)(SFC, 3/2/99, p.A8)
1999 Feb 28, In Colombia 3 US
citizens, Terence Freitas, Ingrid Washinawatok and Lahe'ena'e Gay, were
kidnapped by FARC rebels. The 3 belonged to a group that worked to
defend the rights of the Uwa Indians in a dispute with Occidental
Petroleum. 3 FARC rebels, wanted for the kidnapping, were captured Nov
28, 2002. [see Mar 4]
(SFC, 3/1/99, p.A12)(AP, 11/29/02)
1999 Feb 28, Ethiopia claimed
victory over Eritrea and said that it had killed, wounded and captured
tens of thousands of Eritrean soldiers.
(SFC, 3/1/99, p.A12)
1999 Feb 28, Israel sent warplanes
against guerrilla targets in Lebanon in retaliation for the death of
Brig. Gen'l. Erez Gerstein and 3 others. Guerrillas had detonated two
bombs beside a military convoy in southern Lebanon, killing a brigadier
general and three other Israelis.
(SFC, 3/1/99, p.A1)(AP, 2/28/00)
1999 Feb 28, Japanese doctors
performed their first legal organ transplant from a brain-dead patient.
A 1997 law allowed the standard for death to be the cessation of brain
activity. The last heart transplant was done in 1968.
(SFC, 3/1/99, p.A10)(WSJ, 3/1/99, p.A1)
1999 Feb 28, In Nigeria retired
Gen'l. Obasanjo led the presidential vote with 62%. Serious concern
over vote-rigging was expressed.
(SFC, 3/1/99, p.A10)(WSJ, 3/1/99, p.A1)
1999 Feb 28, In Zambia a bomb
exploded at the Angolan Embassy and 4 other locations in Lusaka.
(SFC, 3/1/99, p.A12)
2000 Feb 28, In Massachusetts
computer-industry publisher Patrick J. McGovern and his wife, Lore Harp
McGovern, pledged a $350 million donation over 20 years to MIT to
finance brain research.
(SFC, 2/29/00, p.A2)(WSJ, 2/29/00, p.A1)
2000 Feb 28, In Algeria an armed
group massacred 20 people, shepherds and their families, near Brezina.
(SFC, 2/29/00, p.A12)
2000 Feb 28, In Austria Joerg
Haider, governor of Carinthia, resigned as head of the Freedom Party in
an apparent bid to end Austria’s international ostracism following his
party’s rise to power. His official resignation took place May 1.
(SFC, 2/29/00, p.A10)(SFC, 5/2/00, p.A10)(AP,
2/28/01)
2000 Feb 28, In Indonesia Henry
Kissinger agreed to work as a political advisor to Pres. Abdurrahman
Wahid.
(SFC, 2/29/00, p.A10)
2000 Feb 28, It was reported that
Iraq and Syria had established diplomatic ties that were cut in
Aug 1980 when Damascus sided with Iran just before the Iran-Iraq war.
(SFC, 2/28/00, p.C2)
2000 Feb 28, In Mozambique
officials feared that thousands may have died in the last 3 weeks of
flooding.
(WSJ, 2/29/00, p.A1)
2000 Feb 28, In Nigeria ethnic
violence between the Ibos and Hausas was reported from Aba in reaction
to the fighting in Kuduna. At least 50 people were reported dead.
(WSJ, 2/29/00, p.A1)
2000 Feb 28, In Turkey 3 Kurdish
mayors were released from prison pending trial on charges that they
aided Kurdish rebels.
(SFC, 2/29/00, p.A12)
2001 Feb 28, A 6.8 magnitude slab
earthquake shook the Northwest and rocked the cities of Seattle and
Portland, Oregon. It was centered 32.6 miles below the surface along
the boundary of the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate and the continental
North American plate. Damages were later estimated at $1.5-2 billion.
(SFC, 3/1/01, p.A1)(WSJ, 3/2/01, p.A1)(SFC, 1/5/02,
p.A4)(AP, 2/28/02)
2001 Feb 28, A train collision in
northeast England killed 10 people and injured more than 70.
(AP, 2/28/02)
2001 Feb 28, China ratified a
UN-sponsored human rights treaty but backed away from a guarantee of
workers rights.
(SFC, 3/1/01, p.A8)(WSJ, 3/1/01, p.A1)
2001 Feb 28, In Congo 3,000 troops
from Rwanda and 150 from Uganda withdrew. All warring parties were
scheduled to make way for an 18-mile buffer zone, to be monitored by
the UN, by March 15.
(SFC, 3/1/01, p.A10)
2001 Feb 28, A 5.4 earthquake hit
El Salvador.
(SFC, 3/1/01, p.A10)
2001 Feb 28, In England a train
crash in North Yorkshire killed 13 people and injured 70.
(SFC, 3/1/01, p.A8)
2001 Feb 28, Officials in Northern
Ireland confirmed hoof-and-mouth disease in sheep imported from
England. 8 more cases were confirmed in England and Wales.
(SFC, 3/1/01, p.A10)
2001 Feb 28, Flooding continued in
central Mozambique as the death toll rose to 52. 81,000 were made
homeless since the beginning of the year.
(SFC, 3/1/01, p.A10)(SFC, 3/2/01, p.A16)
2002 Feb 28, Dr. Ellen Feinberg
(43) stabbed to death her 10-year-old son and wounded a younger son in
Champaign, Ill.
(SFC, 3/2/02, p.A6)
2002 Feb 28, The body of a young
girl found outside San Diego, Ca., was positively identified as that of
7-year-old Danielle van Dam, who'd disappeared from her bedroom about a
month earlier; a neighbor, David Westerfield, was later convicted of
her murder and sentenced to death.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2002 Feb 28, Mary Stuart (75),
Soap opera actress, died in New York. She had starred in "Search for
Tomorrow" for some 35 years.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2002 Feb 28, In Gujarat state,
Hindu mobs killed over 158 people, burned shops and attacked residences
in Ahmadabad to avenge the killing of 58 Hindu activists. In 2007
a series of videotaped confessions showed Hindu activists acknowledging
their roles in the killings and detailing blatant state collusion.
