February 29: "Gone with the Wind" won 10 Oscars (1940)

The 1939 movie Gone with the Wind received 10 Academy Awards (8 competitive, 1 honorary and 1 technical) in the 12th Academy Awards on February 29, 1940. Of the 17 competitive awards, the movie had 13 nominations. This was the first movie that won more than five Academy Awards. The movie was one of the earliest major movie shot in colour and won the first Academy Award for Best Cinematography. The movie was directed by Victor Fleming and from a screenplay by Sidney Howard based on the Pulitzer-award winning novel of the same name by Margaret Mitchell. Among others, Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland and Hattie McDaniel were the main characters. It was the longest American sound movie with 3 hours and 44 minutes. It is the highest-grossing movie after inflation adjustment. 

February 28: DNA structure was discovered (1953)

DNA structure

James Dewey Watson and Francis Harry Compton Crick, researchers at the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge, announced to their colleagues that they found the molecular structure of the DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid), on February 28, 1953. DNA is a nucleic acid containing genetic instructions used in development and functioning of the all known living organisms except RNA viruses. Watson and Crick were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, along with Maurice Wilkins, for the discovery of the DNA molecular structure. Watson wrote the bestselling book The Double Helix about this discovery in 1968. The work done by Rosalind Elsie Franklin, a Cambridge graduate and researcher at King's College London, was critical for Watson and Crick to build the DNA model though her work had not been recognized for quite some time. Rosalind worked with Wilkins on the same research project with x-ray diffraction at King's College London.

February 27: The British Labour Party is founded (1900)

The Labour Party was founded from the Trade Union Congress, which was well attended by various working-class and left-wing organizations, in 1900. The party is a centre-left social democratic and democratic socialist political party in the UK. Labour formed its first government in 1924 under the leadership of Ramsey MacDonald - the first Labour prime minister. The latest Labour government was led by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown between 1997 and 2010, which is known as the "New Labour" period. Blair is the longest serving Labour prime minister (for 10 years) and the only person to have led three consecutive victories in the general election. The party is a member of the Socialist International. Labour is current official opposition under the leadership of Ed Miliband.

February 26: Barings Bank collapsed (1995)

Barings Bank was the oldest merchant bank in London until its collapse in 1995 due to a series of speculative investment involving futures contracts, managed by Nick Leeson of its Singapore office, which resulted in a loss of £827 million ($1.3 billion). Barings Bank was founded in 1762 and had survived financial crises such as the Great Depression and World Wars. The bank had been playing an important role in the British financial market until the collapse. The corruption and greed were one of the main causes of the failure. The bank was acquired by ING Group of the Netherlands.  

February 25: JP Morgan incorporated US Steel (1901)

JP Morgan and the attorney Elbert Gary founded United States Steel Corporation (US Steel) in 1901 and incorporated on February 25, 1901 by combining Andrew Carnegie's Carnegie Steel Company with Gary's Federal Steel Company and William Henry Moore's National Steel Company. The company became the first billion dollar company in the world. US Steel was the largest steel producer and largest corporation in the world at one time. It acquired oil companies during 1980s and now a majority portion of the company's revenue and profits are from its energy subsidiaries. US Steel and the energy companies are now under the holding company USX Corporation.

February 24: Fidel Castro retired from the public positions (2008)

In 2008, Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz, former head of Cuba, retired from the leadership positions of Cuba. He stepped down from all leadership positions including the President, the Secretary-General of the Non-Aligned Movement and the first Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba. Castro had been in the leadership positions of Cuba for 55 years. He is a Marxist-Leninist and converted Cuba into a one-party socialist state.

February 23: ISO was founded (1947)

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO), an international standard-setting body composed of representatives of national standardization bodies, was founded on February 23, 1947. The ISO is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland and has 162 member nations. The official languages of the ISO include English, French and Russian. Standards of the ISO are the most widely adopted in the world.

February 22: The first cloned mammal Dolly was anounced (1997)

Remains of Dolly

Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell and colleagues at the Roslin Institute and PPL Therapeutics near Edinburgh, Scotland, has successfully cloned adult female sheep named Dolly. She was the first mammal cloned from an adult somatic cell. She was born on July 5, 1996 and her existence was announced on February 22, 1997. Dolly died with a progressive lung disease at her age of six on February 14, 2003.

