Like today, February 18, 2022

842: The Iconoclasm ends. Theodora, wife of the last iconoclastic emperor, Theophilos, imposes the restoration of the worship of the sacred icons.

1478: The Duke of Clarence, George, is executed in the Tower of London convicted of treason against his older brother, Edward IV of England.

1637: Off the coast of Cornwall in England, the Spanish Fleet intercepts a large British Fleet of 44 ships accompanied by 6 warships, destroying or occupying 20 of them.

1791: The United States Congress passed a law introducing the state of Vermont into the Union, effective March 4, 1791, marking the 14th anniversary of the state’s existence as a de facto independent and largely unrecognized state.

1828: Andreas Miaoulis, by order of Ioannis Kapodistrias, cleanses the Sporades islands from pirates.

1861: In Montgomery, Alabama, Jefferson Davis is sworn in as interim president of the Confederate States of America.

1873: Bulgarian revolutionary leader Vassil Levski is hanged in Sofia by the Ottoman authorities.

1907: In the United States, students of Japanese descent are admitted to schools in San Francisco, following an agreement between President Roosevelt and the city authorities.

1929: The announcement of the Oscars, which will be awarded on May 16, is announced in Hollywood.

1931: British officials take part in the unveiling of the statue of George Canning in the square of Athens, which bears his name (Kaningos).

1943: The Nazis arrest the members of the White Rhodes.

1943: Joseph Goebbels utters the “Total War”, one of his most famous speeches, in Sportsplatz.

1946: Sailors of the Royal Indian Navy revolt in the port of Mumbai, from where the action spreads to all provinces of British India, with the participation of 78 ships and 20,000 sailors.

1952: The Greek Parliament ratifies the agreement of our country’s membership in NATO, with only negative votes the eight of the EDA and one of Michalis Kyrkos.

1957: The 7th Broad Plenary Session of the Central Committee and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece (18-24 February 1957) convenes in Romania, during which Nikos Zachariadis is dismissed as a member of the Central Committee, while he is also removed as a member of the party. Costas Koligiannis comes out of the process strengthened.

1964: George Papandreou receives the mandate to form a government from King Pavlos, after the triumphant 52.87% gathered by the Union of the Center in the elections of February 16.

1965: The Gambia becomes independent from the United Kingdom.

1972: An Olympic Aviation Learjet 25 crashes near the French city of Antibes. The flight operated the route Athens – Nice. Both crew members are killed.

1983: In the largest mass murder-motivated robbery in U.S. history, 13 people were killed and one seriously injured in Seattle.

1992: The Council of Political Leaders is convened under the President of the Republic, Konstantinos Karamanlis, for Makedoniko. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Antonis Samaras, suggests that no name containing the term “Macedonia” or its derivatives be accepted by Greece. The Council endorsed its proposal.

2004: The tragic death toll from a train defect in Khorasan province in northeastern Iran is 200 dead and 350 injured. Powerful explosions on the 51 wagons of the commercial train carrying petrol, sulfur and phosphate fertilizers leveled five nearby villages. The cause of the tragedy was a weak earthquake, which occurred in the area.

2009: The terrorist organization “Revolutionary Struggle” attempted a bomb attack on the headquarters of Citibank, in Nea Kifissia.

2015: Prokopis Pavlopoulos is elected President of the Hellenic Republic, with 233 votes, against 30 of the constitutionalist Nikos Alivizatos. “Present” vote 32 deputies and 5 are absent.

2016: The popular songwriter Pantelis Pantelidis lost his life in a car accident on Vouliagmenis Avenue, in Athens.

2021: The Perseverance spacecraft successfully lands on Mars as part of the Mars 2020 mission.