(SFC, 3/1/02, p.A1,12)(SFC, 10/25/07, p.A13)
2002 Feb 28, In Hong Kong Tung
Chee-hwa won a 2nd term after a nomination period expired with
challengers.
(SFC, 3/1/02, p.A17)
2002 Feb 28, Israeli troops
assaulted 2 West Bank refugee camps. One Israeli soldier and 12
Palestinian fighters were killed.
(SFC, 3/1/02, p.A13)(WSJ, 3/1/02, p.A10)
2002 Feb 28, Japan reportedly
planned to double its whale catch to 260 whales and include the
endangered sei whale.
(SFC, 3/1/02, p.A19)
2002 Feb 28, In Amman, Jordan, a
bomb killed 2 passersby and destroyed the car of a top anti-terrorism
official’s wife.
(WSJ, 3/1/02, p.A1)
2002 Feb 28, In Madagascar Pres.
Didier Ratsiraka declared martial law following 2 months of strikes and
mass protests.
(SFC, 3/1/02, p.A17)
2002 Feb 28, In Pakistan gunmen
attacked a police bus in a bid to free prisoners that included a
suspect in the slaying of Daniel Pearl. A policeman and a prisoner were
killed.
(WSJ, 3/1/02, p.A1)
2003 Feb 28, The Ninth U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals stood by its ruling that reciting the Pledge
of Allegiance in public schools was unconstitutional because of the
words "under God."
(AP, 2/28/04)
2003 Feb 28, The FDA announced
that every bottle of ephedra would soon bear stern warnings that the
popular herb could cause heart attacks or strokes, even kill.
(AP, 2/28/04)
2003 Feb 28, NASA released video
taken aboard Columbia that had miraculously survived the fiery
destruction of the space shuttle with the loss of all seven astronauts;
in the footage, four of the crew members can be seen doing routine
chores and admiring the view outside the cockpit.
(AP, 2/28/04)
2003 Feb 28, The
International Atomic Energy Agency said it has sent an emergency
mission to Nigeria to help find an undisclosed amount of missing or
stolen radioactive material.
(AP, 2/28/03)
2003 Feb 28, In Austria a
conservative-led coalition assumed governing power in Austria backed by
Joerg Haider's anti-immigrant party.
(AP, 2/28/03)
2003 Feb 28, Carnival began
in Brazil as a large crime wave swept Rio. Imprisoned Red Command
leader, Luiz Fernando da Costa, was believed responsible and was moved
to a maximum security prison in San Paolo state.
(SFC, 2/28/03, A16)
2003 Feb 28, Tassos
Papadopoulos took office as the fifth Greek Cypriot president, pledging
to strive for reunification.
(AP, 2/28/03)
2003 Feb 28, Czech
lawmakers elected opposition candidate Vaclav Klaus as president,
succeeding former president and long time rival Vaclav Havel.
(AP, 2/28/03)
2003 Feb 28, Fidel Sanchez
Hernandez (85), former El Salvador President (1967-1972), died. He
directed the so-called 100-hour war, when the Salvadoran army invaded
Honduras in 1969 over a territorial dispute.
(AP, 3/1/03)
2003 Feb 28, Iraq agreed to
begin destroying its Al Samoud 2 missiles within 24 hours.
(AP, 2/28/03)
2003 Feb 28, Ivory
Coast-based mercenary fighters attacked and captured Toe Town on
Liberia's eastern border. Liberia's government considered the assault
"highly provocative" and "tantamount to a declaration of war" by Ivory
Coast.
(AP, 3/1/03)
2004 Feb 28, The Bow Mariner, a
tanker carrying 3.5 million gallons of ethanol, exploded and sank off
Virginia's Eastern Shore. Three crewmen were known dead and six others
were rescued. 18 crew members were left missing.
(SSFC, 2/29/04, p.A3)(SFC, 2/02/04, p.A3)
2004 Feb 28, It was reported that
80% of Americans claim to believe in God, compared with 62% of the
French and 52% of Swedes.
(Econ, 2/28/04, p.34)
2004 Feb 28, It was reported that
scientists had measured the shortest time interval ever, a mere 100
attoseconds. The “atto” referred to a billionth of a “nano.”
(Econ, 2/28/04, p.77)
2004 Feb 28, Daniel Joseph
Boorstin (89), author, historian and 12th librarian of Congress, died
in Washington DC. His 2 dozen books included The Americans trilogy:
"The Colonial Experience" (1959), "The National Experience" (1966), and
"The Democratic Experience" (1973).
(SSFC, 2/29/04, p.A2)(Econ, 3/20/04, p.94)
2004 Feb 28, African leaders
agreed on a common security policy that for the first time gives the
fledgling African Union authority to intervene in border wars and
internal conflicts. A draft declaration of the policy was expected to
be announced at the conclusion of the two-day pan-African summit.
(AP, 2/28/04)
2004 Feb 28, Egyptian security
forces attacked gunmen who had taken an estimated 80 people hostage in
a southern Egyptian town. Some of the captives were feared dead.
(AP, 2/28/04)
2004 Feb 28, In Finland hundreds
of trucks prepared to roll onto frozen roads at midnight, stocked with
beer and hard cider for a population that eagerly awaits a historic
government measure that will cut alcohol prices by nearly 40 percent.
(AP, 2/28/04)
2004 Feb 28, In Haiti anarchy
spread across the capital as residents looted warehouses, government
loyalists attacked passers-by and rebels advanced closer to the seat of
power.
(AP, 2/28/04)
2004 Feb 28, Iraq's U.S.-picked
leaders failed to meet a deadline for adopting an interim constitution.
(AP, 2/28/05)
2004 Feb 28, Six-nation talks on
North Korea's nuclear program ended without any major breakthrough. The
North denounced the United States, saying it wasn't willing to reach a
settlement.
