28 February 1069

A Sunday in history

Weekday

Sunday

Season

Winter (N. Hemisphere)

Century

11th century

Records

220

  1. 2026

    The United States and Israel launched strikes against Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other senior officials.

    Source
  2. 2021

    Bus drivers in Greater Manchester began an eleven-week strike, one of the longest in British transportation history.

    Source
  3. 2013

    Benedict XVI became the first pope in nearly 600 years to resign from the papacy.

    Source
  4. 2002

    During a period of religious violence in Gujarat, India, mobs of Hindus attacked Muslims in Naroda Patiya and in Chamanpura, resulting in 166 deaths.

    Source
  5. 2001

    A high-speed train crash occurred near Selby in North Yorkshire, England, killing 10 and injuring 82.

    Source
  6. 1997

    GRB 970228, a highly luminous 80-second flash of gamma rays, was detected on Earth, providing early evidence that gamma-ray bursts occur well beyond the Milky Way.

    Source
  7. 1997

    Two heavily armed bank robbers exchanged gunfire with officers of the Los Angeles Police Department in North Hollywood, in one of the most intense gun battles in American police history.

    Source
  8. 1985

    The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army launched a mortar attack on a Royal Ulster Constabulary station in Newry, Northern Ireland, killing nine people.

    Source
  9. 1975

    A London Underground train failed to stop at the terminal Moorgate station, crashing and causing the deaths of 43 people.

    Source
  10. 1974

    The British election ended in a hung parliament after the Liberal Party, under Jeremy Thorpe, achieved their highest ever number of votes.

    Source
  11. 1972

    Japanese police stormed a mountain lodge near Karuizawa, Nagano Prefecture, to end a ten-day siege by members of the paramilitary group United Red Army.

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  12. 1966

    American test pilots Charles Bassett and Elliot See die in a plane crash in St. Louis, Missouri.

    Source
  13. 1963

    Chicago alderman Benjamin F. Lewis was murdered in his office by unknown assailants two days after having been reelected.

    Source
  14. 1947

    Nationalist soldiers fired on protesters in Taipei (crowd pictured), triggering widespread uprisings and violent suppression in the White Terror.

    Source
  15. 1939

    In one of the most famous errors in lexicography, the erroneous word dord was discovered in Webster's New International Dictionary by an editor.

    Source
  16. 1928

    Indian physicist C. V. Raman and his colleagues discovered what is now known as Raman scattering, for which he later became the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize in Physics.

    Source
  17. 1914

    In the aftermath of the Balkan Wars, Greeks living in southern Albania proclaimed the short-lived Autonomous Republic of Northern Epirus.

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  18. 1904

    The most successful football club in Portugal, S.L. Benfica (first team pictured), was founded in Lisbon as Sport Lisboa.

    Source
  19. 1897

    Ranavalona III (pictured), the last sovereign ruler of the Kingdom of Madagascar, was deposed by French military forces.

    Source
  20. 1893

    USS Indiana, the lead ship of her class and the first battleship in the United States Navy comparable to foreign battleships of the time, was launched.

    Source
  21. 1874

    In one of the longest cases ever heard in an English court, the claimant in the Tichborne case was convicted of perjury for attempting to assume the identity of the missing heir to the Tichborne baronetcy.

    Source
  22. 1638

    The National Covenant was formally adopted in opposition to proposed reforms to the Church of Scotland by King Charles I.

    Source
  23. -202

    Rebel leader Liu Bang declared himself Emperor Gaozu of Han after overthrowing the Qin dynasty, the first imperial dynasty of China.

    Source

Photo archive

24 historic images from this day — tap to open the gallery.

What was life like?

Prices, jobs, food, music and everyday routine — the world as it felt to live in.

Sources & fact check

Every claim is traced to primary sources, archives, universities and the press — with an explicit confidence rating. Dossiers are generated once and cached permanently.

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