February 20

Edward VI is crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey at age nine, beginning a brief reign dominated by regents.

Edward VI, the only surviving legitimate son of Henry VIII, became king at age nine, with real governing authority exercised first by his uncle and then by other regents throughout his brief six-year reign, during which England moved further toward Protestantism.

Gioachino Rossini's comic opera "The Barber of Seville" premieres in Rome, later becoming one of the most performed operas in the world.

Rossini reportedly composed the entire opera in under three weeks, and though its chaotic premiere was famously disrupted by hecklers and technical mishaps, "The Barber of Seville" quickly became one of the most beloved and frequently performed comic operas in the classical repertoire.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens in New York City, growing into one of the largest and most visited art museums on Earth.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened with a modest initial collection before growing, through donations and acquisitions over the following century and a half, into one of the largest and most comprehensive art museums in the world, housing millions of works spanning five thousand years of human history.

Adolf Hitler secretly meets with German industrialists to secure funding for the Nazi Party's final election campaign before seizing dictatorial power.

Hitler's secret appeal to industrialists sought financial backing for the Nazi Party's final push before the March 1933 elections, framing the campaign as a decisive battle against Marxism. The funding helped the Nazis consolidate the political and financial support needed to establish a one-party dictatorship within weeks.

Roughly 20,000 people attend a pro-Nazi rally at New York's Madison Square Garden, revealing the extent of American sympathizer movements before World War II.

The rally, organized by the German American Bund, drew a large crowd beneath a massive portrait of George Washington flanked by swastika banners, revealing the presence of organized pro-Nazi sentiment in the United States shortly before the country entered World War II against Germany.

John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth, completing three orbits aboard Friendship 7.

Glenn's orbital flight came at a critical moment in the Cold War space race, following earlier Soviet achievements, and made him an instant national hero. He later became a U.S. senator and, in 1998, returned to space at age 77 aboard the Space Shuttle, becoming the oldest person to fly in space at the time.

The Soviet Union launches the Mir space station core module, which would remain in orbit for 15 years and host crews for a decade of that time.

Mir became a symbol of sustained human presence in orbit, hosting international crews including American astronauts during a period of post-Cold War cooperation, and provided crucial experience for the later construction and operation of the International Space Station before being deliberately deorbited in 2001.

Crowds in Tirana topple a giant statue of former Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha, symbolizing the collapse of communist rule in Albania.

The toppling of Hoxha's statue in Tirana symbolized the collapse of Albania's uniquely isolated and repressive form of Stalinist communism, which had cut the small Balkan nation off from most of the outside world for over four decades under his rule.

A pyrotechnics display ignites a fire at The Station nightclub in Rhode Island, killing 100 people in one of the deadliest nightclub fires in U.S. history.

The Station nightclub fire, ignited by pyrotechnics used during a rock concert that quickly set flammable soundproofing foam ablaze, killed 100 people in one of the deadliest nightclub disasters in American history and led to stricter fire safety regulations for entertainment venues nationwide.

Dozens of anti-government protesters are killed by snipers in Kyiv's Independence Square during Ukraine's Euromaidan uprising.

The sniper killings in Kyiv's Independence Square, during the final violent days of the Euromaidan protests against President Yanukovych, marked a bloody climax to months of demonstrations and directly preceded Yanukovych's ouster and flight from Ukraine days later.