May 31

• May 31, 1223
  A coalition of several Rus' principalities is decisively defeated by the Mongol invaders under the command of generals Jebe and Subutai near the Kalka River in modern-day Ukraine
• May 31, 1433
  Sigismund is crowned Holy Roman Emperor of Rome
• May 31, 1469
  Manuel I of Portugal, king of Portugal, is born
• May 31, 1495
  Emperor Maximilian, Pope Alexander VI, Milan, King Ferdinand, Isabella and Venice sign anti-French Saint League
• May 31, 1564
  Lübeck and Denmark beat Sweden at Gotland during Northern Seven Years' War
• May 31, 1659
  Dutch Republic, England and France sign Treaty of The Hague during Second Northern War
• May 31, 1740
  Frederick William I of Prussia, king of Prussia, dies at age 51, and his son Frederick the Great comes to power in Prussia
• May 31, 1831
  Captain John Ross, an English explorer, identifies the magnetic north pole on the west coast of the Boothia Peninsula, Netsilik territory
• May 31, 1832
  Évariste Galois, a French mathematician and radical Republican, who developed a general theory of equations, dies from wounds suffered in a duel at age 20
• May 31, 1838
  The Federal Republic of Central America federation is dissolved as the congress meets to declare that the provinces were free to create their own independent republics
• May 31, 1859
  The tower clock known as Big Ben, located at the top of Elizabeth Tower at the north end of the Palace of Westminster, rings out over the Houses of Parliament in London for the first time
• May 31, 1862
  At the Battle of Seven Pines, McClellan defeat the Confederates outside of Richmond
• May 31, 1879
  First electric railway opens at Berlin Trades Exposition, Germany
• May 31, 1889
  Johnstown, Pennsylvania is destroyed by a massive flood after the South Fork Dam across a tributary of the Little Conemaugh River collapsed under pressure from the rain-swollen Lake Conemaugh killing 2,209 people in a flood and related fire
• May 31, 1889
  Johnstown, Pennsylvania is destroyed by a massive flood after the South Fork Dam across a tributary of the Little Conemaugh River collapsed under pressure from the rain-swollen Lake Conemaugh killing 2,209 people in a flood and related fire
• May 31, 1891
  Work on Trans-Siberian Railway, the longest railway line in the world, connecting Moscow with the Sea of Japan, begins
• May 31, 1902
  Second Boer War between the British Empire and the Afrikaans-speaking Dutch settlers, which has cost around 75,000 lives, ends leaving the Transvaal and the Orange Free State as colonies of the British Empire
• May 31, 1910
  The Union of South Africa is formed, incorporating Cape Colony, Natal, Orange Free State, and Transvaal
• May 31, 1915
  An LZ-38 Zeppelin makes first zeppelin air raid on London, England, killing 7 and injuring 35 people during the first bombing raid
• May 31, 1937
  German cruiser Deutschland bomb Almería, Spain during Spanish Civil War
• May 31, 1943
  Japanese forces are driven from Aleutian Islands, Alaska
• May 31, 1961
  South Africa becomes a republic following a referendum in which white voters narrowly voted in favour thereof
• May 31, 1970
  A kilometer wide avalanche mass of ice, mud and rock, triggered by an earthquake in Peru, advances about 18 km and leads to more than 20,000 death
• May 31, 1988
  U.S. President Ronald Reagan addresses 600 Moscow State University students, during his visit to the Soviet Union
• May 31, 1997
  Official opening of the Confederation Bridge, between Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, Canada, the world's longest bridge spanning ice covered waters

March 14

• March 14, 1558
  Ferdinand I is appointed Holy Roman emperor
• March 14, 1629
  About 1,000 puritans in Massachusetts Bay Company under the leadership of John Winthrop receive a royal charter from King Charles I to trade and colonize between the Charles and Merrimack rivers
• March 14, 1647
  The Treaty of Ulm is reached between the French and the Bavarians during the Thirty Years' War by which Maximilian I of Bavaria abandoned his alliance with the Holy Roman emperor Ferdinand III
• March 14, 1653
  Johan van Galen beats English fleet in the battle of Leghorn at Livorno
• March 14, 1841
  David Livingstone, a Scottish explorer in Africa, arrives as medical missionary in Capetown, South Africa
• March 14, 1864
  Samuel and Florence Baker arrive at Lake Luta N'Zige and named it Lake Albert, also find that the Nile enters the lake at a 130-foot waterfall that they named Murchison Falls
• March 14, 1879
  Physicist Albert Einstein, mathematician best known for his theories on relativity, is born in Ulm, Germany
• March 14, 1883
  Karl Marx, a German political philosopher, dies in London
• March 14, 1900
  United States Congress passes the Gold Standard Act, fixing gold value of dollar at 25.8 grains at 0.900 fine as standard unit of money of the United States
• March 14, 1939
  Slovakia declares their independence from the Czech government in Prague and becomes a client state of Nazi Germany
• March 14, 1942
  American physician John Bumstead and Orvan Hess become the first in the world to successfully treat a patient using penicillin
• March 14, 1991
  Emir of Kuwait Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah returns to Kuwait City, after the Iraqis leave
• March 14, 1995
  Astronaut Norman Thagard becomes the first American to ride into space aboard a Russian launch vehicle, lifting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan
• March 14, 2004
  Vladimir Putin easily wins a second term in Russian presidential election