(AP, 2/28/04)
2004 Feb 28, In Pakistan a suicide
attacker blew himself up in a Shiite Muslim mosque in a city near
Islamabad.
(AP, 2/28/04)
2004 Feb 28, The mayor of Nablus,
the West Bank's largest city, said he is quitting to protest Yasser
Arafat's failure to rein in armed gangs.
(AP, 2/28/04)
2004 Feb 28, Qatar accused Russia
of detaining two of its nationals in Moscow, after two Russians were
charged with murdering a former rebel Chechen leader in Qatar.
(AP, 2/28/04)
2004 Feb 28, It was reported that
70% South Koreans had high-speed Internet connections.
(Econ, 2/28/04, p.61)
2004 Feb 28, In Taiwan an
estimated 1.2 million people linked hands in a human chain the length
of the island as President Chen Shui-bian urged protesters to oppose
China's military threats and create the "Great Wall of Taiwan's
democracy."
(AP, 2/28/04)
2005 Feb 28, The US Mint began
distributing new buffalo nickels to banks. The reverse side showed a
bolder profile of Thomas Jefferson.
(SFC, 2/26/05, p.A3)
2005 Feb 28, Michael Jackson faced
opening statements in Santa Maria, Ca., in his trial on child
molestation charges.
(SFC, 3/1/05, p.A1)
2005 Feb 28, US District Judge
Joan Humphrey Lefkow discovered the bodies of her husband and mother
inside her Chicago home. An unemployed electrician confessed to the
murders in a suicide note. In 2002 she had ordered the white
supremacist group World Church of the Creator under Matthew Hale to
remove the World Church name from its website. A cigarette butt found
in Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow's house was matched to the electrician,
Bart Ross, who killed himself Mar 9 during a traffic stop in Wisconsin,
and left a suicide note claiming responsibility for the killings.
Lefkow last fall dismissed a rambling lawsuit in which Ross claimed
that cancer treatments had disfigured his face.
(SFC, 3/2/05, p.A13)(AP, 3/11/05)(SFC, 3/11/05,
p.A1)(AP, 2/28/06)
2005 Feb 28, Federated Dept.
Stores announced the acquisition of may Dept. Stores for $11 billion in
cash and stock.
(SFC, 3/1/05, p.A1)
2005 Feb 28, African Union (AU)
chairman, Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo, met Sudan's first vice
president Ali Taha over the bloody crisis in Darfur region.
(AFP, 2/28/05)
2005 Feb 28, In Britain the
Duchess of Northumberland opened her new Poison Garden, dedicated to
the world’s most venomous and hallucinogenic plants. It was a part of
Alnwick Garden opened in 2002.
(SFC, 10/29/05,
p.F7)(www.alnwickgarden.com/media/in_the_press.asp)
2005 Feb 28, Burundians voted on a
new constitution that enshrines Hutu control by allotting them 60% of
parliamentary seats with 40% for Tutsis.
(WSJ, 3/1/05, p.A1)
2005 Feb 28, Thierry Breton
arrived for work as France's 4th finance minister in less than a year,
ready to pick up the unfinished business of restoring the French
economy to good health.
(AP, 2/28/05)
2005 Feb 28, In Grenada Alister
Hughes (86), respected journalists known for his coverage of Grenada's
political woes and the US invasion in 1983, died of a stroke.
(AP, 3/2/05)
2005 Feb 28, India's
communist-backed coalition government unveiled a budget aimed at
boosting growth to help the rural poor but warned this would be at the
expense of tackling a bloated deficit.
(AP, 2/28/05)
2005 Feb 28, Indonesia welcomed a
move by the US to resume a small but high-profile US military training
program that was frozen in the 1990s because of human rights abuses in
East Timor. Human rights groups condemned the decision.
(Reuters, 2/28/05)
2005 Feb 28, In Iraq a suicide car
bomber blasted a crowd of police and national guard recruits as they
gathered for physicals outside a medical clinic in Hillah, south of
Baghdad, killing 125 people and wounding 132.
(AP, 3/1/05)(AP, 2/28/06)
2005 Feb 28, Israeli troops
discovered a vehicle packed with half a ton of explosives in the West
Bank, the largest bomb found in four years of fighting.
(AP, 3/1/05)
2005 Feb 28, Defying a ban on
protests, about 10,000 people demonstrated against Syrian interference
in Lebanon, as opposition lawmakers sought to bring down the
pro-Damascus government. The pro-Damascus PM Omar Karami and his
Cabinet resigned.
(AP, 2/28/05)(SFC, 3/1/05, p.A1)
2005 Feb 28, Mexican prosecutors
charged 27 state, federal and local police in Cancun with running a
drug ring or aiding in the murder of their fellow officers, busting one
of Mexico's largest police-protection rackets and solving the mystery
behind the killing of three federal agents in November.
(AP, 3/1/05)
2005 Feb 28, In Nepal at least 50
Maoist rebels and 4 soldiers were killed in a gunbattle in the western
Bardiya district.
(AP, 3/1/05)
2005 Feb 28, In Tajikistan
opposition parties alleged systematic vote-rigging and other breaches
during weekend parliamentary elections in the former Soviet republic.
(AP, 2/28/05)
2006 Feb 28, The US Supreme Court
voted 8-0 to bar the use of racketeering laws against antiabortion
protesters.
(WSJ, 3/1/06, p.A1)
2006 Feb 28, The first Mardi Gras
since Hurricane Katrina drew a smaller-than-usual turnout.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2006 Feb 28, The San Francisco
Board of Supervisors passed a resolution (7-3) asking the city’s
Democratic congressional delegation to seek the impeachment of Pres.
Bush.
(SFC, 3/1/06, p.A1)
2006 Feb 28, In Gas City, Indiana,
a museum chronicling the short life of James Dean closed after
struggling financially since its opening in 2004. David Loehr said he
would soon be setting up a small display in the National Automotive
& Truck Museum in Auburn.
