175 Fun Facts About February

February is named after Februa, a Roman ritual of what?

Purification gave the month its name: Romans called the things they cleansed with februa, and a priestess who asked for februa might be handed a twig of pine.

Which Roman king is credited with adding January and February to the calendar?

Numa Pompilius, Rome's second king, is credited with filling a gap: by Roman tradition the older ten-month year ran from March to December and simply left winter uncounted until January and February were added.

Before a reshuffle made it the second month, February was which month of the Roman calendar year?

Twelfth and last: Roman writers disagree on who later moved February up to second place, and it was inside February that priests slotted in an extra month when the calendar slipped.

In the Southern Hemisphere, February is the last month of which meteorological season?

Summer in the south runs from December to February on the meteorologists' calendar, which counts seasons in whole months so that one year's records can be compared with the next.

Which gemstone is February's birthstone?

Amethyst takes its name from the Greek for 'not drunk': the ancient Greeks believed the wine-coloured stone kept its wearer sober, and tied it to their god of wine.

Which of these is one of February's birth flowers?

Violet shares February with the primrose, two of the few flowers out at the tail of winter; carnations belong to January, daffodils to March and lily of the valley to May.

Under the Gregorian calendar's century rule, which of these years will skip its leap day?

2100 will have no 29 February: century years keep their leap day only if they divide by 400, so 2000 and 2400 qualify while 1900 did not and 2100 will not.

Francis Crick is said to have walked into a Cambridge pub on 28 February 1953 and announced the structure of what?

DNA: by James Watson's account, Crick told lunchtime drinkers at the Eagle that the pair had 'found the secret of life' after working out the double helix that morning.

The papal bull of 24 February 1582 that created the Gregorian calendar aimed mainly to fix the date of which festival?

Easter was the worry: the old calendar had slipped ten days against the spring equinox that sets its date, so the bull struck ten days from October 1582 and trimmed future leap years.

Which country's calendar once had a 30 February, in the year 1712?

Sweden had botched a gradual switch to the Gregorian calendar, so it added a double leap day to fall back in line with the Julian one.

By Irish tradition, what are women permitted to do on 29 February?

Propose marriage: legend has Saint Patrick granting the right, and custom later held that a man who said no owed the woman several pairs of gloves, to hide her ringless hand.

Which Italian opera composer, famous for The Barber of Seville, was born on 29 February 1792?

Gioachino Rossini was born in Pesaro on 29 February 1792; by his death in 1868 he had seen only eighteen true leap-day birthdays, because 1800 was not a leap year.

Groundhog Day on 2 February grew out of the superstitions of which community?

Pennsylvania Dutch settlers brought their German Candlemas weather lore with them and handed the forecasting job to the groundhogs they found in their new home.

Punxsutawney Phil makes his prediction from a spot with what name?

Phil emerges at Gobbler's Knob, a wooded hill just outside Punxsutawney; the top-hatted Inner Circle prepares two scrolls in advance so either verdict is ready to read.

By club lore, what has kept Punxsutawney Phil alive since his first forecast in 1887?

A magic elixir, the club insists: there has only ever been one Phil, kept going since 1887 by a sip of 'groundhog punch' at each year's Groundhog Picnic.

Groundhog Day (1993) was shot almost entirely in which Illinois town standing in for Punxsutawney?

Woodstock now marks spots from the film with plaques that visitors can follow on a walking tour, down to the pothole Bill Murray keeps stepping in.

Candlemas, on 2 February, commemorates which event from the Gospel of Luke?

The presentation of Jesus at the Temple by Joseph and Mary; churchgoers bring candles to be blessed for the year, a symbol of Christ as 'Light of the World'.

Imbolc, the Gaelic festival on 1 February, is the feast day of which saint?

Brigid, Ireland's patroness, has her feast on 1 February, the old first day of spring; households mark it by weaving crosses from rushes in her name.

Which Roman festival, held in mid-February, is often cited as a pagan ancestor of Valentine's Day?

Lupercalia had priests in goatskins run through Rome striking women with strips of goat hide, a blow thought to bring fertility; the rite outlived paganism and was still being run in the 490s.

Which medieval English poet is credited with first linking Saint Valentine's Day to romantic love?

Geoffrey Chaucer's Parlement of Foules has birds gathering on Saint Valentine's Day to choose their mates; it is generally taken as the earliest record linking the saint's feast with love.

Which state, admitted on 14 February 1912, completed the contiguous 48?

Arizona got in only after dropping a clause letting voters recall judges, which President Taft had vetoed; once admitted on Valentine's Day 1912, Arizonans voted the clause back in that same year.

The 1929 Saint Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago targeted the gang of which rival of Al Capone?

Bugs Moran was running late and turned away when he saw what looked like a police raid; the gunmen, some dressed as officers, lined seven of his men and hangers-on against a garage wall and shot them.

