February 1

1327 Edward III was crowned King of England at the age of 14 on February 1, 1327 after his father was forced to abdicate. During Edward's minority, a council of regency nominally ruled England, but the actual power was in the hands of Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer. Edward was the first post-1066 English king to speak in English rather than French. He replaced French with English as the language of government and consolidated parliament as the only maker of laws.

Image taken from f. 22 of Nova Statuta (index Statutes of England

1587 Mary Queen of Scots was a passionate user of ciphers after being imprisoned by Elizabeth I of England. She sent out many cryptograms to the Queen's enemies in The Hague and Madrid, but ciphers smuggled in a beer keg were discovered. Elizabeth I signed the execution warrant for Mary Queen of Scots on February 1, 1587. The clerk whipped it off Elizabeth immediately and rushed it to her ministers - for they feared the Queen might change her mind. Mary was executed a week later.

1662 The Chinese general Koxinga seized the island of Formosa at the Siege of Fort Zeelandia, which ended on February 1, 1662. In 1683, following the defeat of Koxinga's grandson by an armada led by Admiral Shi Lang of southern Fujian, the Qing dynasty formally annexed Formosa. Use of the current Chinese name Taiwan was formalized the following year with the establishment of Taiwan Prefecture.

1814 Lord Byron wrote his semi-autobiographical tale in verse The Corsair while snowed up at Newstead Abbey in England with his half sister Augusta Leigh.  The Corsair was published on February 1, 1814 by John Murray.  It sold 10,000 copies on its first day and over 25,000 copies in the next month.

First edition title page

1840 French novelist Alexandre Dumas married actress Ida Ferrier (born Marguerite-Joséphine Ferrand) (1811–1859) on February 1, 1840. He had numerous liaisons with other women and was known to have fathered at least four children by them.

1851 The author of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, died at her London home after a long illness on February 1, 1851, possibly caused by a brain tumor.  She was buried in the graveyard of St. Peter's Church in Bournemouth. In order to fulfill Mary Shelley's wishes, her son Percy Florence and his wife Jane had the coffins of Mary Shelley's parents exhumed from St. Pancras and buried with her in Bournemouth.

1884 The first volume (A to Ant) of the Oxford English Dictionary was published on February 1, 1884. The first complete edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was not published until 1928. Planned as a 10-year project, the 44-year undertaking resulted in a comprehensive, historical dictionary of English—the longest in the world today.

Volumes of the Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. By Dan (mrpolyonymous on Flickr)

1893 Thomas Edison is credited for building the first film production studio nearby his home and lab in West Orange, New Jersey. Construction was completed on February 1, 1893. It was called Black Maria, or the “Doghouse” by Edison himself. The Black Maria building was essentially a large wooden shed covered with tar paper, was small enough that it was mounted on circular tracks so it could be turned to accommodate sunlight through an opening in the roof.

1900 The Brownie box camera was introduced by Eastman Kodak on February 1, 1900 selling for just $1.00. The camera's 6-exposure film sold for 15 cents. The Brownie played a significant role in popularizing amateur photography by making it simpler and more affordable for people to take their own pictures.

1901 Hollywood actor Clark Gable was born William Clark Gable on February 1, 1901 in Cadiz; he was mistakenly listed as a female on his birth certificate. His parents were William Henry "Will" Gable  an oil-well driller and Adeline (née Hershelman). He was named William after his father, but even in childhood he was almost always called Clark. At seventeen Gable was inspired to be an actor after seeing the play The Bird of Paradise.

1915 During World War I, European governments introduced border passport requirements for security reasons, and to control the emigration of people with useful skills. On February 1, 1915, British passports were for the first time required to carry photographs of their holders instead of written descriptions. These controls remained in place after the war throughout Europe, becoming a standard, though controversial, procedure.

1931 President of Russia Boris Yeltsin was born in Butka, a small village near the Ural Mountains on February 1, 1931. The priest at young his christening was so drunk that he dropped baby Boris into the font then forgot he was there. The first President of Russia from 1990 to 1999, Yeltsin took control after the fall of the Soviet Union.

1935 The Hagia Sophia was the world's largest cathedral for nearly a thousand years, The Ottoman conqueror of Constantinople, Mehmet II, entered the magnificent Hagia Sophia cathedral on May 29, 1453 and converted it into a mosque. It remained a place of worship for Muslims until 1931 when the Hagia Sophia was secularized. It opened as a museum on February 1, 1935 but in 2020 it reopened as a mosque.

Hagia Sophia By Arild Vågen - Wikipedia Commons

1946 Following the fall of Nazi Germany, Soviet troops occupied Hungary with the goal of forming the entire country into a communist satellite state of the Soviet Union. The Parliament of Hungary abolished the monarchy after nine centuries, and proclaimed the Hungarian People's Republic on February 1, 1946.

1957 The Wankel engine is a type of internal combustion engine using an eccentric rotary design to convert pressure into rotating motion. Invented by German engineer Felix Wankel, he began development in the early 1950s at NSU research and development department in Neckarsulm, Germany. The first working prototype, DKM 54, produced 21 horsepower and ran on February 1, 1957, at the NSU.