March 12

• March 12, 1054
  Pope Leo IX escapes captivity at Benevento and returns to Rome
• March 12, 1088
  Odo of Lagery elected as Pope Urban II, replacing Victor III
• March 12, 1365
  The University of Vienna is founded by Duke Rudolph IV
• March 12, 1609
  The Virginia Company establishes a settlement in the Islands of Bermuda making Bermuda an English colony
• March 12, 1664
  England's King Charles II grants land in the New World, later known as New Jersey, to his brother James, the Duke of York
• March 12, 1689
  Former English King James II lands in Ireland starting the Williamite War between Jacobites (supporters of Catholic King James II) and Williamites (supporters of Protestant Prince William of Orange)
• March 12, 1755
  First steam engine in America installed, to pump water from a mine
• March 12, 1845
  Francis Rynd, an Irish physician, describes in the Dublin Medical Press the hollow needle, his invention used in hypodermic syringes
• March 12, 1867
  Last French troops leave Mexico after Mexican Republican victory in French intervention
• March 12, 1917
  Russian State Duma deputies sets up Provisional Committee, a special government body competing for power with the Petrograd Soviet, set up by workers
• March 12, 1918
  Moscow becomes capital of revolutionary Russia
• March 12, 1925
  Sun Yat-sen, the Premier of the Kuomintang of China, dies, creating a power vacuum in the party and triggering contest between Chiang Kai-shek, a member of the right wing of the KMT, and Sun Yat-sen's close comrade-in-arms Wang Jingwei
• March 12, 1930
  Mahatma Gandhi, the preeminent leader of Indian nationalism, with large numbers of Indians begins the Salt March to the sea coast, the campaign against the British salt monopoly in colonial India, which becomes an important episode of the Indian independence movement
• March 12, 1938
  German troops, greeted by cheering German-Austrians with Nazi salutes, march into Austria and annex the country, which is called by Nazi propaganda the Anschluss
• March 12, 1939
  Pope Pius XII is crowned in Vatican ceremonies
• March 12, 1947
  Truman Doctrine, a United States policy to stop Soviet expansion during the Cold War, is proclaimed by United States President Harry S. Truman during his speech addressed to the U.S. Congress
• March 12, 1957
  German Democratic Republic accepts 22 Russian divisions
• March 12, 1968
  Mauritius gains independence from Britain
• March 12, 1968
  After poor performance in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, Lyndon Johnson announces he will not seek reelection
• March 12, 1993
  North Korea says that it plans to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and refuses to allow inspectors access to nuclear sites
• March 12, 1999
  Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic join NATO

March 11

• March 11, 222
  Elagabalus, Syrian emperor of Rome, is murdered at age 18. Alexander Severus succeeds
• March 11, 537
  The Goths lay siege to Rome during the Gothic War
• March 11, 1566
  The Second Statute of Lithuania goes into effect by the order of King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, Sigismund II Augustus and upholds a democracy of landowners
• March 11, 1649
  The peace of Rueil is signed between the Frondeurs and the French government
• March 11, 1702
  The first English daily newspaper, The Daily Courant, is published for first time
• March 11, 1792
  The British St. George's Bay Company transport a second group of settlers, including 1,196 Blacks from Nova Scotia, 500 Jamaicans and dozens of rebellious slaves from other colonies, who found Freetown, Sierra Leone
• March 11, 1810
  Emperor Napoleon of France marries by proxy to Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria
• March 11, 1811
  Ned Ludd, leader a group of workers in a wild protest against mechanization in Britain, begin their activity with destruction of textile machinery near Nottingham that is eliminating their jobs
• March 11, 1845
  Seven hundred Māoris led by their chief, Hone Heke, burn the small town of Kororareka in protest at the settlement of Maoriland by Europeans, starting New Zealand Wars
• March 11, 1851
  Rigoletto, an opera written by Giuseppe Verdi, is premiered at La Fenice in Venice
• March 11, 1888
  Great Blizzard of 1888 strikes the northeastern United States, resulting in some 400 deaths
• March 11, 1917
  British troops occupy Baghdad during World War I
• March 11, 1935
  Hermann Göring, a leading member of the Nazi Party, officially creates German Air Force, the Luftwaffe
• March 11, 1938
  An Austrian Nazi politician Artur Seyss-Inquart replaces Kurt von Schuschnigg as Chancellor of Austria after Hitler' ultimatum
• March 11, 1941
  The US Congress passes "An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States", known as the Lend-Lease Bill, which will provide billions of dollars of war materials to the Allied powers
• March 11, 1985
  Mikhail Gorbachev is elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R by the Politburo, which marks reorientation of Soviet strategic aims to the end of the Cold War
• March 11, 1990
  Patricio Aylwin is sworn-in as the first democratically-elected Chilean president since 1970
• March 11, 2004
  In Madrid, Spain, ten simultaneous explosions on commuter trains and in rail stations kill 190 people
• March 11, 2006
  Slobodan Milošević is found dead at age 64 from an apparent heart attack in his prison cell in the United Nations war crimes tribunal's detention centre, located in the Scheveningen section of The Hague
• March 11, 2011
  A 9.1-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit the east of Japan, killing 15,840 and leaving another 3,926 missing, followed by emergencies declared at four nuclear power plants affected by the quake

