Under Wednesday, February 22, the book of history records, among other things:
1198: The 37-year-old Count Lotario Segni becomes Pope Innocent III. enthroned.
1288: Girolamo Masci is elected Pope and takes the name Nicholas IV. He is the first Franciscan on the throne of Peter.
1358: Angry merchants, who were particularly hard hit by the turmoil of the Hundred Years’ War, invaded the royal palace in Paris under the leadership of the cloth merchant Étienne Marcel and murdered the marshals of Champagne and Normandy.
1558: Emperor Ferdinand I opens the University of Jena.
1628: Emperor Ferdinand II transfers the right to inherit the electoral dignity to Elector Maximilian I of Bavaria.
1808: Russian troops invade Finland, which retains its internal autonomy. Sweden must agree to the annexation.
1828: End of the two-year Russo-Persian War: With the Peace of Turkmanchay, the Persian Empire under Shah Fath Ali from the Qajar dynasty has to cede Transcaucasia to Russia.
1828: Birth of organic chemistry: With the synthesis of urea from ammonium cyanate, the German chemist Friedrich Wöhler succeeds in the first artificial production of an organic substance.
1853: Washington University is founded in St. Louis, which will be the site of the 1904 Third Summer Olympics and the World’s Fair in St. Louis.
1878: The premiere of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36, takes place in Moscow.
1913: Mexican President Francisco Indalecio Madero is overthrown and killed by the military.
1918: Emperor Karl I meets Emperor Wilhelm II at the headquarters of the German Supreme Command to discuss the war situation.
1918: Germany calls on Russia to accept the peace terms dictated in Brest-Litovsk within 48 hours.
1933: The British racing driver Malcolm Campbell sets a new speed record over a mile on the beach of Daytona Beach in the USA with his “Blue Bird” (2500 hp): 437.8 kilometers per hour.
1943: The siblings Sophie and Hans Scholl and Christoph Probst, students and members of the German anti-Nazi resistance group “White Rose”, are sentenced to death in Munich by the “People’s Court” under Roland Freisler and executed on the same day.
1948: In Albania, two Roman Catholic bishops are sentenced to death in a treason trial.
1948: In Romania, the Communist Workers’ Party, led by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, joins forces with the Peasant Party, the People’s Party and the People’s Union of the Hungarian Minority in a “People’s Democratic Front”. A single list is drawn up for the parliamentary elections.
1948: The Arab League appoints Iraqi General Safwat as commander of the Palestine Liberation Army.
1953: The early National Council elections bring the SPÖ under Vice Chancellor Adolf Schärf the majority of the votes, but one seat less than the ÖVP under Chancellor Julius Raab.
1958: In referendums, the citizens of Egypt and Syria approved the merger of their two countries to form the United Arab Republic (UAR) under the presidency of Gamal Abdel Nasser with almost 100 percent.
1973: The US and the People’s Republic of China agree to set up liaison offices in Washington and Beijing. George Bush, who later became Vice President and President, became the first head of the US office.
1978: The Stuyvenberg Agreement between the French-speaking Walloons and the Dutch-speaking Flemings is intended to balance the rival population groups and parts of the country. The central government should be staffed equally.
1993: The UN Security Council resolves to have an international tribunal punish war crimes committed in former Yugoslavia following January 1st.
2008: The two Austrians Andrea Kloiber and Wolfgang Ebner are kidnapped by the terrorist group “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb” (AQMI) in Tunisia while on vacation. They will be released on October 31st.
birthdays: Peter Anich, Austria cartographer (1723-1766); Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher (1788-1860); Sir John Mills, British actor (1908-2005); Al Gross, US electrical engineer “father of CB radio”, inventor of the “walkie-talkie” (1918-2000); Billy Mo, German-Trinidad. singer (1923-2004); Karin Dor, German actress (1938-2017); Horst Köhler, German politician (1943).
days of death: Wilhelm Lamormaini, Austria Jesuit (1570-1648); Edwin Hartl, Austria literary critic (1906-1998); José María de Areilza, Spanish politician and diplomat (1909-1998); Hans Scholl, German resistance fighter (1918-1943); Sophie Scholl, German resistance fighter (1921-1943); Valentin Falin, Russian politician/diplomat (1926-2018); Richard E. Taylor, Canada. Physicist; Nobel Prize 1990 (1929-2018).
name days: Margareta, Robert, Johanna, Isabella, Elisabeth, Marhold.