(AP, 3/30/06)
2006 Feb 28, The US FDA approved a
selegeline skin patch to treat depression. Somerset Pharmaceuticals
said the drug will be marketed as Emsam. Selegiline as approved in pill
form in 1989 to help treat Parkinson’s disease.
(SFC, 3/1/06, p.A12)
2006 Feb 28, US coffee giant
Starbucks Corp said it planned to begin selling Rwandan specialty
coffee in 5,000 outlets across the US from next month.
(Reuters, 2/28/06)
2006 Feb 28, Bob Fu, a US-based
activist and a Chinese legal scholar, said leaders of an underground
Chinese church, who are accused of killing of 20 members of a rival
group, were tortured into confessing in a crackdown on unofficial
religious organizations.
(AP, 2/28/06)
2006 Feb 28, Owen Chamberlain
(b.1920) Nobel Prize winning physicist (1959), died in Berkeley, Ca. He
and Emilio Segre shared the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physics for their 1955
discovery of the anti-proton.
(SFC, 3/2/06, p.B7)
2006 Feb 28, In Afghan police
fired at inmates trying to push down a gate at Kabul's main jail as
about 2,000 prisoners resumed rioting after a 24-hour pause in
violence. One inmate died and three were wounded in the renewed
fighting. A US soldier was killed by an IED.
(AP, 2/28/06)(WSJ, 3/1/06, p.A1)
2006 Feb 28, A Bangladesh court
sentenced 21 Islamic militants, aged 21-25, to death for their part in
a deadly wave of blasts that saw more than 400 bombs explode almost
simultaneously across the country on Aug 17, 2005. All were members of
the militant group Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and were
sentenced under the country's Explosive Substances Act."
(AFP, 2/28/06)
2006 Feb 28, The UN refugee agency
said fighting between soldiers and rebels in eastern Chad was sending
civilians fleeing across the border to Sudan’s Darfur region and were
being targeted by Sudanese militia.
(SFC, 3/1/06, p.A10)
2006 Feb 28, Sergei Abramov, the
Kremlin-backed PM of war-battered Chechnya, said he was stepping down
to give way to Ramzan Kadyrov (29), the widely feared head of a shadowy
security service.
(AP, 3/1/06)
2006 Feb 28, Chinese President Hu
Jintao denounced the Taiwanese president's decision to scrap an agency
dedicated to uniting Taiwan with the communist mainland, and warned
that Beijing will not permit the self-ruled island to pursue formal
independence.
(AP, 2/28/06)
2006 Feb 28, In El Salvador
thousands of street vendors, university students and labor unionists
marched in San Salvador against a regional free trade accord with the
US, which they say will hurt small businesses and organized labor.
(AP, 2/28/06)
2006 Feb 28, The deadly strain of
bird flu was confirmed in a cat in northern Germany, the first time the
virus has been identified in a mammal in the 25 nations of the European
Union.
(AP, 2/28/06)
2006 Feb 28, Palaniappan
Chidambaram, India’s finance minister, unveiled the budget for the new
fiscal year. It forecast growth at 8.1% and included a 7.2% increase in
defense spending to $20 billion.
(WSJ, 3/1/06, p.A6)(Econ, 3/4/06, p.38)
2006 Feb 28, In central India
suspected Maoist militants (Naxalites) attacked a group of trucks
jammed with passengers, killing 23 people and injuring 33.
(AP, 2/28/06)(Econ, 4/15/06, p.45)
2006 Feb 28, A suicide bomber
detonated an explosives belt at a crowded gas station killing 23 people
with 51 injured. 9 bullet-riddled bodies, including that of a Sunni
Muslim tribal sheik, were found off a road southeast of Baghdad. Sunnis
and Shiites in Baghdad traded bombings and mortar fire mainly at
religious targets, killing at least 75 people.
(AP, 2/28/06)(AP, 3/1/06)(SFC, 3/1/06, p.A1)
2006 Feb 28, Iraqi border guards
captured, Abdullah Salah al-Harbi, a Saudi who admitted he was involved
in the suicide attack on the Abqaiq oil facility in Saudi Arabia.
(AP, 3/2/06)
2006 Feb 28, A car bomb targeted a
British patrol in Amarah, 180 miles from Baghdad, and 2 British
soldiers were killed. The deaths raised the British toll in the Iraq
conflict to 103.
(AP, 2/28/06)
2006 Feb 28, The Malaysian
government sharply raised fuel prices to trim a ballooning fuel-subsidy
bill. Interest rates and inflation were expected to rise as a result.
(WSJ, 3/1/06, p.A7)
2006 Feb 28, Mexico City officials
moved to shut down a US-owned hotel that angered many Mexicans when it
kicked out a Cuban delegation under pressure from Washington. The
Sheraton Maria Isabel Hotel would be closed because it was in violation
of building codes. The hotel could reopen when it had corrected the
violations and paid a $15,000 fine. The threat of closure was dropped
the next day.
(AP, 3/1/06)(AP, 3/2/06)
2006 Feb 28, Some 4,000 Mexican
miners struck copper mines owned by the operator of the coal mine where
65 men died in an explosion last week.
(AP, 2/28/06)
2006 Feb 28, Nigerian separatist
militants stormed a tanker ship working in the Niger Delta and took a
large sum of cash, 12 days after they kidnapped nine foreign oil
workers from another vessel. The insurgent spokesman said the tanker
captain had parted with 500,000 naira as a "goodwill token" during the
encounter, although a shipping industry source put the sum at two
million naira (15,500 dollars / 13,000 euros).
(AFP, 3/1/06)
2006 Feb 28, In Peru 2 buses
crashed head-on in the southern Andes, killing 12 people, including one
American tourist. Nearly 50 people were injured.
(AP, 3/2/06)
2006 Feb 28, A top UN envoy said
Sudan has begun a campaign to keep African Union troops in Darfur and
prevent a UN force from taking over efforts to restore peace there.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi
rejected the replacement of an AU force in the Sudanese region of
Darfur by UN peacekeepers.
