Two armed robbers in body armor engaged in a 44-minute shootout with police in North Hollywood
The bank robbers fired over 1,100 rounds of armor-piercing ammunition while police bullets bounced off their custom body armor. Officers had to borrow...
February 28 in History
Significant events that happened on this day.
Historical Events
1997
1995
A Denver disc jockey was sentenced to probation for playing "Gonna Make You Sweat" 15 times in a row
Doug Sorenson played C+C Music Factory's hit song on repeat at an airport hotel to protest being forced to play music he didn't like. The judge ruled...
1983
The final episode of M*A*S*H aired, becoming the most-watched television broadcast in American history
Major"Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" drew 125 million viewers, a record that stood for decades. The 2.5-hour finale was so popular that New York City reported...
1974
The United States and Egypt re-established diplomatic relations after a seven-year break
Relations had been severed during the Six-Day War in 1967. This warming of ties marked a major shift in Middle Eastern geopolitics and paved the way f...
1956
A patent was filed for the first computer hard disk drive
IBM's RAMAC 305 could store an incredible 5 megabytes of data across 50 24-inch disks weighing over a ton. Today, a thumbnail-sized microSD card can h...
1953
James Watson and Francis Crick announced they had determined the double-helix structure of DNA
MajorIn a Cambridge pub called The Eagle, Crick interrupted patrons' lunch to announce they had "found the secret of life." Their discovery of DNA's struct...
1940
Basketball was first televised when a college game was broadcast from Madison Square Garden
Only a few hundred television sets in New York could receive the experimental broadcast of Fordham vs. Pittsburgh. The announcer had to describe plays...
1935
Nylon was invented by Wallace Carothers at DuPont laboratories
Carothers created the first fully synthetic fiber, revolutionizing the textile industry. Ironically, he suffered from depression and died by suicide b...
1892
St. Louis became the first city to require tuberculosis reporting to health authorities
This groundbreaking public health measure was revolutionary but controversial—many feared stigma and quarantine. It established the precedent for dise...
1849
The first boatload of California gold rush prospectors arrived in San Francisco
The SS California sailed into San Francisco Bay carrying the first wave of fortune seekers after news of gold discovery spread. The ship's crew immedi...
1811
A massive earthquake struck the central United States, temporarily reversing the flow of the Mississippi River
The New Madrid earthquake was so powerful that it rang church bells in Boston and cracked sidewalks in Washington, D.C., over 700 miles away. Eyewitne...
1784
John Wesley chartered the Methodist Church as an independent religious organization
The 80-year-old Wesley formally broke from the Church of England, creating what would become one of the largest Protestant denominations. He had spent...