1488Bartolomeu Dias of Portugal lands in Mossel Bay after rounding the Cape of Good Hope, becoming the first known European to travel so far south.
1509The Portuguese navy defeats a joint fleet of the Ottoman Empire, the Republic of Venice, the Sultan of Gujarat, the Mamlûk Burji Sultanate of Egypt, the Zamorin of Calicut, and the Republic of Ragusa at the Battle of Diu in Diu, India.
1583Battle of São Vicente takes place off Portuguese Brazil where three English warships led by navigator Edward Fenton fight off three Spanish galleons sinking one in the process.
1862Moldavia and Wallachia formally unite to create the Romanian United Principalities.
1870The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing voting rights to male citizens regardless of race.
1913The Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, authorizing the Federal government to impose and collect an income tax.
1916The Centre Block of the Parliament buildings in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada burns down with the loss of seven lives.
1917World War I: The American entry into World War I begins when diplomatic relations with Germany are severed due to its unrestricted submarine warfare.
1918The Twin Peaks Tunnel in San Francisco, California begins service as the longest streetcar tunnel in the world at long.
1927A revolt against the military dictatorship of Portugal breaks out at Porto.
1930The Communist Party of Vietnam is founded at a "Unification Conference" held in Kowloon, British Hong Kong.
1931The Hawke's Bay earthquake, New Zealand's worst natural disaster, kills 258.
1933Adolf Hitler announces that the expansion of Lebensraum into Eastern Europe, and its ruthless Germanisation, are the ultimate geopolitical objectives of Nazi foreign policy.
1943The is sunk by a German U-boat. Only 230 of 902 men aboard survive.
1944World War II: During the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign, U.S. Army and Marine forces seize Kwajalein Atoll from the defending Japanese garrison.
1945World War II: As part of Operation Thunderclap, 1,000 B-17s of the Eighth Air Force bomb Berlin, a raid which kills between 2,500 and 3,000 and another 120,000.
1953The Batepá massacre occurs in São Tomé when the colonial administration and Portuguese landowners unleash a wave of violence against the native creoles known as forros.
1958Founding of the Benelux Economic Union, creating a testing ground for a later European Economic Community.
1959Rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson are killed in a plane crash along with the pilot near Clear Lake, Iowa, an event later known as The Day the Music Died.
1959Sixty-five people are killed when American Airlines Flight 320 crashes into the East River on approach to LaGuardia Airport in New York City.
1960British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan speaks of "a wind of change", signalling that his Government is likely to support decolonisation.
1961The United States Air Force begins Operation Looking Glass, and over the next 30 years, a "Doomsday Plane" is always in the air, with the capability of taking direct control of the United States' bombers and missiles in the event of the destruction of the SAC's command post.
1966The Soviet Union's Luna 9 becomes the first spacecraft to make a soft landing on the Moon, and the first spacecraft to take pictures from the surface of the Moon.
1971New York Police Officer Frank Serpico is shot during a drug bust in Brooklyn and survives to later testify against police corruption.
1972The first day of the seven-day 1972 Iran blizzard, which would kill at least 4,000 people, making it the deadliest snowstorm in history.
1984Doctor John Buster and a research team at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in the United States announce history's first embryo transfer, from one woman to another resulting in a live birth.
1989After a stroke two weeks previously, South African President P. W. Botha resigns as leader of the National Party, but stays on as president for six more months.
1989A military coup overthrows Alfredo Stroessner, dictator of Paraguay since 1954.
1994Space Shuttle program: STS-60 is launched, carrying Sergei Krikalev, the first Russian cosmonaut to fly aboard the Shuttle.
1998Cavalese cable car disaster: A United States military pilot causes the death of 20 people when his low-flying plane cuts the cable of a cable-car near Trento, Italy.
2005One hundred five people are killed when Kam Air Flight 904 crashes in the Pamir Mountains in Afghanistan.
2007A Baghdad market bombing kills at least 135 people and injures a further 339.
2014A school shooting in Moscow, Russia leaves two people dead and one wounded.
2023Ohio train derailment: A freight train containing vinyl chloride and other hazardous materials derails and burns in East Palestine, Ohio, United States, releasing hydrogen chloride and phosgene into the air and contaminating the Ohio River.
2026Islamist militants massacred at least 162 while injuring and kidnapping dozens in two villages in Kwara State, Nigeria.
Nacimientos (167)
1338Joanna of Bourbon (died 1378)
1393Henry Percy, 2nd Earl of Northumberland, English nobleman and military commander (died 1455)
1428Helena Palaiologina, Queen of Cyprus (died 1458)
1478Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham (died 1521)
1504Scipione Rebiba, Italian cardinal (died 1577)
1677Jan Santini Aichel, Czech architect, designed the Karlova Koruna Chateau (died 1723)
1689Blas de Lezo, Spanish admiral (died 1741)
1721Friedrich Wilhelm von Seydlitz, Prussian general (died 1773)
1736Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, Austrian composer and theorist (died 1809)
1747Samuel Osgood, American soldier and politician, 1st United States Postmaster General (died 1813) las demás fuentes: 3 feb 1748
1757Joseph Forlenze, Italian ophthalmologist and surgeon (died 1833)
1763Caroline von Wolzogen, German author (died 1847)
1777John Cheyne, Scottish physician and author (died 1836)
1780Mihail G. Boiagi, Aromanian grammarian and professor (died uncertain)
1790Gideon Mantell, English scientist (died 1852)
1795Antonio José de Sucre, Venezuelan general and politician, 2nd President of Bolivia (died 1830)