(AP, 2/28/06)
2006 Feb 28, Uganda's main
opposition party pledged to challenge President Yoweri Museveni's
re-election in court, charging that many people were barred from voting
and some returns were falsified.
(AP, 2/28/06)
2007 Feb 28, The US government
said the nation has 754,000 homeless people, filling emergency shelters
through the year and spilling into special seasonal shelters in the
coldest months.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Feb 28, A federal judge in
Miami ruled that suspected al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla was
competent to stand trial on terrorism support charges, rejecting
arguments that he was severely damaged by 3 1/2 years of interrogation
and isolation in a military brig.
(AP, 2/28/08)
2007 Feb 28, Sen. John McCain made
it official that he is seeking the 2008 Republican presidential
nomination and said he plans a formal announcement in April.
(Reuters, 2/28/07)
2007 Feb 28, A US military court
in Florida sentenced Air Force Capt. Devery L. Taylor to 50 years in
prison for raping 4 men and attempted rape of 2 others. A day earlier
the court had found him guilty of drugging and kidnapping servicemen he
had picked up in bars.
(SFC, 3/1/07, p.A3)
2007 Feb 28, Albert Facchiano
(96), a Genovese family mobster, pleaded guilty in Florida to
racketeering conspiracy. His arrest record dated back 75 years.
(SFC, 3/1/07, p.A4)
2007 Feb 28, A group of 12 North
Korean refugees has arrived in the United States to seek asylum, the
largest group from the communist nation to have recently defected there.
(AP, 3/1/07)
2007 Feb 28, In Michigan Thomas
Katona, a former county treasurer of a Lake Huron vacation community,
was ordered to stand trial on charges that he looted $186,500 in public
funds for a Nigerian investment scam. Katona was treasurer of Alcona
County from 1993 until his dismissal late in 2006. On June 12 Katona
(56) was sentenced for up to 14 years in prison.
(AP, 2/28/07)(AP, 6/12/07)
2007 Feb 28, Wall Street rebounded
fitfully from the previous session's 416-point plunge in the Dow
industrials as investors took comfort from comments by Federal Reserve
Chairman Ben Bernanke that he still expected moderate economic growth.
(AP, 2/28/08)
2007 Feb 28, A US study said more
than one-third of American women are infected with human papilloma
virus (HPV) by the time they are 24 years old. Overall about
one-quarter of women under age 60 are infected at any given time.
(SFC, 2/28/07, p.A5)
2007 Feb 28, Arthur M. Schlesinger
Jr. (89), the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and "court philosopher"
of the Kennedy administration, died in NY. He remained a proud liberal
even as others dared not use the word. In 2007 Penguin Press published
his “Journals: 1952-2000.”
(AP, 3/1/07)(Econ, 3/10/07, p.85)(Econ, 10/20/07,
p.116)
2007 Feb 28, Martin Metal (88), a
Berkeley sculptor, musician and poet, died.
(SFC, 3/17/07, p.B5)
2007 Feb 28, In Belgium a mother
killed her five children, then tried to commit suicide at the family's
home. The four girls and a boy, aged between 4 and 14, were stabbed
with a knife. The woman called emergency services, then tried to kill
herself.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Feb 28, Bolivia’s President
Evo Morales officially declared months of deadly flooding a national
disaster, committing some $50 million to the crisis that killed 35
people and affected some 72,000 families.
(AP, 3/1/07)
2007 Feb 28, The Church of
England's assembly affirmed existing teaching that homosexuality is no
bar to full participation in the church but avoided the fractious
debate within the Anglican Communion about accepting gay sexual
relationships.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Feb 28, Lord Charles Forte
(b.1908), Italian-born British businessman, died. He had parlayed a
London soda shop in 1934 into one of the world’s largest hospitality
businesses. He was knighted in 1970 and in 1982 PM Margaret Thatcher
made him Baron of Ripley. He authored an autobiography in 1986.
(WSJ, 3/3/07, p.A4)
2007 Feb 28, Burundi said that it
will send 1,700 peacekeepers to Somalia as part of an 8,000-strong
African Union force, while the first Ugandan contingent prepared to
leave for the war-torn nation.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Feb 28, Djidda Moussa Outman,
Chad's minister of foreign affairs, said that Chad had never accepted
the idea of a military force of "whatever nature" on its eastern border.
(AP, 3/1/07)
2007 Feb 28, An official report
said China's population grew by almost 7 million people last year.
China's National Bureau of Statistics said that the country's
population was 1,314,480,000 at the end of 2006, an increase of 6.92
million people. Numbers also showed that China will overtake the US
this year or in 2008 as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases.
(AP, 2/28/07)(SFC, 3/5/07, p.A1)
2007 Feb 28, Chinese stocks
recovered following their worst plunge in a decade as regulators
shifted into damage control, denying rumors of plans for a 20 percent
capital gains tax on stock investments. A sandstorm with
hurricane-strength wind gusts derailed a train in the far west, killing
at least four people and injuring another 30.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Feb 28, An Egyptian court
ordered a freeze on the assets of 29 known financiers of the Muslim
brotherhood, Egypt's most powerful opposition movement. An Egyptian
with Canadian citizenship on trial for spying for Israel shouted from
his courtroom cage that a confession had been extracted under torture.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Feb 28, European airliner
maker Airbus told unions that it would dispose of six factories and
switch some work from France to Germany under a plan costing some
10,000 jobs.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Feb 28, A boat carrying
Haitian migrants caught fire off the coast of the Dominican Republic,
leaving at least eight passengers dead and 44 missing.
(AP, 3/1/07)
2007 Feb 28, The fifth of six
former Guatemalan police officers suspected in the killings of three
Salvadoran politicians and their driver turned himself. Prosecutors
said the ex-officer allegedly bought the gasoline used to burn the
victims.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Feb 28, Honduras named its
first ambassador to Cuba in 45 years, completing the restoration of
diplomatic ties with communist-run island that were severed during the
Cold War.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Feb 28, In Kashmir Indian
officials charged 7 policemen in Srinagar with murdering a man and
claiming he was an Islamic militant, the first charges in an alleged
plot by officers to kill innocent people and earn rewards.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Feb 28, In India finance
minister Palaniappan Chidambaram presented his annual budget speech. As
inflation approached 7% he increased funds for education by 34% and
money for health and family welfare by 22%. Defense spending was set to
increase 7.8%.
