February 28

**February 28** is the 59th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; 306 days remain until the end of the year (307 in leap years).

It is the last day of February in common years and the penultimate day of February in leap years. It is also the last day of meteorological winter in Northern Hemisphere in common years.

## Events

### Pre-1600[edit]

* 202 BC – Liu Bang is enthroned as the Emperor of China, beginning four centuries of rule by the Han dynasty.
* 870 – The Fourth Council of Constantinople closes.
* 1525 – Aztec king Cuauhtémoc is executed on the order of conquistador Hernán Cortés.

### 1601–1900[edit]

* 1638 – The Scottish National Covenant is signed in Edinburgh.
* 1835 – Elias Lönnrot signed and dated the first version of the *Kalevala*, the so-called foreword to the *Old Kalevala*.

### 1901–present[edit]

* 1922 – The United Kingdom ends its protectorate over Egypt through a Unilateral Declaration of Independence.
* 1925 – The Charlevoix-Kamouraska earthquake strikes northeastern North America.
* 1947 – February 28 Incident: In Taiwan, civil disorder is put down with the loss of an estimated 30,000 civilians.
* 1948 – Christiansborg Cross-Roads shooting in the Gold Coast, when a British police officer opens fire on a march of ex-servicemen, killing three of them and sparking major riots and looting in Accra.
* 1953 – James Watson and Francis Crick announce to friends that they have determined the chemical structure of DNA; the formal announcement takes place on April 25 following publication in April's *Nature* (pub. April 2).
* 1958 – A school bus in Floyd County, Kentucky hits a wrecker truck and plunges down an embankment into the rain-swollen Levisa Fork river. The driver and 26 children die in what remains one of the worst school bus accidents in U.S. history.
* 1959 – *Discoverer 1*, an American spy satellite that is the first object intended to achieve a polar orbit, is launched but fails to achieve orbit.
* 1966 – A NASA T-38 Talon crashes into the McDonnell Aircraft factory while attempting a poor-visibility landing at Lambert Field, St. Louis, killing astronauts Elliot See and Charles Bassett.
* 1972 – China–United States relations: The United States and 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.
* 1980 – Andalusia approves its statute of autonomy through a referendum.
* 1983 – The final episode of *M\*A\*S\*H* airs, with almost 106 million viewers. It still holds the record for the highest viewership of a season finale.
* 1985 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army carries out a mortar attack on the Royal Ulster Constabulary police station at Newry, killing nine officers in the highest loss of life for the RUC on a single day.
* 1986 – Olof Palme, 26th Prime Minister of Sweden, is assassinated in Stockholm.
* 1991 – The first Gulf War ends.
* 1993 – The 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 ATF agents and six Davidians die in the initial raid, starting a 51-day standoff.
* 1995 – Former Australian Liberal party leader John Hewson resigns from the Australian parliament almost two years after losing the 1993 Australian federal election.
* 1997 – An earthquake in northern Iran is responsible for about 3,000 deaths.
* 1997 – GRB 970228, a highly luminous flash of gamma rays, strikes the Earth for 80 seconds, providing early evidence that gamma-ray bursts occur well beyond the Milky Way.
* 1997 – A Turkish military memorandum resulted with collapse of the government in Turkey.
* 2001 – The 2001 Nisqually earthquake, having a moment magnitude of 6.8, with epicenter in the southern Puget Sound, damages Seattle metropolitan area.
* 2002 – During the religious violence in Gujarat, 97 people are killed in the Naroda Patiya massacre and 69 in the Gulbarg Society massacre.
* 2004 – Over one million Taiwanese participate 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 Pope Gregory XII, in 1415.