February 21: The Peace Symbol was designed (1958)

The Peace Symbol, commissioned by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the UK, was designed by Gerald Holtom in 1958. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is an anti-nuclear organization advocates a tighter international arms regulation through agreements like nuclear non-proliferation treaties rather than through military action. The symbol is a combination of the semaphore signals for the letters N (nuclear) and D (disarmament). The symbol has been wildly popular and used in many places, especially during and after the Vietnam War. The symbol is also available in Unicode (U+262E) and HTML (☮ or ☮)

February 20: The Met was opened (1872)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) was opened at 681 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, New York, on February 20, 1872. The museum was founded in 1870 by a group of American citizens including financiers, businessmen and artists. Over time, the museum bought and accommodated a significant amount of valuable art works and it has grown significantly. As of 2010, the Met's facade measures almost a quarter mile and its area covers over two million square feet. Currently it houses over 2 million works.

February 19: Alan Turing's paper on stored-program comuter (1946)

Alan Mathison Turing, the father of computer science, presented a paper describing detailed design of a stored-program computer on February 19, 1946. Turing had worked on the design of the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) at the National Physical Laboratory of the UK between 1945 and 1947. This paper is based on the work of ACE and the computing machines used at the Bletchley Park. In February 1947, Turing wrote a report 'Intelligent Machinery', which introduced the question of whether or not it is possible for machinery to show intelligent behaviour - this is later named "Turing test".

February 18: Statue of Liberty patented (1897)

Statue of Liberty

The design patent of the Statue of Liberty was issued to Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi on February 18, 1897. Originally, the statue was named "Liberty enlightening the world". The head of the statue was exhibited at the Paris' World's Fair in 1878. The French government authorized a lottery to raise a fund to support the construction of the statue. The statue was erected in Liberty Island in New York Harbor and was dedicated on October 28, 1886. The dedication ceremony was presided by the then President Grover Cleveland, who was the former New York governor. The statue became an icon of freedom and the United States.

February 17: Newsweek was launched (1933)

The first issue of Newsweek

Newsweek, an American weekly news magazine, was first published on February 17, 1933, in New York City. Thomas Martyn founded the magazine and the original investors include Ward Cheney, John Hay Whitney, and Paul Mellon. The magazine gradually increased its subscription base. The magazine was purchased by the Washington Post Company in 1961. The company was sold to Sidney Harman in 2010 and was then merged with the online publication The Daily Beast in the end of the same year - the company name became The Newsweek Daily Beast Company. The magazine has gone through a series of ownership changes since its foundation while it has built its reputation as an international weekly magazine. 

February 16: First bulletin board went online (1978)

Ward Christensen and the CBBS server

The first public dial-up bulletin board system, named Computerized Bulletin Board System or CBBS, went online on February 16, 1978 in Chicago, Illinois. CBBS was developed by Ward Christensen and Randy Suess. At the time, the speed of the connection was 110 baud or 300 baud, which was very slow. Christensen created a file transfer protocol for sending binary computer files through modem connections. Christensen received 1992 Dvorak Awards for Excellence in Telecommunications for the first bulletin board system.

February 15: Galileo Galilei was born (1564)

Galileo Galilei, an Italian inventor, physicist, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher, was born on February 15, 1564. He improved the telescope and discovered the four largest satellites of Jupiter. His support for the heliocentrism, which was introduced by Copernicus, caused great discomfort to the church and he ended up denying his scientific belief in an investigation by the Roman Inquisition. Galilei also improved scientific devices like compass, thermometer and microscope. He passed away on January 8, 1642.

February 14: ENIAC was released to the public (1946)

ENIAC

ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer), the first general purpose Turing-complete electronic computer, was released to the public on February 14, 1946. The design and development of the computer was financed by the US Army. ENIAC was designed by John Mauchly and John Presper Eckert of the University of Pennsylvania. ENIAC consists of 17,468 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, and 10,000 capacitors. It weighed 2.7 tons and its volume was about 2.4m x 0.9m x 30 m. It consumed 150 kW of power and occupied about 167m² (1800sf) of space. It used IBM card reader and card punch for input and output devices, respectively.