(Econ, 3/3/07, p.49)
2007 Feb 28, French author
Dominique Lapierre opened the first of 15 schools planned in India with
money raised by auctioning an iconic dress worn by Audrey Hepburn in
"Breakfast at Tiffany's."
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Feb 28, Indonesia said it is
planning to ban local carriers from operating jetliners more than 10
years old as part of a safety campaign following a string of crashes
and accidents.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Feb 28, Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his first visit to Khartoum, for talks with
his Sudanese opposite number Omar al-Beshir.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Feb 28, In Iraq a car bomb
killed at least 10 people packed into a Baghdad market. US forces
killed 8 suspected militants in a raid north of the city, and captured
6 others in separate operations around Baghdad. Guards outside the Bab
al-Sheik police station in central Baghdad fired on a suicide truck
bomber as he approached them. The bomber changed course and crashed
into a cement barrier, detonating his explosives. An Algerian whose
suicide payload was hidden in gas and chlorine bottles, was foiled when
his path into Bab al-Sheikh police station in central Baghdad was
blocked by a departing policeman's car. Two civilians were killed and
two policemen and another civilian were wounded in the blast and
exchange of gunfire. Two brothers of a leading Sunni lawmaker were
gunned down in Muqdadiyah. In Mosul a high-ranking officer and his
driver were killed in a drive-by shooting. The tortured body of another
senior police officer was discovered in central Baghdad, about two
months after the man disappeared. A US Marine was killed in the western
Anbar province. 80 al-Qaida members were killed and 50 captured in
fierce clashes between al-Qaida and residents of the village of
Amiriyat near Fallujah, 45 kilometers (25 miles) west of Baghdad. The
US military could not confirm the report. In 2010 video was made public
of Iraqi police who appeared to lynch the failed suicide bomber at the
Bab al-Sheikh police station. The police were shown stamping on the
bomber's head and kicking his body and faced human rights charges.
(AP, 2/28/07)(AP, 3/1/07)(AP, 3/2/07)(AFP, 5/1/10)
2007 Feb 28, Syria said it would
participate in a Baghdad-organized conference of Iraq's neighbors that
the US plans to attend. Iran said it was considering whether to take
part.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Feb 28, Israeli troops shot
and killed three Palestinian militants in the West Bank town of Jenin
and raided the nearby city of Nablus for the second time this week,
placing tens of thousands of people under curfew.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Feb 28, Italian Premier
Romano Prodi kept his fractious center-left coalition together to win a
confidence vote in the Senate, ensuring the immediate survival of his
nine-month-old government.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Feb 28, Japan and Russia
looked to expand trade despite rocky relations as they agreed to
cooperate on nuclear energy and in preventing disasters in disputed
islands.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Feb 28, Officials said Japan
has decided to pull its whaling fleet out of the Antarctic and end this
year's whale hunt early after a deadly fire crippled its mother ship.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Feb 28, In Namibia hundreds
of people protested a visit by Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe,
holding signs reading, "Go home dictator." The local National Society
for Human Rights called Mugabe's three-day state visit an insult to
Namibia.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Feb 28, In Nigeria at least
50 people were feared dead when a ferry sank on the Nun River in the
southern state of Bayelsa.
(AFP, 3/2/07)
2007 Feb 28, An air force
helicopter crashed in Peru's highlands, killing 3 military personnel
and injuring an army general who commanded a military base in the area.
(AP, 3/1/07)
2007 Feb 28, Vladimir Nikolayev,
the mayor of Vladivostok, was stripped of his authority amid a criminal
investigation into suspect land deals and embezzlement in the latest
bout of corruption to hit the long-troubled Pacific port.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Feb 28, Sri Lanka escalated
sea and land attacks against Tamil Tigers and killed at least 18 people.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Feb 28, A Swiss court
acquitted seven men of providing logistical support to a Saudi terror
cell in the first Swiss trial of alleged al-Qaida associates.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Feb 28, It was reported that
international developers planned a $4 billion resort and casino complex
in Vietnam. The project, dubbed Ho Tram, would be on the South China
Sea, a 2-hour drive from Ho Chi Minh City.
(WSJ, 2/28/07, p.B1)
2008 Feb 28, The Pew Center on the
States reported that 1% of adult Americans are in jail or prison, an
all-time high that cost state governments nearly $50 billion a year in
addition to over $5 billion spent by the federal government. The US led
the world in the percentage of residents incarcerated with China a
distant second.
(SFC, 2/29/08, p.A7)
2008 Feb 28, It was reported that
Aluminum Bahrain BSC had filed suit in federal court in Pittsburgh
accusing Alcoa Corp. of a 15-year conspiracy involving overcharging,
fraud and bribery.
(WSJ, 2/28/08, p.A1)
2008 Feb 28, California’s Second
District Court of Appeal ruled that California law requires parents to
send their children to full-time public or private schools, or have
them taught by credentialed tutors at home. The ruling put an estimated
166,000 children as possible truants. On March 7 Gov. Schwarzenegger
denounced the ruling and promised to change the law if necessary to
guarantee that parents are able to educate their children at home. On
August 8 a state appeals court ruled that parents have a right to
educate their children at home even if they lack a teaching credential.
(SFC, 3/7/08, p.A1)(SFC, 3/8/08, p.A1)(SFC, 8/9/08,
p.A1)
2008 Feb 28, It was reported that
California state Senator Leland Yee has introduced a bill to let Daly
City purchase the 68-acre Cow Palace property, owned by the state, and
tear it down for redevelopment.
