1493: Columbus returns to Spain after his first voyage across the Atlantic.
1558: After his brother Charles V renounced the imperial crown, Ferdinand I of Habsburg was solemnly recognized as Roman Emperor by the electors in Frankfurt am Main.
1848: The Hungarian revolution against the Habsburg rule breaks out in Pest under the leadership of the so-called “March Youth”.
1898: Founding of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, which splits in 1903 into moderate Mensheviks (minority members) and radical Bolsheviks (majority members).
1918: In Petrograd, an extraordinary congress of Soviets ratifies the separate peace of Brest-Litovsk.
1918: In contradiction to the provisions of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, a provincial assembly of Courland offered the German Kaiser Wilhelm II the title of duke of Courland, which he did not refuse.
1933: The initiative of the resigned third president, Sepp Straffner, from the Greater Germans to reconvene the paralyzed National Council, fails. The government of Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss sends the police into the parliament building and prevents the session.
1933: The German League for Human Rights is banned by the Nazi regime. The chairman, Carl von Ossietzky, had already been arrested at the end of February.
1938: Hitler proclaimed Austria’s “annexation” to the German Reich in front of around 250,000 people on Vienna’s Heldenplatz. Arthur Seyss-Inquart becomes “Reichsstatthalter”. The Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Theodor Innitzer, is received by Hitler.
1938: The Soviet politicians Genrich Yagoda, Nikolai Bukharin and former Prime Minister Alexei Rykov convicted in the third Moscow show trial (“Trial of the 21”) are executed in Moscow.
1943: On Hitler’s orders, all airfields near Vichy are made unusable to prevent an eventual escape by Marshal Philippe Pétain, head of the French collaborationist regime.
1943: The Jews interned in Greece are deported to Auschwitz.
1973: In Vienna, American and Soviet negotiators begin the fourth round of the SALT negotiations to limit strategic armaments.
1978: Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon (“Operation Litani”) to create a so-called “security zone”. After several days of fierce fighting, Israel occupies an 850 sq km strip of territory beyond its northern border.
1988: Largest unofficial demonstration in Budapest since 1956: tens of thousands commemorate the 1848 revolution.
1993: The world’s first CFC-free refrigerator rolls off the assembly line in Saxony. It is manufactured by “Foron Hausgeräte GmbH”.
1998: In regional elections in France, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s far-right Front National wins 15 percent of the vote.
2003: France, Germany and Russia launch a final initiative in the UN Security Council to prevent a war in Iraq.
2003: Communist Party leader Hu Jintao will succeed Jiang Zemin as President of the People’s Republic of China (probably until March 2013).
birthdays: Jules Moch, French politician (1893-1985); Philippe de Broca, French film director (1933-2004); Ruth Bader Ginsburg, US attorney; Justice of the Supreme Court 1993-2020 (1933-2020); Bodo Hell, Austria writer (1943); Rudolf Nagiller, Austria Journalist, moderator, editor, radio and television information director of the ORF and author of German origin (1943); David Cronenberg, Canada. Film director, producer and writer (1943); Ali Saïdi-Sief, Alger. track and field athlete (1978); Paul Pogba, French footballer (1993).
days of death: Karl Schönherr, Austria writer (1867-1943); Alexei Rykov, Soviet politician (1881-1938); Nikolai Bukharin, Soviet politician and economic theorist (1885-1938); Dame Rebecca West (Cicily Isabel Fairfield), British writer and journalist (1892-1983); Heinz Ullstein, German publisher (1893-1973).
name days: Clement, Luise, Zacharias, Christoph, Pius, Adalbert, Lukretia, Longinus, Diedo, Judika.