This is a list of selected February 12 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 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.
Staging area
Images
Use only ONE image at a time
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General Bernardo O'Higgins of Chile -
Xuantong, the last Emperor of China -
Puyi -
Fragment of the Sikhote-Alin meteorite -
Soviet frigate Bezzavetny (right) bumping the USS Yorktown -
James II of England -
Michigan State University's Beaumont Tower -
Eros, looking from one end of the asteroid across the gouge on its underside and toward the opposite end -
Isabella I of Castile -
Contemporary artist's rendering of the crash of the USS Macon -
"Bar" suit from Dior's New Look
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Ineligible
| Blurb | Reason |
|---|---|
| Lincoln's Birthday in parts of the United States | refimprove |
| Darwin Day | lots of CN tags (9) |
| 881 – Pope John VIII crowned Charles the Fat as Holy Roman Emperor. | lots of CN tags (18) |
| 1429 – Hundred Years' War: At the Battle of the Herrings, English forces under John Fastolf successfully defended a supply convoy carrying rations to the army besieging Orleans from attack by the French. | refimprove |
| 1502 – Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama set sail from Lisbon, Portugal, on his second voyage to India with the object of enforcing Portuguese interests in the Far East. | Gama: refimprove section; 4th Portuguese India Armada: refimprove section, unreferenced section |
| 1541 – Spanish conquistador Pedro de Valdivia founded Santiago, today the capital of Chile, as Santiago del Nuevo Extremo. | refimprove section |
| 1554 – Lady Jane Grey, "The Nine Days Queen of England" in 1553, was executed for high treason at the Tower of London. | Save article for July 10 |
| 1733 – James Oglethorpe founded the city of Savannah along with the Province of Georgia, the last of the Thirteen Colonies established by Great Britain in what later became the United States. | refimprove section, primary sources |
| 1816 – The original building of the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, Italy, today the oldest continuously active opera house in Europe, was destroyed by fire. Its reconstructed building was inaugurated exactly one year later. | unreferenced section |
| 1818 – On the first anniversary of its victory in the Battle of Chacabuco, Chile formally declared its independence from Spain. | refimprove |
| 1825 – Under the Treaty of Indian Springs, the Creeks, a Native American group, ceded the last of their lands in Georgia to the US government and migrated west. | refimprove |
| 1909 – The NAACP, one of the oldest and most influential civil rights organizations in the United States, was founded to work on behalf of the rights of African Americans. | inappropriate tone |
| 1912 – Xinhai Revolution: Puyi, the last Emperor of China, abdicated under a deal brokered by military official and politician Yuan Shikai, formally replacing the Qing dynasty with a new republic in China. | too long, unreferenced section (Ancestry) |
| 1934 – Austrian Civil War | Orange "additional sources needed" banner |
| 1946 – The British Royal Navy concluded Operation Deadlight, its operation to scuttle German U-boats that had been captured during World War II. | lots of CN tags (relative to length) |
| 1947 – The Sikhote-Alin meteorite, one of the largest iron meteorite impacts ever observed, fell in the Sikhote-Alin range in Siberia. | unreferenced section |
| 1968 – Vietnam War: Unarmed citizens in the villages of Phong Nhị and Phong Nhất were massacred, allegedly by South Korean Marines. | Refimprove section |
| 1974 – Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was arrested and subsequently deported from the Soviet Union for writing The Gulag Archipelago, an exposé of the Soviet forced labour camp system. | lots of CN tags |
| 1988 – While exercising the "right of innocent passage" through Soviet waters, the USS Yorktown was intentionally rammed by a Soviet Burevestnik class frigate in what was described as "the last incident of the Cold War". | refimprove section |
| Daughter of Emperor Xiaoming of Northern Wei |b|528 | unreferenced section (Ancestry) |
| Abraham Lincoln |b|1809| | Cleanup banner |
Eligible
- 1502 – Queen Isabella I issued an edict outlawing Islam in the Crown of Castile, forcing virtually all her Muslim subjects to convert to Christianity.
- 1855 – The precursor of Michigan State University in East Lansing was founded as the United States' first agricultural college.
- 1909 – The ferry SS Penguin struck a rock in Wellington Harbour and sank, killing 75 people in New Zealand's worst maritime disaster of the 20th century.
- 1935 – The USS Macon, one of the largest helium-filled airships ever created, crashed into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California and sank<--!(contemporary artist's rendering of the crash).-->
- 1942 – The Imperial Japanese Army initiated the Battle of Pasir Panjang in Kent Ridge Park in Singapore.
- 1945 – A devistating tornado outbreak across Mississippi and Alabama kills 45 people and injures 427 others.
- 1946 – African-American U.S. Army veteran Isaac Woodard was severely beaten by a South Carolina police officer and lost sight in both eyes, an incident that galvanized the civil rights movement.
- 1947 – The French fashion company Dior unveiled its New Look collection (suit pictured), which revolutionized women's dress and re-established Paris as the centre of the fashion world after World War II.
- 1968 – Following the deaths of two employees on the job, black sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, began a strike that lasted more than two months.
- 1988 – While claiming the right of innocent passage through Soviet territorial waters in the Black Sea, the American cruiser USS Yorktown and destroyer USS Caron were bumped by Soviet warships.
- 1993 – Two-year-old James Bulger was led away from New Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle, England, and murdered by two 10-year-old boys, who became the youngest convicted murderers in modern English history.
- 2001 – The NASA space probe NEAR Shoemaker touched down on Eros, becoming the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.
- 2009 – Just before it was scheduled to land at Buffalo Niagara International Airport, Colgan Air Flight 3407 crashed into a house in Clarence Center, New York, killing the house's occupant and all 49 people on board the aircraft.
- 2016 – In the first meeting between the leaders of the Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church, Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow signed the Havana Declaration at José Martí International Airport in Cuba.
- Born/died this day: | Wulfhelm |d|941| Lord Guildford Dudley |d|1554| Jan Ladislav Dussek |b|1760| Norbert Provencher |b|1787| Bobby Peel |b|1857| Eugène Atget |b|1857| Will P. Brady |b|1876| Alice Roosevelt Longworth |b|1884| Judy Blume |b|1938| Jean Eyeghé Ndong |b|1946| Eubie Blake |d|1983| Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat |d|2015
February 12: Lincoln's Birthday in some states of the United States; Red Hand Day; Shrove Monday (Western Christianity, 2024)
Edvard Munch's The Scream
- 1691 – A papal conclave convened to select a new pope after the death of Pope Alexander VIII.
- 1924 – George Gershwin's composition Rhapsody in Blue premiered at Aeolian Hall in New York.
- 1994 – Edvard Munch's painting The Scream (pictured) was stolen from the National Gallery of Norway.
- 2003 – Protesters in La Paz and the Bolivian government brokered a deal to end two days of rioting against a proposed salary tax.
- Ethan Allen (d. 1789)
- Charles Darwin (b. 1809)
- Bill Russell (b. 1934)
- Anna Anderson (d. 1984)
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