1963 The Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "I Saw Her Standing There" were released in the United States in late 1963, marking the beginning of Beatlemania on an international level.
"I Want to Hold Your Hand." became their first US number one hit on February 1, 1964.

1968 Photojournalist Eddie Adams took his Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of the summary execution of Viet Cong prisoner Nguyễn Văn Lém on February 1, 1968. The picture helped build opposition in the USA to the Vietnam War.

1968 Nine months after Elvis Presley married Priscilla Wagner, she gave birth to Lisa Marie on February 1, 1968. Lisa Marie was Elvis Presley's only child and was known for her musical career as well as her connection to her famous father. She died on January 12, 2023.

The Presleys with newborn Lisa Marie, February 1968

1972 Kuala Lumpur means "muddy confluence." The Malaysian city was originally a small settlement of just a few houses at the confluence of Sungai Gombak and Sungai Klang. The town of Kuala Lumpur was established ca. 1857 when the Malay Chief of Klang and his brother raised funds to hire some Chinese miners from Lukut to open new tin mines in the area. Kuala Lumpur became a city on February 1, 1972 by a royal charter granted by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia.

1972 The HP-35, Hewlett-Packard's first pocket calculator, was introduced on February 1, 1972. It was the world's first scientific pocket calculator, featuring trigonometric and exponential functions. The HP-35 played a significant role in revolutionizing the field of calculators and electronic computation and led to the decline of the slide rule.

An HP-35 pocket calculator. By Seth Morabito 

1974 Kuala Lumpur was declared a Federal Territory on February 1, 1974. Before that, it was part of the state of Selangor in Malaysia. The creation of the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur was aimed at ensuring that the capital city had a special administrative status, distinct from any particular state, to better serve as the country's administrative and financial center.

1978 Abolitionist and humanitarian Harriet Tubman becomes the first African American woman to be honored on a U.S. postage stamp in the Black Heritage series on February 1, 1978. Harriet Tubman, known for her role in the Underground Railroad and her advocacy for the abolition of slavery, was a fitting choice for this honor.

1998 Lillian Elaine Fishburne was the first African-American female to hold the rank of rear admiral in the United States Navy. She was appointed to the rank of Rear Admiral (Lower Half) by President of the United States Bill Clinton and was officially promoted on February 1, 1998.

Lillian E Fishburne

2003 The Columbia Space Shuttle broke apart while re-entering the Earth's atmosphere on February 1, 2003, killing all seven people who were on it at the time. After the space shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003 the debris field stretched from Texas through Louisiana, and the search team was so thorough they found nearly 84,000 pieces of the shuttle, as well as a number of murder victims and a few meth labs.

2009 The first cabinet of Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir was formed in Iceland on February 1, 2009, making her the country's first female prime minister and the world's first openly gay head of government of the modern era. Sigurðardóttir joined in a civil union with Jónína Leósdóttir (born 1954), an author and playwright, in 2002. In 2010, when same-sex marriage was legalized in Iceland, Jóhanna and Jónína changed their civil union into a marriage.

2013 The Shard in Southwark, London became  the tallest building in the European Union with a height of 1,016 feet (309.6 metres), when it opened to the public on February 1, 2013. The Shard is a 95-storey skyscraper with 72 habitable floors, a viewing gallery and open-air observation deck on the 72nd floor, at a height of 802 ft (244.3 metres). It is also the second-tallest free-standing structure in the United Kingdom, after the concrete tower at the Emley Moor transmitting station.

2015 Super Bowl XLIX, which pitted the New England Patriots against Seattle Seahawks, 28–24 on February 1, 2015, was the most-watched Super Bowl with a whopping 114.4 million US viewers. Not only that, it is the most-watched American television program of all time.

2017 Beyoncé's February 1, 2017 photograph revealing that she is pregnant with twins was the ‘most-liked’ Instagram post of 2017. The artistic image of the pregnant singer holding her stomach, had the caption: “We would like to share our love and happiness. We have been blessed two times over. We are incredibly grateful that our family will be growing by two, and we thank you for your well wishes. – The Carters.”

2020 An outbreak of a new novel virus was identified during mid-December 2019 in the city of Wuhan in Central China. It was a group of people with pneumonia with no clear cause. The disease was soon seen as a new strain of coronavirus, which was named 2019-nCoV. The first death outside China was reported in the Philippines, where a 44-year-old man confirmed to have contracted 2019-nCoV died on February 1, 2020.

2021 After Aung San Suu Kyi was elected as State Counsellor of Myanmar (equivalent to a prime minister), she shared power with the military. That agreement reached a breaking point after a landslide election victory for her party in November 2020. This may have led military officials to fear they'd be further pushed out of the government. On February 1, 2021 Aung San Suu Kyi was arrested by the military during a coup d'état after they declared the November 2020 Myanmar general election results fraudulent.