this day in history

On 26 February 1815, Napoleon escaped Elba and walked back into power without firing a shot. The gamble lasted one hundred days and ended at Waterloo.

On 25 February 1836, Samuel Colt received US Patent No. 138 for a revolving-cylinder pistol. The revolver democratised killing and America has been living with the consequences ever since.

On 24 February 1525, Charles V turned twenty-five. His birthday present was the Battle of Pavia, a captured French king, and confirmation that his was the most powerful empire Europe had seen since Rome.

On 24 February 2022, Russian forces invaded Ukraine. Four years on, the war grinds on — hundreds of thousands dead, a continent reshaped, and a causal chain that traces back to a suitcase in Taiwan.

On 23 February 1455, a goldsmith's workshop in Mainz finished printing a Latin Bible using movable metal type. Every book, newspaper, and screen that followed owes something to that press.

On 22 February 1921, a Cossack officer named Reza Khan marched on Tehran and seized power. The dynasty he founded lasted fifty-four years. Its heir now calls for revolution from a suburb of Washington.

A boy tsar in 1613, a revolutionary pamphlet in 1848, a president's flight in 2014 — all on 21 February, all part of the same unfinished argument about Russia.

On 20 February 1798, French soldiers escorted Pope Pius VI out of Rome. He had ruled as a temporal sovereign — as every pope had for over a thousand years. None would again.

In 1954, the Soviet Presidium voted to transfer Crimea from Russia to Ukraine. The session lasted minutes. The consequences are still running.

On 18 February 1885, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published in the United States — a literary event that forced the country to look squarely at race, complicity, and the conscience of a boy on a raft.