February 13: Apollo Computer was incorporated (1980)

Apollo DN330 workstation

Apollo Computer, Inc., the manufacture of Apollo/Domain workstations, was incorporated by William Poduska, a founder of Prime Computer, in 1980 in Chelmsford, Massachusetts. Apollo was one of the earliest graphics workstation vendors along with Sun Microsystems and Symbolics. Apollo workstations originally ran Aegis operating system and then Domain/OS, a POSIX-compliant unix operating system written in Pascal, and used Motorola 68000-series processors. Apollo was the largest workstation vendor until 1987 when Digital Equipment Corporation and Sun Microsystems gained bigger market shares than Apollo's. Hewlett-Packard (HP) acquired Apollo in 1989 and Apollo then became a HP's workstation brand. Apollo team led the development of the microprocessor PA-RISC used for HP workstations and servers.

February 12: Charles Darwin was born (1809)

Charles Robert Darwin, an English naturalist, was born on February 12, 1809. He published his seminal book "On the origin of species" in 1859, after his voyages on HMS Beagle. He developed a theory of evolution, later called Darwinism, and provided its evidence. The theory of natural selection nailed his idea. His theory has been widely adopted, however, the controversy around Darwinism also never stops. He died on April 19, 1882 at age 73 and was honoured by ceremonial funeral at Westminster Abbey, where he was buried near Isaac Newton. Darwin has been regarded as the one of the most influential people in human history. His influence is not limited to the area of natural science but to social science, philosophy, art, ... everywhere.

February 11: University College London was founded (1826)

University College London (UCL) was founded on February 11, 1826 as the first university established in London. It is the first university in England to admit students regardless of the religion or gender. UCL became one of the two founding colleges of the University of London, founded in 1836, along with King's College London. The University of London is a federal university made up of 19 separate colleges and 12 research institutes and it is the largest university in the UK by the number of full-time students, with over 135,000 students and 50,000 in the international programs. UCL is the oldest and largest constituent college in the University of London. Notable alumni of the UCL include Mahatma Gandhi, John Graham Bell, Rabindranath Tagore, to name a few.

February 10: Deep Blue defeated Kasparov (1996)

IBM Deep Blue

IBM's chess computer Deep Blue defeated world champion Garry Kasparov in the first game of the six-game match. This was the first event that a computer won a chess game against a reigning world chess champion under regular time controls. Overall, Kasparov won the match over Deep Blue with 4-2, however, he lost to the next version of Deep Blue in the re-match in the following year. The project of developing a chess computer was started at Carnegie Mellon University by Feng-hsiung Hsu and Hsu kept working on the project after hired by IBM. Since his joining IBM in 1989, Hsu had worked for the project until Deep Blue was dismantled by the company. Kasparov accused IBM of cheating with human intervention during the game. IBM denied. However, this event is a recorded moment of the evolution of the computer capability. 

February 9: David Wheeler (1927) and Roger Needham (1935) were born

Computer Laboratory,
University of Cambridge

Two distinguished British computer scientists David John Wheeler and Roger Michael Needham were born on February 9 in 1927 and 1935, respectively. Both were professors at the University of Cambridge, Computer Laboratory (formerly Mathematical Laboratory) and fellows of the Royal Society. David Wheeler completed world's first Ph.D. in computer science in 1951 and later became the doctoral advisor of Roger Needham. David Wheeler is known for his invention of "subroutine", also known as Wheeler jump, and his work on EDSAC. Roger Needham was famous for the Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic for authentication, the Needham-Schroeder security protocol, capability systems and local area network including the Cambridge Ring, which was copied by Apple and named as AppleTalk. The Needham-Schroeder protocol became the basis of the Kerberos authentication and key exchange system. Needham had served as the head of the Computer Laboratory for 17 years and then set up the Microsoft's Research Laboratory at Cambridge in 1997. Needham was knighted as a CBE in 2001. Needham passed away in 2003 and Wheeler in 2004.

