On This Day - 19th February

1473 - Nicolas Copernicus born
1924 - Lee Marvin born
1940 - Smokey Robinson born
1948 - Tony Iommi born
1955 - Margaux Hemingway and Jeff Daniels born
1961 - Police battle with supporters of the murdered Congolese premier outside the Belgian embassy in London.
1963 - Seal born
1966 - Justine Bateman born
1968 - The High Court awards compensation to 62 children born with thalidomide-induced deformities.
1978 - At least ten Egyptian commandos are killed in a gun battle with Greek Cypriot soldiers at Larnaca airport.
1997 - China's paramount leader Deng Xiaoping has died at the age of 92 after suffering from failing health for several years.
2001 - A five-mile exclusion zone is placed around an abbatoir in Essex after a suspected case of foot-and-mouth disease is detected.

On This Day - 18th February

1848 - Louis Comfort Tiffany born
1859 - Sholem Aleichem born
1920 - Bill Cullen and Jack Palance born
1921 - The worlds first Helicopter flies
1922 - Helen Gurley Brown born
1925 - George Kennedy born
1930 - Planet Neptune is discovered and Gahan Wilson born
1931 - Toni Morrison born
1932 - Milos Forman born
1933 - Yoko Ono born
1949 - Keith Rule born
1950 - Cybill Shepherd and John Hughes born
1954 - The Secretary of the US army orders two generals subpoenaed by anti-Communist senator Joseph McCarthy to ignore the summons and John Travolta born
1957 - Vanna White born
1964 - Matt Dillon born
1965 - Dr. Dre born
1968 - Molly Ringwald born
1969 - Hundreds of people clamour to see the marriage of popstars Lulu and Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees in a Buckinghamshire church.
1978 - Police in Northern Ireland arrest at least 20 people in connection with the La Mon restaurant bomb.
1981 - Mrs Thatcher's Conservative Government withdraws plans to close 23 pits in its first major U-turn since coming to power two years ago.
1996 - Three people are feared dead after a bomb explodes on a London bus, nine days after the IRA ended its ceasefire.
2005 - Hunting with dogs in England and Wales becomes illegal as the ban on the activity passes into law.

On This Day - 17th February

1908 - Red Barber born
1914 - Arthur Kennedy born
1925 - Hal Holbrook born
1934 - Alan Bates born
1936 - Jim Brown born
1954 - Rene Russo born
1959 - Turkish Prime Minister Adnan Menderes survives an air crash near London that killed 12 people.
1963 - Michael Jordan born
1965 - The Duke and Duchess of Kent celebrate the end of 300 years of colonial rule in Gambia with 35 chiefs.
1972 - Denise Richards and Billie Joe Armstrong born
1974 - Bryan White and Jerry O'Connell born
1979 - China sends hundreds of troops into Vietnam after weeks of tension and a military build-up along the border.
1981 - Paris Hilton and Joseph Gordon-Levitt born
1987 - A group of Tamils seeking asylum in Britain protest at Heathrow airport by removing their clothes as they are about to be deported.
1992 - Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is jailed for life in the US for murdering and dismembering 15 young men and boys.

On This Day - 16th February

1903 - Edgar Bergen born
1909 - Hugh Beaumont born
1920 - Patty Andrews born
1935 - Sonny Bono born
1957 - LeVar Burton born
1958 - Ice-T born
1959 - Cuba's revolutionary leader Fidel Castro becomes the country's youngest ever premier and John McEnroe born
1965 - A second report from British Railways Board chairman Dr Richard Beeching outlines transport needs for the next 25 years.
1972 - Many homes and businesses will be without electricity for up to nine hours a day from today due to the miner's strike, the Central Electricity Generating Board has announced.
1985 - Ministry of Defence assistant secretary Clive Ponting resigns from his post over the Belgrano affair.
2001 - At least seven Serbs are killed in a bomb attack on a bus making its way to a religious ceremony in Kosovo.
2005 - The Kyoto Protocol that aims to slow down global warming takes effect but the US remains outside it.

On This Day - 15th February

1564 - Galileo Galilei born
1820 - Susan B. Anthony born
1882 - John Barrymore born
1902 - The Berlin Underground opens
1907 - Cesar Romero born
1927 - Harvey Korman born
1931 - Claire Bloom born
1942 - British forces in Singapore surrender to the Japanese, seven days after enemy troops first stormed the island.
1951 - Jane Seymour and Melissa Manchester born
1952 - King George is buried at St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle after a solemn procession through London.
1954 - Matt Groening born
1961 - At least 73 people are killed when a Boeing 707 jet airliner crashes at Berg, near Brussels airport.
1964 - Chris Farley born
1967 - Jane Child born
1971 - The British Government launches a new decimal currency across the country. and Renee O'Connor born
1976 - Brandon Boyd born
1986 - Eight police officers are injured in the worst outbreak of violence yet outside the News International printing plant in Wapping, east London.
1989 - Soviet troops withdraw from Afghanistan, nine years after they invaded the country.
1996 - The long-awaited report into the sale of arms-to-Iraq in the 1980s is published and contains strong criticisms of the ministers involved.

On This Day - 14th February

1859 - Oregon becomes the 33rd state of the US
1894 - Jack Benny born
1912 - Arizona becomes the 48th State of the US
1913 - Jimmy Hoffa and Mel Allen born
1921 - Hugh Downs born
1929 - St Valentines Day massacre in Chicago
1932 - Vic Morrow born
1934 - Florence Henderson born
1944 - Carl Bernstein born
1945 - British and US bombers pound the ancient German city of Dresden with high explosives and incendiaries.
1946 - Gregory Hines born
1960 - Meg Tilly born
1972 - Drew Bledsoe born
1974 - Soviet authorities formally charge Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn with treason a day after forcing him to leave the USSR.
1984 - British figure skating couple Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean skate off with a gold medal at the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo after dancing to Ravel's Bolero.1989 - Iranian Muslim leader Ayatollah Khomeini issues a death threat against British author Salman Rushdie and his publishers over the book Satanic Verses.
1993 - Police confirm a body found on a railway embankment in Merseyside is that of missing toddler James Bulger.
1997 - Jurors at the inquest into the death of Stephen Lawrence have decided the black teenager was unlawfully killed "in a completely unprovoked racist attack by five white youths".
2005 - Former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri is killed by a car bomb explosion in Beirut.

On This Day - 13th February

1826 - The American Temperence Society is formed
1873 - L.L. Bean born
1882 - Composer Richard Wagner dies
1885 - Bess Truman born
1892 - Grant Wood born
1919 - Tennessee Ernie Ford born
1920 - Eileen Farrell born
1923 - Chuck Yeager born
1933 - Kim Novak born
1934 - George Segal born
1942 - Peter Tork born
1944 - Stockard Channing and Jerry Springer born
1950 - Peter Gabriel born
1961 - Officials in the Congolese province of Katanga declare former Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba dead.
1968 - Kelly Hu born
1974 - Robbie Williams born
1975 - British mineworkers' leaders agree to accept the coal board's latest pay offer of up to 35%.
1978 - Tomorrow's World presenter Anna Ford has been officially announced as ITN's first female newsreader.
1991 - Hundreds of Iraqi civilians are killed and wounded in Baghdad by American bombers.
2001 - A man goes on trial in Glasgow for knowingly infecting a woman with the HIV virus in a case believed to be the first of its kind in Scotland.