What is the official federal name of the US holiday most people call Presidents' Day?

Washington's Birthday is still the legal name: a 1968 bid in Congress to rename it Presidents' Day was dropped, and the label spread anyway through advertisers and calendar makers.

Which two famous men were both born on 12 February 1809?

Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin arrived on the same day an ocean apart, one in a one-room Kentucky log cabin, the other in a wealthy doctor's house in Shrewsbury; 12 February now doubles as Darwin Day.

Which historian created Negro History Week in 1926, the forerunner of Black History Month?

Carter G. Woodson, the son of formerly enslaved parents, worked in West Virginia coal mines and only started high school at 20, yet went on to a Harvard doctorate and launched Negro History Week in 1926.

Negro History Week's February date held the birthdays of Lincoln and which other man?

Frederick Douglass, born into slavery, never knew his real birthday and chose 14 February for himself; Black communities were already celebrating both men's birthdays by the late 1800s.

Which country observes Black History Month in October rather than February?

United Kingdom: its first Black History Month was held in London in October 1987, organised by the Ghanaian-born Akyaaba Addai-Sebo; Ireland also keeps October, the US and Canada February.

Which team won the first Super Bowl played in February, pushed back a week after the 9/11 attacks?

New England Patriots: 9/11 postponed a week of games, moving Super Bowl XXXVI to 3 February 2002, where Adam Vinatieri's 48-yard kick as time ran out beat the heavily favoured Rams 20-17.

Which quarterback played his final game in Super Bowl 50, held on 7 February 2016?

Peyton Manning bowed out a winner as his Broncos beat the Panthers 24-10; the NFL shelved Roman numerals for that one game so the logo could show a '50' instead of a lone 'L'.

Which Japanese festival on or around 3 February involves throwing roasted beans to drive out demons?

Setsubun sees families fling roasted soybeans out of the door, or at a relative in a demon mask, shouting 'Demons out, fortune in'; each person then eats one bean for every year of their age.

Which Japanese city's February Snow Festival began in 1950 with six snow statues built by local students?

Sapporo's festival began with students' snow statues in Odori Park; it has grown into a show of giant snow and ice sculptures that draws about two million visitors a year.

Waitangi Day, marked each 6 February, recalls a treaty the British Crown signed in 1840 with whom?

Māori chiefs, more than 40 of them, signed at Waitangi on 6 February 1840 and over 500 had by the year's end; the English and Māori texts differ on sovereignty, a dispute that still runs.

Where were the first Winter Olympic Games held, in early 1924?

Chamonix, France, hosted what was billed only as an 'International Winter Sports Week' from 25 January to 5 February 1924; the IOC recognised it as the first Winter Olympics after the fact.

The 'Miracle on Ice' of 22 February 1980 saw the United States beat which team at Lake Placid?

The Soviet Union lost to a team of US college players in the medal round, not the final; the Americans then beat Finland for gold.

Which astronomer spotted Pluto on photographic plates on 18 February 1930?

Clyde Tombaugh, a 24-year-old Lowell Observatory assistant hired on the strength of his drawings, found Pluto by comparing photographic plates; 11-year-old Venetia Burney of Oxford suggested the name.

On 20 February 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth aboard which capsule?

Glenn's Friendship 7 capsule circled Earth three times in just under five hours; the '7' honoured the seven original Mercury astronauts.

The Beatles drew a record 73 million US viewers on 9 February 1964 with their live debut on which programme?

The Ed Sullivan Show booked them after its host saw some 1,500 screaming fans greet the band at London's airport in October 1963; the broadcast opened the door to the British Invasion.

Which South African president announced Nelson Mandela's release, which came on 11 February 1990 after 27 years in prison?

F. W. de Klerk lifted the ban on the ANC on 2 February 1990 and freed Mandela nine days later; the two men went on to share the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize.

Under what name did Mark Zuckerberg launch his social network for fellow students on 4 February 2004?

The site launched as TheFacebook (thefacebook.com) for Harvard students; Facemash was his earlier hot-or-not site, and the 'The' was dropped in 2005 after the company bought facebook.com.

'The Day the Music Died', 3 February 1959, refers to a plane crash near which Iowa town?

Clear Lake's Surf Ballroom hosted the last show by Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper; Valens won his seat on the chartered plane with a coin toss, and it crashed minutes after take-off.

Which Berlin building burned on 27 February 1933, handing Hitler a pretext to suspend civil liberties?

The Reichstag fire came four weeks after Hitler took office; a decree the next day swept away free speech and assembly, and the Dutchman Marinus van der Lubbe, arrested inside, was executed in 1934.

The Greensboro sit-ins that began on 1 February 1960 targeted the lunch counter of which store chain?