February 8: Standard Time proposed (1879)

Fleming memorial plaque:
Inventor of Standard Time

Sandford Fleming, a Scottish-born Canadian engineer, first proposed adoption of worldwide standard time zones, which he called Cosmic Time, at a meeting of the Royal Canadian Institute on February 8, 1879. Sir Fleming also designed the first Canadian stamp and was a founding member of the Royal Society of Canada. Sir Fleming promoted the idea of standard time zones and the International Meridian Conference of 1884 selected a different version of Universal Time. By 1929, a majority of the countries in the world accepted the time zones. 

February 7: The Maastricht Treaty signed (1992)

European Union

The Maastricht Treaty was signed on February 7, 1992, by the twelve members of the European Community in Maastricht, Netherlands. The treaty is formally known as the Treaty on the European Union (EU). The EU was formed based on the treaty and it eventually led to the creation of the single European currency, the euro (€).

February 6: Jack Kilby filed the first patent for the integrated circuit (1959)

Jack Kilby's original integrated circuit

Jack Kilby of Texas Instrument filed the first patent for the integrated circuit in February 1959. The idea of integrating circuits in bi-dimensional or tri-dimensional compact grid was proposed to the US Army by Jack Kilby. The project got evolved into the concept of integrated circuit. Jack Kilby was hired by Texas Instrument and he then recorded his idea of the integrated circuit and successfully demonstrated the first working example. Kilby won the Nobel prize in physics for his part of the contribution to the invention of the integrated circuit in 2000. His work is also named an IEEE Milestone in 2009. 

February 5: BBC pips began broadcasting (1924)

The pips in time interval

The hourly time signal known as Greenwich Time Signal, more commonly known as the pips or BBC pips, began broadcasting by BBC radio stations in 1924. It is a series of six short tones broadcast at one-second intervals, which occur on the 5 seconds leading up to the hour and on the hour itself, to mark the precise start of each hour. The pips are from an atomic clock in the basement of the BBC's headquarters Broadcasting House synchronized with the National Physical Laboratory's Time from NPL (UK's time reference) and GPS.

February 4: Facebook was launched (2004)

Facebook, the most used social network service globally, was launched on February 4, 2004. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard dropout, with his college roommates and fellow students. The story around the foundation of the company and conflicts among the founders inspired the movie The Social Network. As of December 31, 2011, the service has 845 million active users and it is the second most accessed web site in the US according to the Nielsen Media Research study. Facebook filed for a $5 billion initial public offering on February 1, 2012. The IPO would value the company between $75 billion and $100 billion, which would be the largest Internet IPO in the world.

February 3: Tulip mania collapsed (1637)

Tulip price index during tulip mania

Tulip mania is generally considered the first recorded economic (speculative) bubble. The economic bubble was starting to collapse after hitting the peak point on February 3, 1637. At the peak of tulip mania, a specific tulip bulb, such as the Viceroy or Semper Augustus, was sold for more than 10 times a skilled craftsman's annual income or 12 acres of land. Tulip mania is a period in the Dutch Golden Age and involved highly speculative trading expecting high return. In this period, some bulbs were reportedly changing hands ten times in a day. Charles Mackay's book Extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds, published in 1841, popularized this event, however, his description of the event was biased and exaggerated based on anti-speculative sources.

February 2: First Groundhog Day recorded (1841)

In Berks County, Pennsylvania, the first Groundhog Day was recorded in 1841. The story behind the day is, if it is cloudy when a groundhog peeps out of its burrow, spring will come early. If it is sunny that day, the winter will stay for another six weeks. This story has a German origin. Groundhog Day is celebrated in the US and Canada. The largest Groundhog Day is held in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, partially because of the 1993 movie Groundhog Day, which was set in the town.

February 1: The Black Maria was built (1893)

The Black Maria

Thomas Edison finished the construction of American's first movie studio "Black Maria" on the grounds of Edison's laboratories in West Orange, New Jersey. It was formally known as the Kinetographic Theater. The Black Maria was wrapped with black tarpaper and had a big window in the ceiling so that it let the sunlight in. Keeping the room bright was important for film making. For over eight years, it was the venue for movie production for performers around the country. The Black Maria was closed in January 1901 when Edison built a glass-enclosed rooftop movie studio in New York City.