history at a glance

TODAY is Sunday February 28 the 59th day of the year. There are 306 days left in the year.

Highlights in history on this date:

1935 – DuPont scientist Wallace Carothers invents nylon.

1942 – The heavy cruiser USS Houston is sunk in the Battle of Sunda Strait with 693 crew members killed,

along with HMAS Perth which lost 375 men.

1947 – February 28 Incident: In Taiwan, civil disorder is put down with the loss of an estimated 30,000

civilians.

1972 – Sino-American relations: The United States and People’s Republic of China sign the Shanghai Communiqué.

1975 – In London an underground train fails to stop at Moorgate terminus station and crashes into the end

of the tunnel, killing 43 people.

1986 – Olof Palme, prime minister of Sweden, is assassinated in Stockholm.

1991 – The first Gulf War ends.

1993 – Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents raid the Branch Davidian church in Waco, Texas with a warrant to arrest the group’s leader David Koresh. Four BATF agents and five Davidians die in the initial raid, starting a 51-day standoff.

1997 – An earthquake in northern Iran is responsible for about 3,000 deaths.

1998 – First flight of RQ-4 Global Hawk, the first unmanned aerial vehicle certified to file its own flight

plans and fly regularly in U.S. civilian airspace.

2004 – Over one million Taiwanese participating in the 228 Hand-in-Hand Rally form a 500-kilometre (310

mi) long human chain to commemorate the February 28 Incident in 1947

2005 – A suicide bombing at a police recruiting centre in Al Hillah, Iraq kills 127.

2013 – Pope Benedict XVI resigns as the pope of the Catholic Church becoming the first pope to do so since

1415.