Woolworth held out for six months: after four North Carolina A&T freshmen sat down on 1 February 1960 the sit-ins spread across the South, and that July the Greensboro counter finally served Black customers.

Space Shuttle Columbia broke apart on re-entry on 1 February 2003 after what struck its wing at launch?

Insulating foam shed by the fuel tank hit the left wing's leading edge about 80 seconds after lift-off; foam had struck shuttles on earlier flights without disaster, so the strike was not treated as an emergency.

The sinking of USS Maine on 15 February 1898 happened in which harbour?

The Maine exploded at anchor in Havana harbour, killing more than 260 men; the blast helped push the United States into the Spanish-American War that April, and its cause was never conclusively settled.

The Yalta Conference of 4-11 February 1945 was held in palaces on which peninsula?

Crimea was Stalin's choice: he insisted his doctors forbade long journeys, so Roosevelt and Churchill came to him at the Black Sea resort of Yalta; Roosevelt died two months after the talks.

Which reggae legend was born on 6 February 1945?

Bob Marley was born in Nine Mile, Jamaica; in December 1976 gunmen shot and wounded him at home, and two days later he still took the stage at the Smile Jamaica concert.

Under the tropical zodiac, the Sun leaves Aquarius and enters which sign around 19 February?

Pisces runs from about 19 February to 20 March; Aquarius covers roughly 20 January to 18 February, so most February babies are water-bearers.

The Old English name Solmonath for February is usually read as meaning what?

Solmonath is usually read as 'mud month' (Old English sol, mud), though Bede glossed it as a month of cakes offered to the gods; Kale-monath, the other Old English name, referred to cabbage.

The Finnish name for February, helmikuu, means month of the what?

Pearl: helmi is Finnish for pearl, after the icy beads that form on branches when thawing snow freezes again.

Which probe photographed Earth as a 'Pale Blue Dot' on 14 February 1990?

Voyager 1 took the Pale Blue Dot image on 14 February 1990 from about 6 billion km away, at Carl Sagan's urging, as part of its Family Portrait of the Solar System.

Which actress became the first Black Oscar winner on leap day 1940, for her role in Gone with the Wind?

Hattie McDaniel won Best Supporting Actress on 29 February 1940 for playing Mammy; criticised for taking servant roles, she answered that she would rather play a maid on screen than be one in real life.

Which astronomer was born in Pisa on 15 February 1564?

Galileo Galilei was hauled before the Inquisition in 1633 for arguing that the Earth circles the Sun; forced to recant, he spent the rest of his life under house arrest.

Chaucer's Valentine poem honoured the engagement anniversary of Richard II and which princess?

Anne of Bohemia married Richard II on 20 January 1382, when both were fifteen; the poem imagines a parliament of birds choosing their mates on Saint Valentine's Day.

In which century did England see Valentine's Day grow into an occasion for flowers, sweets and cards?

In 18th-century England couples began exchanging flowers, confectionery and handwritten notes; the notes became known simply as 'valentines', and mass-printed cards followed in the 1800s.

Saint Valentine is the patron saint of lovers, people with epilepsy and which group of workers?

Beekeepers share Saint Valentine with lovers and people with epilepsy; the lovers came late, since nothing ties his feast to romance before the Middle Ages.

Which pope stepped down on 28 February 2013, the first to give up the office in almost 600 years?

Benedict XVI cited his advanced age; the last pope to resign before him, Gregory XII, did so in 1415 to help end the schism then dividing the Church.

Which future country star gave up his seat on the plane that crashed on 'The Day the Music Died'?

Waylon Jennings, then in Buddy Holly's band, let the flu-stricken Big Bopper take his place on the chartered flight of 3 February 1959 and rode the tour bus instead.

Relics of Saint Valentine, given by Pope Gregory XVI in the 1830s, are kept in a Carmelite church in which capital city?

Dublin's Whitefriar Street Church received the relics through the Irish Carmelite John Spratt, and its shrine now draws couples and people praying to find love, above all on 14 February.

Daks Day, the name for Groundhog Day in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, comes from the German word for which animal?

Badger: Dachs is German for badger, which is also why the dachshund, bred to hunt them, is literally a 'badger dog'; Lunenburg's German settlers brought the word over in the 1750s.

In what language does Punxsutawney Phil supposedly deliver his forecast to the club president?

Groundhogese, by club lore, is understood only by the Inner Circle's president, whose acacia-wood cane is said to let him translate Phil's verdict for the crowd.

By tradition, what does it mean if Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow on 2 February?

Six more weeks of winter is the verdict, though the record is shaky: NOAA checked Phil's forecasts against US temperatures and found him right well under half the time.

A leap year is also known as an intercalary year or what kind of year?

Bissextile comes from the Roman bis sextum, 'twice sixth', because the leap day doubled the sixth day before the Kalends of March, which fell on 24 February.

