- 1455 – Johannes Gutenberg prints his first Bible.
- 1836 – The siege on the Alamo begins.
- 1850 – Cesar Ritz is born. His hotels and restaurants inspired singers, songwriters and chefs around the world.
- 1868 – W.E.B. DuBois is born. An American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, he was awarded the Spingarn medal by the NAACP in 1920 and the Lenin Peace Prize by the USSR in 1959.
- 1900 – Elinor Warren, a composer, and gifted pianist, was born on this day. Some of her major works with orchestra are “The Harp Weaver” and “The Legend of King Arthur.”
- 1940 – Woody Guthrie writes This Land Is Your Land.
- 1945 – U.S. Marines raise the American flag on Iwo Jima.
- 1954 – 1st mass inoculation against polio with the Jonas Salk vaccine takes place at Arsenal Elementary School in Pittsburgh
- 1968 – The US Equal Opportunity Commission rules that a candidate’s gender (female) or marital status (single) could not be a required qualification for employment as a flight attendant.
- 1979 – Frank E. Peterson, Jr. is named the first Black general in the Marine Corps.
- 1991 – President George H. W. Bush gives Iraq a 24-hour deadline to withdraw from Kuwait or face a ground war.
- 1998 – Osama bin Laden publishes a fatwa declaring jihad against all Jews and Crusaders.
- 2020 – The first major COVID-19 outbreak in Europe hits Italy with 152 cases and three deaths, prompting emergency measures, locking down 10 towns in Lombardy.
