What happened on February 20 ?

1472 - Orkney and Shetland are returned by Norway to Scotland, due to a defaulted dowry payment.

1547 - Edward VI of England is crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey.

1724 - The premiere of Giulio Cesare, an Italian opera by George Frideric Handel, takes place in London.

1725 - The first reported case of white men scalping Native Americans takes place in New Hampshire colony.

1792 - The Postal Service Act, establishing the United States Post Office Department, is signed by President George Washington.

1810 - Andreas Hofer, Tyrolean patriot and leader of rebellion against Napoleon's forces, was executed.

1816 - Gioachino Rossini's The Barber of Seville debuts at Teatro Argentina, with a fiasco.

1835 - Concepción, Chile is destroyed by an earthquake

1864 - Battle of Olustee

1872 - In New York City the Metropolitan Museum of Art opens.

1873 - The University of California opens its first medical school in San Francisco, California.

1901 - The legislature of Hawaii Territory convenes for the first time.

1913 - King O'Malley drives in the first survey peg to mark commencement of work on the construction of Canberra.

1921 - The film The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, starring Rudolph Valentino, premieres.

1931 - California gets the go-ahead by the U.S. Congress to build the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

1942 - Lieutenant Edward O'Hare becomes America's first World War II flying ace.

1943 - American movie studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor movies.

1943 - The Paricutín volcano begins to form in Paricutín, México.

1944 - World War II: "Big Week" begins with American bomber raids on Nazi aircraft manufacturing centers.

1944 - World War II: The United States takes Eniwetok Island.

1947 - State of Prussia ceases to exist

1952 - Emmett L. Ashford becomes the first African-American umpire in organized baseball by being authorized to be a substitute umpire in the Southwestern International League.

1952 - The film The African Queen opens at the Capitol Theatre in New York City.

1959 - The Avro Arrow programme to design and manufacture supersonic jet fighters in Canada is cancelled by the Diefenbaker government amid much political debate.

1962 - Mercury program: While aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn orbits the earth three times in 4 hours, 55 minutes, becoming the first American to orbit the earth.

1965 - Ranger 8 crashes into the moon after a successful mission of photographing possible landing sites for the Apollo program astronauts.

1976 - The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization disbands.

1987 - Unabomber: In Salt Lake City, in the USA, a bomb explodes in a computer store.

1991 - A gigantic statue of Albania's long-time dictator, Enver Hoxha, is brought down in the Albanian capital, Tirana, by mobs of angry protesters.

1992 - Ross Perot announces his intention to run in the 1992 U.S. presidential election on CNN's Larry King Live.

1992 - The FA Premier League is formed and takes over as the professional league in England from season 1992?93.

1998 - American figure skater Tara Lipinski becomes the youngest gold-medalist at the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

2001 - FBI agent Robert Hanssen is arrested and charged with spying for Russia for 15 years.

2002 - In Reqa Al-Gharbiya, Egypt, a fire on a train injures over 65 and kills at least 370.

2003 - In Rhode Island, in the USA, The Station nightclub fire kills about 100 and injures over 200.

2005 - Spain becomes the first country to vote in a referendum on ratification of the proposed Constitution of the European Union, passing it by a substantial margin, but on a low turnout.