(SFC, 2/28/08, p.A1)
2008 Feb 28, Under threat of legal
action SF returned $2.7 million to the US Justice Dept. and promised to
pay the rest. This was half of the $5.4 million it had received from
2004-2006 to prosecute alleged border crimes. Federal officials added
demands for another $300,000 that SF received in 2007. The grants had
been processed by Brad Burgess of the Public Resource management Group
in Roseville, Ca.
(SFC, 4/10/08, p.A1)
2008 Feb 28, In SF the new
InterContinental Hotel opened at Fifth and Howard streets just in time
for the 75th annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopedic
Surgeons.
(SSFC, 2/24/08, p.C1)
2008 Feb 28, At the TED conference
in Monterey, Ca., Geneticist Craig Venter, who mapped his genome and
the genetic diversity of the oceans, said he is creating a life form
that feeds on climate-ruining carbon dioxide to produce fuel.
(AFP, 2/28/08)
2008 Feb 28, In Las Vegas two
vials of ricin were found a manager at the Extended Stay America motel.
2 days earlier police had found firearms and an “anarchist type
textbook” there. Roger Von Bergendorff (57) was the last to stay in the
room, and has been in critical condition since calling an ambulance on
Feb. 14 complaining of respiratory distress. In April Bergendorff was
indicted on federal charges that included possession of a biological
toxin. Bergendorff was convicted and sentenced in November to 3½
years in federal prison.
(AP, 3/1/08)(SFC, 3/3/08, p.A4)(SFC, 4/23/08,
p.A3)(SFC, 11/18/08, p.A8)
2008 Feb 28, Joseph M. Juran
(b.1904), pioneer of quality control, died. Juran’s 80-20 rule states
that that 80% of a firms problems stem from 20% of causes. He called
this his Pareto principle, after Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923), an
Italian economist who noted that 20% of the population owned 80% of the
property in Italy. Juran’s “Quality and Control Handbook” (1951) made
his reputation. In 2004 he authored his memoir “Architect of Quality.”
(WSJ, 3/8/08, p.A7)
2008 Feb 28, In Afghan four
militants died and another was wounded when the roadside bomb they were
planting on a main road in Helmand exploded prematurely.
(AP, 2/28/08)
2008 Feb 28, In western Antarctica
a 160-square mile chunk of ice on the edge of the Wilkins ice shelf
began collapsing. It had been there for some 1,500 years. In 2010
scientists suggested that break was the result of gravity waves
generated by a series of storms on the coast of Patagonia.
(SFC, 3/26/08, p.A4)(Econ, 2/20/10, p.79)
2008 Feb 28, In Bangladesh a ferry
carrying more than 100 people collided with a cargo vessel and capsized
in a river near Dhaka, killing at least 39 people with 20 missing.
(AP, 2/28/08)(AP, 2/29/08)
2008 Feb 28, A bitterly divided
Bolivian Congress approved a national vote on President Evo Morales'
proposed constitution, which would grant greater political power to
Bolivia's long-oppressed indigenous groups.
(AP, 2/29/08)
2008 Feb 28, In Bulgaria a night
train traveling from Sofia to the northeastern town of Kardam caught
fire. Officials said at least eight people died, adding that the toll
could rise.
(AP, 2/29/08)
2008 Feb 28, The presidents of
resource-hungry China and oil-rich Nigeria met ahead of the planned
signing of energy deals in Beijing's latest overture to an African
nation.
(AFP, 2/28/08)
2008 Feb 28, In China at least 14
miners were missing after a cave-in at the Jianbao Coal Minein Jixi
city. The mine owners in northeastern Heilongjiang province initially
concealed the number of missing workers.
(AP, 3/12/08)
2008 Feb 28, Cuba's government
signed two key international human rights treaties that Fidel Castro
long opposed, but said it had reservations about some provisions and
accused the United States of impeding the Cuban people's enjoyment of
their rights.
(AP, 2/28/08)
2008 Feb 28, In Ecuador a
landslide caused some 4,000 barrels of oil to spill from its main
pipeline contaminating Coca River.
(www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/03/02/america/LA-FIN-Ecuador-Pipeline.php)
2008 Feb 28, The European Court of
Human Rights ruled that a government may not deport an individual to a
state where he may be at risk of torture or other ill-treatment.
(Econ, 3/1/08, p.63)
2008 Feb 28, French President
Nicolas Sarkozy, following talks with South African President Thabo
Mbeki in South Africa, announced a "renegotiation" of all French
military accords with African nations, arguing that France no longer
had a "policing" role to play on the continent. French power giant
Alstom announced a 1.36 billion euro (two-billion-dollar) contract for
the construction of a coal-fuelled power plant in South Africa which is
suffering from a severe electricity shortage.
(AFP, 2/28/08)
2008 Feb 28, In Paris the body of
former top model Katoucha Niane (47) was found in the River Seine. The
former model and speaker against female circumcision went missing in
January. Her 2007 book, "Katoucha, In My Flesh," described her own
experience with female circumcision at age 9.
(AP, 2/29/08)(AP, 3/7/08)
2008 Feb 28, An Indonesian court
rejected a civil case against the youngest son of ex-dictator Suharto
for alleged corruption and awarded him 550,000 dollars in a countersuit
he filed.
(AP, 2/28/08)
2008 Feb 28, In Iraq the US
military captured an insurgent leader who was recruiting and training
women, including his wife, to wrap themselves in explosives and blow
themselves up, the latest sign that al-Qaida in Iraq plans to keep
using women to carry out suicide attacks.
(AP, 3/1/08)
2008 Feb 28, Kenya's rival
politicians, aided by AU chairman Jakaya Kikwete, signed a
power-sharing agreement and shook hands after weeks of bitter
negotiations on how to end the country's deadly postelection crisis.
(AP, 2/28/08)(Econ, 3/1/08, p.49)
2008 Feb 28, Israeli aircraft
struck a series of targets throughout the Gaza Strip, killing 15
Palestinians, including 5 boys. Palestinian rocket fire continued
throughout the day, lightly wounding two people. Hamza al-Haya, the son
of hardline Hamas lawmaker Khalil al-Haya, was among those killed.