Births

1360 – Giovanni di Bici of Medici, Italian banker

1374 – Jadwiga, Queen of Poland

1404 – Leon Batista Alberti, Italian painter, poet and philosopher

1515 – Valerius Cordus, German physician

1516 – Mary I, Queen of England

1543 – Charles III, Duke of Lorraine

1559 – Isaac Casobon, French scholar

1626 – Francesco Redi, Italian physician

1745 – Alessandro Volta, Italian physicist

1838 – Ernst Mach, Austrian physicist

1848 – Louis Tiffany, American artist

1854 – George Lampakis, Greek theologian

1860 – Anders Zorn, Swedish painter

1895 – Gustaf von Wangenheim, German actor and director

1895 – Semyon Tymoshenko, Soviet soldier

1898 – Enzo Ferrari, Italian racing driver and founder of Ferrari

1906 – Hans Asperger, Austrian pediatrician

1909 – Pantelis Prevelakis, Greek writer

1909 – Dido Sotiriou, Greek writer

1911 – Valias Semertzidis, Greek painter and engraver

1914 – Costas Montis, Cypriot writer

1919 – Jack Palance, American actor

1931 – Tony Morrison, American author

1932 – Milos Forman, Czech director

1933 – Yoko Ono, Japanese artist

1933 – Bobby Robson, English footballer and coach

1935 – Savvas Theodoridis, Greek football player and football player

1940 – Fabrizio De Andre, Italian songwriter

1940 – Osbourne Fleming, Anguilla politician

1947 – Terence Quick, Greek journalist and politician

1950 – Sibyl Shepard, American actress

1951 – Antonis Tourkogiorgis, Greek singer and musician

1954 – John Travolta, American actor

1960 – Gazebo (named after Paul Mazzolini), Italian musician

1965 – Dr. Dre (pronounced Andre Rommel Young), American producer and rapper

1967 – Roberto Baggio, Italian footballer

1969 – Antonis Kanakis (according to Antonis Doumas), Greek presenter

1975 – Gary Neville, English footballer

1978 – Panos Kalidis, Greek singer

1981 – Andrei Kirilenko, Russian basketball player

1985 – Drisa Diakite, Malian footballer

1992 – Melinda Sankar, Canadian actress

Deaths

999 – Pope Gregory V

1218 – Bertolt V, Duke of Cheeringen

1294 – Kublai Khan, Mongol emperor

1379 – Albert II, Duke of Mecklenburg

1405 – Tamerlane, Mongol emperor

1455 – Fra Angelico, Italian painter

1546 – Martin Luther, German theologian

1564 – Michael Angelos, Italian artist

1683 – Nicholas Peterson Berham, Dutch painter

1712 – Louis, Duke of Burgundy

1726 – Jacques Curry, French painter

1743 – Anna Maria Louise, last descendant of the Medici

1799 – Constantine Hantzeris, Prince of Wallachia

1873 – Vasil Levski, Bulgarian revolutionary

1890 – Gula Andrasi, Hungarian politician

1900 – Eugenio Beltrami, Italian mathematician

1907 – George Mourouzis, prince

1927 – Turhan Pasha Permeti, Albanian politician

1934 – Ioannis Govatzidakis, Greek politician

1943 – Robert Ranalph Maret, British ethnologist

1949 – Nitheto Alcala-Thamora, Spanish politician

1951 – Lyman Gilmore, American inventor

1960 – Miltiadis Iatridis, Greek soldier

1963 – Leonidas Karamaounas, Greek politician

1963 – Ioannis Kinias, Greek politician

1966 – Robert Rosen, American director

1967 – Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist

1973 – Costas Negrepontis, Greek footballer and coach

1992 – Konstantinos Dimaras, Greek literary critic

1993 – Allen Montgomery Lewis, Governor-General of St. Lucia

2001 – Nikos Zardinidis, Greek politician

2004 – Despo Diamantidou, Greek actress

2013 – Kevin Ayers, English singer and guitarist

2015 – Andreas Garyfallos, Greek swimmer and water polo player

2016 – Pantelis Pantelidis, Greek singer

2017 – Michael Otzio, Governor-General of Papua New Guinea