February 28

202 BC The coronation ceremony of Liu Bang as Emperor Gaozu of Han took place on February 28, 202 BC at the Xianyang Palace in modern-day Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, China. This marked the beginning of the Han Dynasty, one of the most significant and influential dynasties in Chinese history, lasting from 202 BC to 220 AD. During the Han Dynasty, China experienced a period of stability, prosperity, and cultural flourishing, making it a golden age of Chinese civilization.

Emperor Gaozu of Han dynasty.

1574 Three English and Irish Lutheran servants to the Spanish ran into trouble with the Inquisition, which had been set up in Mexico three years previously. People from all over the country attended the public announcement of their sentences and the burning at the stake of the three Lutherans was an elaborate public spectacle on February 28, 1574.  They were the first to be killed for their faith in America.

1743 French mineralogist and priest René Just Haüy was born at Saint-Just-en-Chaussée on February 28, 1743, Haüy founded the science of crystallography after he accidentally broke a piece of calcite and discovered that they cleaved along straight planes that met at constant angles. He broke more pieces to confirm his discovery and developed the theory of crystal structure. During the French revolution he also helped to establish the metric system.

1893 USS Indiana was the lead ship of her class and the first battleship in the United States Navy comparable to foreign battleships of the time. Her launch on February 28, 1893 was attended by around 10,000 people, including President Benjamin Harrison, several members of his cabinet and the two senators from Indiana.

USS Indiana between 1900 and 1908

1901 American chemist and peace activist Linus Pauling was born on February 28, 1901. He is the only person to have won two unshared Nobel Prizes: the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962. He is also one of two people to be awarded Nobel Prizes in different fields, the other being Marie Curie.

1935 Organic chemist Wallace Carothers began working at the DuPont Experimental Station in 1928. One day, a team of researchers, led by Carothers discovered an molten substance: it would stick to a glass rod and form a fine strand. As soon as the strand met the cold air, it solidified and formed a long continuous fiber that was both flexible and strong. The fiber was stronger and elastic than silk. The first example of what would become nylon was produced on February 28, 1935.

1936 Twins Ann Hunt and Elizabeth Hamel were separated soon after they were born in Aldershot, England, to their unmarried domestic servant mother on February 28, 1936. They didn't see each for a record 78 years. Elizabeth was kept because she had curvature of the spine and her mother thought that it would be difficult for her to be adopted. Ann, who was adopted, grew up an only child. When they finally met in 2014, they discovered they had both married men called Jim.

1939 The word "dord" was accidentally created, as a ghost word, by the staff of G. and C. Merriam Company in the 1934 edition of the New International Dictionary. They defined the term a synonym for density used in physics and chemistry in the following way: "dord (dôrd), n. Physics & Chem. Density." On February 28, 1939, an editor discovered the erroneous word "dord" in the Websters New International Dictionary, Second Edition, prompting an investigation. The non-word "dord" was excised.

1940 Basketball was televised for the first time when the University of Pittsburgh's win against Fordham University at Madison Square Garden was shown by NBC station W2XBS on February 28, 1940. The broadcast was experimental, and the game was shown only to a small audience in the New York City area. The broadcast had a limited number of cameras and no replays, but it paved the way for the widespread coverage of basketball and other sports on television,

1953 James D. Watson and Francis Crick announced to friends on February 28, 1953 that they had determined the chemical structure of DNA; the formal announcement took place in Nature on April 25th. In the early 1950s, Watson and Crick were only two of many scientists working on figuring out the structure of DNA.

1967 James Anderson, Jr covered a grenade with his body to save his colleagues when mortally wounded while serving in Vietnam on February 28, 1967. He later posthumously received the first Medal of Honor to be awarded to an African American U.S. Marine.

1983 M*A*S*H's final episode aired on February 28, 1983. The popular television show M*A*S*H was about American medical personnel serving in the Korean War. The series ran from 1972 to 1983 on CBS and was one of the most popular American television shows ever. M*A*S*H's final episode was one of the most watched shows in television history. It was viewed by 125 million people.

1984 Michael Jackson set a record for most wins at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles on February 28, 1984 by taking home eight of the gramophone statuette honors. He broke the previous record of six awards set by Roger Miller in 1965. In 2000, the band Santana also took home 8 awards, celebrating their comeback album Supernatural and various other categories.

2013 On February 28, 2013, Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation from the papacy, effective at the end of that day. This made him the first pope in nearly 600 years to resign from the papacy, since Pope Gregory XII resigned in 1415. Benedict XVI, who was born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, had been Pope since April 2005 and cited his advanced age and declining health as the reasons for his resignation. He was succeeded by Pope Francis.

2020 Astronomers reported that a 100 million light-year wide cavity in the Ophiuchus Supercluster originated from the ejection of ~270 million solar masses from a nearby supermassive black hole, the biggest explosion ever documented in the universe. To create a blast that large, one scientist said, the black hole would have had to swallow about 270 million suns’ worth of mass. The explosion was documented in The Astrophysical Journal on February 28, 2020.

Seven Nobel Prize winners had birthdays on February 28. No other date has as many apart from May 21 (also seven).