this day in history

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.

In 1652, Russia's new Patriarch decided the liturgy was wrong. The schism that followed still hasn't healed — and it was never just about religion.

Four hundred and ten years ago today, a Jurchen chieftain proclaimed himself Khan. The dynasty his heirs built solved an ancient problem — and created the conditions for a modern catastrophe.