What happened on February 14 ?

842 - Charles the Bald and Louis the German swear the Oaths of Strasbourg in French and German language.

1014 - Pope Boniface I recognizes Henry of Bavaria as King of Germany.

1076 - Pope Gregory VII excommunicates Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor.

1556 - Thomas Cranmer is declared a heretic.

1575 - Henry III of France marries Louise de Lorraine-Vaudémont.

1743 - Henry Pelham becomes British Prime Minister.

1779 - James Cook is killed by the natives of the Sandwich Islands.

1797 - John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent & Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson led the British Royal Navy to victory over a Spanish fleet in the Battle of Cape St. Vincent near Gibraltar.

1803 - Chief Justice John Marshall declares that any act of U.S. Congress which conflicts with the Constitution is void.

1804 - Karadjordje leads the First Serbian Uprising against the Ottoman Empire.

1831 - Ras Marye of Yejju marches into Tigray and defeats and kills dejjazmatch Sabagadis in the Battle of Debre Abbay.

1843- The event that inspired the song Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! is held.

1849 - In New York City, James Knox Polk becomes the first President of the United States to have his photograph taken.

1854 - Texas is linked by telegraph with the rest of the United States, when a connection between New Orleans and Marshall, Texas is completed.

1859 - Oregon is admitted as the 33rd U.S. state.

1876 - Alexander Graham Bell applies for a patent for the telephone,as does Elisha Gray.

1879 - The War of the Pacific breaks out when Chilean armed forces occupy the Bolivian port city of Antofagasta.

1886 - First trainload of oranges left Los Angeles via the transcontinental railroad.

1895 - First performance of Oscar Wilde's last play The Importance of Being Earnest at the St James's Theatre in London).

1899 - Voting machines are approved by the U.S. Congress for use in federal elections.

1900 - Russia responds to international pressure to free Finland by tightening imperial control over the country.

1900 - Second Boer War: In South Africa, 20,000 British troops invade the Orange Free State.

1903 - The United States Department of Commerce and Labor is established (later split into Dept. of Commerce and Dept. of Labor).

1912 - Arizona is admitted as the 48th U.S. state.

1912 - In Groton, Connecticut, the first diesel-powered submarine is commissioned.

1918 - Tarzan of the Apes, the first movie featuring Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan character, is released.

1918 - The Soviet Union adopts the Gregorian calendar (1 February according to the Julian calendar).

1919 - The Polish-Soviet War begins.

1920 - The League of Women Voters is founded in Chicago, Illinois.

1924 - The International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) is founded.

1929 - St. Valentine's Day Massacre: Seven gangster rivals of Al Capone are murdered in Chicago, Illinois.

1943 - World War II:Rostov, Russia is liberated.

1943 - World War II: The Battle of the Kasserine Pass - German General Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps launch an offensive against Allied defenses in Tunisia.

1944 - World War II: Anti-Japanese revolt on Java.

1945 - On the second day of the Bombing of Dresden in World War II the British Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Forces begin fire-bombing Dresden, the capital of the German state of Saxony.

1945 - Bombing of Prague - probably due to a mistake in the orientation of the pilots bombing Dresden.

1945 - Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay and Peru join the United Nations.

1945 - President Franklin D. Roosevelt meets with King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia aboard the USS Quincy, officially starting the U.S.-Saudi diplomatic relationship.

1945 - Fascism was destroyed in City of Mostar,Bosnia and Herzegovina(then:Yugoslavia) thanks to partisans(Dalmatinaska birgada,Hercegovacka divizija).

1946 - The Bank of England is nationalized.

1946 - ENIAC (for "Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer"), the first general-purpose electronic computer, is unveiled at the University of Pennsylvania.

1949 - The Knesset (Israeli parliament) first convenes.

1949 - The Asbestos Strike begins in Canada. The strike marks the beginning of the Quiet Revolution in Quebec.

1952 - VI Olympic Winter Games open in Oslo, Norway.

1956 - The XX Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union starts in Moscow. In the last night of the meeting, in a secret session, Premier Nikita Khruschev condemns Josef Stalin's crimes.

1961 - Discovery of the chemical elements: Element 103, Lawrencium, is first synthesized at the University of California.

1962 - First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy takes television viewers on a tour of the White House.

1966 - Australian currency is decimalised.

1979 - In Kabul, Muslim extremists kidnap the American ambassador to Afghanistan, Adolph Dubs who is later killed during a gunfight between his kidnappers and police.

1980 - XIII Olympic Winter Games open in Lake Placid, New York.

1980 - Walter Cronkite announces his retirement from the CBS Evening News.

1981 - Stardust Disaster. A fire in a Dublin nightclub kills 48 people

1985 - CNN reporter Jeremy Levin is freed from captivity in Lebanon.

1989 - Union Carbide agrees to pay $470 million to the Indian government for damages it caused in the 1984 Bhopal Disaster.

1989 - Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini issues a fatwa encouraging Muslims to kill the author of The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie.

1989 - The first of 24 satellites of the Global Positioning System is placed into orbit.

1998 - Authorities in the United States announce that Eric Robert Rudolph is a suspect in an Alabama abortion clinic bombing.

2000 - The spacecraft NEAR Shoemaker enters orbit around asteroid 433 Eros, the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid.

2002 - The Tullaghmurray Lass sinks off the coast of Kilkeel, County Down, Northern Ireland killing three members of the same family on board.

2004 - In a suburb of Moscow, Russia, the roof of the Transvaal water park collapses, killing more than 25 people, and wounding more than 100 others.

2005 - Lebanon's former Prime Minister, Rafik Hariri, is assassinated, prompting the Cedar Revolution (Intifada of Independence).

2005 - Seven people were killed and 151 wounded in a series of bombings by suspected Al-Qaeda-linked militants that hit the Philippines' Makati financial district in Metro Manila, Davao City, and General Santos City.