February 25

• February 25, 1570
  Pope Pius V issues the bull Regnans in Excelsis which excommunicates Queen Elizabeth I and absolves her subjects from allegiance
• February 25, 1791
  President George Washington signs a bill creating the First Bank of the United States
• February 25, 1831
  The Polish revolutionaries halt the Russian advance into their country at the Battle of Olszynka Grochowska
• February 25, 1836
  Samuel Colt, an American inventor and industrialist, patents the first revolving barrel multi-shot firearm, which allows the shooter to fire 5 or 6 times before reloading
• February 25, 1856
  Congress of Paris between representatives of the great powers in Europe to make peace after Crimean War begins
• February 25, 1863
  US President Abraham Lincoln signs the National Currency Act into law, creating national banking system, comptroller of currency, allowing qualified banks to issue government-sponsored paper money in the banks' names
• February 25, 1910
  Dalai Lama flees Tibet from Chinese troops to British-Indies
• February 25, 1921
  Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic is proclaimed after invasion and occupation by Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
• February 25, 1923
  Bread in Berlin, Germany rises to 2,000 marks due to hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic
• February 25, 1932
  Immigrant Adolf Hitler gets German citizenship
• February 25, 1939
  First Anderson bomb shelter in Britain erected in an Islington garden, named after Sir John Anderson with special responsibility for preparing air-raid precautions
• February 25, 1947
  The Allied Control Council of Germany issues Law No. 46, disbanding Prussia
• February 25, 1948
  The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia under Klement Gottwald, with Soviet backing, seize power in Czechoslovakia after coup d'aet, ending the last remaining democracy in Eastern Europe
• February 25, 1956
  Soviet party leader Nikita Khrushchev denounces Josef Stalin's purges and the personality cult at 20th Soviet Party Conference, ushering in a less repressive era in the Soviet Union
• February 25, 1964
  Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., later accepted name Muhammad Ali, one of the greatest heavyweights in the sport's history, wins the world heavyweight championship for the first time
• February 25, 1980
  Military coup under DГ©si Bouterse and Roy Horb in Suriname ousts Prime Minister Henck Arron, replacing the government with a National Military Council and starting military dictatorship in Suriname
• February 25, 1992
  Khojaly Massacre, massacre of 613 Azerbaijani civilians by the Armenian, occurs in Khojaly
• February 25, 2006
  Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni wins his second re-election, sparking riots in Kampala by opposition supporters

February 24

• February 24, 303
  First official Roman edict for the Great Persecution of Christians and Manicheans is issued by Emperor Diocletian
• February 24, 1272
  Jacob, an Italian-Jewish trader, departed in haste from Zaitun, China
• February 24, 1525
  The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V captures the French king Francis I at the battle of Pavia in Italy during Italian War of 1521–26, making Spain dominant power in Italy
• February 24, 1538
  King Ferdinand of Austria and King John Zipolya of Hungary sign Treaty of Nagyrad dividing the medieval Kingdom of Hungary
• February 24, 1582
  Pope Gregory XIII issues a papal bull, or edict, outlining his calendar reforms, because the old Julian Calendar has an error rate of one day in every 128 years
• February 24, 1744
  French attempt to restart the Jacobite rebellion fails due to one of the worst storms of the century
• February 24, 1821
  Mexico rebels proclaim the Plan de Iguala, their declaration of independence from Spain, and take over the mission lands in California
• February 24, 1836
  Winslow Homer, American painter, is born
• February 24, 1839
  Steam shovel is patented by William Otis, Philadelphia
• February 24, 1881
  De Lesseps' Company begins work on Panama Canal
• February 24, 1895
  Cuban War for Independence, which results in Cuban independence from Spain, begins
• February 24, 1918
  Estonia declares independence from Russia
• February 24, 1924
  Mahatma Gandhi is released from jail having served only two of six years imprisonment for sedition
• February 24, 1949
  WAC Corporal, the first sounding rocket developed in the United States, used a German V-2 rocket acting as first stage, becomes the first rocket to outer space, White Sands, New Mexico
• February 24, 1986
  Voyager 2, an American space probe, performs first Uranus fly-by and makes the first close up images of the planet Uranus
• February 24, 1991
  United States and allies begin a ground war assault on Iraqi troops in Kuwait
• February 24, 2004
  A 6.5 Richter scale earthquake in Northern Morocco hits in the Rif mountains near the city of Al Hoceima, killing 400. Ait Kamara is destroyed; 517 are killed
• February 24, 2006
  A state of emergency is declared in the Philippines, after an alleged coup against President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is foiled