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There are many events that happened on this date in history. Here are just a few of them!

February 28 is the 59th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; 306 days remain until the end of the year (307 in leap years).

EVENTS

202 BC – Liu Bang is enthroned as the Emperor of China, beginning four centuries of rule by the Han dynasty.

1525 – Aztec king Cuauhtémoc is executed on the order of conquistador Hernán Cortés.

1844 – A gun explodes on board the steam warship USS Princeton during a pleasure cruise down the Potomac River, killing six, including Secretary of State Abel Upshur. President John Tyler, who was also on board, was not injured from the blast.

1958 – A school bus in Floyd County, Kentucky hits a wrecker truck and plunges down an embankment into the rain-swollen Levisa Fork river. The driver and 26 children die in one of the worst school bus accidents in U.S. history.

1959 – Discoverer 1, an American spy satellite that is the first object intended to achieve a polar orbit, is launched but fails to achieve orbit.

1966 – A NASA T-38 Talon crashes into the McDonnell Aircraft factory while attempting a poor-visibility landing at Lambert Field, St. Louis, killing astronauts Elliot See and Charles Bassett.

1983 – The final episode of M*A*S*H airs, with almost 110 million viewers.

1993 – The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents raid the Branch Davidian church in Waco, Texas with a warrant to arrest the group's leader David Koresh starting a 51-day standoff.

2013 – Pope Benedict XVI resigns as the pope of the Catholic Church, becoming the first pope to do so since Pope Gregory XII, in 1415.

BIRTHS

1704 – Louis Godin, French astronomer and academic (d. 1760)

1866 – Vyacheslav Ivanov, Russian poet and playwright (d. 1949)

1894 – Ben Hecht, American director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 1964)

1896 – Philip Showalter Hench, American physician and endocrinologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1965)

1901 – Linus Pauling, American chemist and activist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1994)

1906 – Bugsy Siegel, American gangster (d. 1947)

1908 – Billie Bird, American actress (d. 2002)

1930 – Leon Cooper, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate

1931 – Gavin MacLeod, American actor, Christian activist, and author (d. 2021)

1939 – Daniel C. Tsui, Chinese-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate

1939 – Tommy Tune, American actor, dancer, singer, theatre director, producer, and choreographer

1940 – Mario Andretti, Italian-American racing driver

1944 – Kelly Bishop, American actress

1945 – Bubba Smith, American football player and actor (d. 2011)

1948 – Steven Chu, American physicist and politician, 12th United States Secretary of Energy, Nobel Prize laureate

1948 – Bernadette Peters, American actress, singer, and author

1955 – Gilbert Gottfried, American comedian, actor, and singer (d. 2022)

1969 – Pat Monahan, American singer, songwriter and actor

DEATHS

1966 – Charles Bassett, American captain, engineer, and astronaut (b. 1931)

1966 – Elliot See, American commander, engineer, and astronaut (b. 1927)

1977 – Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, American actor and comedian (b. 1905)

1993 – Ruby Keeler, Canadian-American actress and dancer (b. 1909)

2007 – Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. American historian and critic (b. 1917)

2009 – Paul Harvey, American radio host (b. 1918)

2016 – George Kennedy, American actor (b. 1925)

2019 – André Previn, German-American pianist, conductor, and composer. (b. 1929)

2020 – Joe Coulombe, founder of Trader Joe's (b. 1930)

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