Hamas said he had commanded a rocket-launching squad in northern Gaza.
(AP, 2/28/08)(SFC, 2/29/08, p.A10)
2008 Feb 28, Liberia's Health
Minister Walter Gwanigale said health services are chronically
understaffed with only 51 native doctors in the west African nation.
(AP, 2/28/08)
2008 Feb 28, The Madhesi in
southern Nepal pledged to end violent protests and a paralyzing general
strike after reaching an agreement with the government to establish
autonomous regions in the Himalayan nation. 2 days after the Madhesi
agreement the government signed another agreement with a 2nd alliance
of ethnic and regional groups.
(AP, 2/28/08)(Econ, 3/8/08, p.50)
2008 Feb 28, In Pakistan a predawn
explosion killed up to 12 suspected militants in South Waziristan. A US
drone was suspected.
(SFC, 2/29/08, p.A10)
2008 Feb 28, Neil Bush, younger
brother of US President George W. Bush, called on Paraguay's Pres.
Nicanor Duarte as the guest of a business federation founded by the
Rev. Sun Myung Moon.
(AP, 3/1/08)
2008 Feb 28, Swedish and Norwegian
authorities cracked down on terror financing, arresting six people in
what Swedish investigators said were coordinated raids in Stockholm and
Oslo.
(AP, 2/28/08)
2008 Feb 28, Former Thai premier
Thaksin Shinawatra vowed to clear his name on corruption charges and
called for national unity as he flew home to a jubilant welcome from
thousands of supporters.
(AP, 2/28/08)
2009 Feb 28, In Louisiana 3
½ years after Hurricane Katrina, the National Guard pulled the
last of its troops out of New Orleans, leaving behind a city still
desperate and dangerous.
(AP, 2/28/09)
2009 Feb 28, A fishing boat from
Clearwater, Florida, capsized as the four friends were pulling up the
anchor. Nick Schuyler was rescued on March 2. Oakland Raiders
linebacker Marquis Cooper, free-agent defensive lineman Corey Smith and
former University of South Florida player William Bleakley remained
missing.
(AP, 3/3/09)
2009 Feb 28, Paul Harvey (b.1918),
news commentator and talk-radio pioneer, died in Arizona. His staccato
style made him one of the nation's most familiar voices. Harvey had
been heard nationally since 1951, when he began his "News and Comment"
for ABC Radio Networks.
(AP, 3/1/09)(SSFC, 3/1/09, p.A12)
2009 Feb 28, Afghan President
Hamid Karzai ordered that presidential elections be held by April,
months earlier than the August 20 date set by a voting authority, after
lawmakers said they would not recognize him as president after May 22.
Afghan security soldiers killed four militants in a clash in the
southern province of Uruzgan.
(AP, 2/28/09)(AFP, 3/1/09)
2009 Feb 28, In Algeria an army
operation in the mountains of Blida province, about 100 kilometers (62
miles) south of Algiers killed 6 Islamist militants. One militant was
killed on Feb 26 before the army took the rest of the group by
surprise. Another 16 were reported killed during a search operation
near Soulahane.
(AFP, 3/2/09)(AFP, 3/3/09)
2009 Feb 28, China's legislature
enacted a tough new food safety law, promising tougher penalties for
makers of tainted products in the wake of scandals that exposed serious
flaws in monitoring of the nation's food supply.
(AP, 2/28/09)
2009 Feb 28, A US Marine died in a
non-combat related incident in Iraq's western Anbar province.
(AP, 3/1/09)
2009 Feb 28, Two rockets fired
from Gaza crashed into southern Israel, one into a school that was
closed for the weekend in the coastal city of Ashkelon and another into
an open field.
(AP, 2/28/09)
2009 Feb 28, Police in southern
Mexico found the body of Rolando Landa, head of security in the
township of La Union, near the Pacific beach town of Zihuatanejo. The
body was accompanied by threatening messages apparently left by members
of the Familia Michoacana drug gang. Two police officers in the town of
Praxedis Guerrero, just south of the border town of Ciudad Juarez, were
shot dead in their patrol vehicle.
(AP, 2/28/09)(AP, 3/1/09)
2009 Feb 28, Pakistani officers
said troops have defeated Taliban militants in the Bajur region near
the Afghan border and are close to victory in the tribal region of
Mohmand after a grinding offensive.
(AP, 2/28/09)
2009 Feb 28, In Panama Tomas
Altamirano Mantovani (49), a prominent ruling party lawmaker and son of
a former vice president, died in a traffic accident.
(AP, 2/28/09)
2009 Feb 28, The yacht Serenity,
with two crew from the Seychelles on board, left the islands en route
to Madagascar and disappeared. One of the crew called his family on
March 24, saying he was being held by Somali pirates and begging for
help.
(AP, 3/25/09)
2009 Feb 28, Somalia's new Pres.
Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed said the government and an Islamic insurgent
group have reached a cease-fire deal, days after dozens of civilians
were killed in fighting in Mogadishu.
(AP, 2/28/09)
2009 Feb 28, In Thailand prominent
activists from military-ruled Myanmar and Cambodia were barred from a
meeting with Southeast Asian leaders (ASEAN), upstaging the opening of
the annual summit billed as a historic step toward greater human rights
in the region.
(AP, 2/28/09)
2009 Feb 28, President Hugo Chavez
ordered troops to intervene in Venezuelan rice processing businesses,
saying some have balked at producing under regulated prices.
(AP, 2/28/09)
2009 Feb 28, In Zimbabwe Pres.
Robert Mugabe told followers at his lavish $250,000 birthday party to
respect the new power-sharing government but vowed to press on with
seizures of white farms. A melee broke out in a dining hall among
thousands lined up for a free meal of porridge and vegetables. Soldiers
used truncheons to maintain order.
(AFP, 2/28/09)(SSFC, 3/1/09, p.A5)
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