Before his release on 11 February 1990, Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 prison years on which island?

Robben Island was only the first of his prisons: he was later moved to the mainland, so his famous walk to freedom actually began at a jail near Paarl called Victor Verster.

Which civil rights organisation was founded in New York on 12 February 1909 by a group including W. E. B. Du Bois?

NAACP founders, Black and white, came together after a deadly 1908 race riot in Springfield, Illinois, convinced the country needed a national body to fight for civil rights.

What was the intercalary month the Romans inserted after 23 February called?

Mercedonius, also called Intercalaris, was added only when the pontiffs chose, and they were accused of stretching or cutting years to keep allies in office or push rivals out.

The Gregorian calendar makes the average year how long?

The Gregorian average is 365.2425 days, from 97 leap days every 400 years, closer to the 365.2422-day tropical year than the Julian 365.25.

Which country switched to the Gregorian calendar in 1923, jumping from 15 February to 1 March?

Greece made the switch for civil life only: Wednesday 15 February was followed by Thursday 1 March 1923, and the decree left church feast days on the old calendar.

Which volcano was born in a Mexican cornfield on 20 February 1943?

Parícutin burst out of Dionisio Pulido's cornfield in Michoacán on 20 February 1943 and kept erupting until 1952, burying the villages of Parícutin and San Juan Parangaricutiro.

Rome's legendary second king, credited with adding February to the calendar, came from which people?

Sabine by birth, he came from the town of Cures; after Romulus, Romans and Sabines are said to have compromised on a king the Romans picked from among the Sabines.

Presidents' Day falls on which Monday of February?

The third Monday was fixed by the 1968 Uniform Monday Holiday Act, in force from 1971; it always lands between the 15th and the 21st, so the holiday can never fall on 22 February, its original date.

Students at which Ohio university held the first month-long Black History Month celebration in 1970?

Kent State's Black United Students proposed the month in 1969 and held it from 2 January to 28 February 1970, two months before the campus shootings of 4 May.

Which 1915 Chicago event inspired Carter Woodson to organise Black history commemoration?

The summer-long celebration marked 50 years since emancipation.

Which Alabama city, the first capital of French Louisiana, claims America's oldest Mardi Gras?

Mobile was founded in 1702 and marked Mardi Gras the next year, fifteen years before New Orleans existed; its mystic societies still start their ball season in November.

In New Orleans, the Carnival season that ends on Mardi Gras opens on which date?

Twelfth Night, 6 January, opens Carnival in New Orleans, when the first king cakes appear; whoever finds the tiny plastic baby hidden inside is expected to buy the next one.

What do many churches ritually burn on Shrove Tuesday?

Holy Week palms from the previous year are burned; the ashes are used the next day, Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent.

Which Disney animated feature, the studio's second, premiered in New York on 7 February 1940?

Pinocchio won Oscars for its score and for 'When You Wish Upon a Star', yet it lost money at first because the war had closed off European markets.

Which Italian city's Carnival was banned in 1797 and revived only in 1979?

Venice lost its Carnival when the republic fell to Napoleon in 1797: under French and then Austrian occupation the masks were banned, and the festival was officially revived only in 1979.

In what year was the first Carnival festival held in Rio de Janeiro?

Rio's Carnival dates back to 1723, when Portuguese immigrants brought the Entrudo, a street fight with water and flour; the samba-school parades began in the 1930s.

Chinese New Year on 17 February 2026 began the Year of which zodiac animal?

The Horse took over from the Snake; 2026 is a Fire Horse year, and in Japan's last one, 1966, births fell by about a quarter over a superstition about girls born then.

Which word game is played with slips pasted on lanterns at China's Lantern Festival?

Riddles have been pasted on lanterns since the Song dynasty: anyone who thinks they know the answer pulls off the slip and checks with the lantern's owner, usually for a small prize.

What pushed the Super Bowl to February's second Sunday in 2022?

A 17th game, added to the regular season in 2021, stretched the schedule by a week, so Super Bowl LVI fell on 13 February 2022, ending an 18-year run on the first Sunday.

Which Italian cities hosted the 2026 Winter Olympics?

Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo shared the Games of 6 to 22 February 2026; Cortina had been due to host in 1944, lost those Games to the war and finally staged them in 1956.

As of 2026, which February race has opened every NASCAR Cup season since 1982?

The Daytona 500 is NASCAR's most prestigious race, yet it comes first rather than last: Bobby Allison won the first season-opening running in 1982, and it has started every season since.

Imbolc is one of four Gaelic seasonal festivals, along with Samhain, Lughnasadh and what?

Bealtaine (Beltane) falls on 1 May: herders drove their cattle between two bonfires to protect them before sending them out to pasture.

Which inventor was born in Milan, Ohio, on 11 February 1847?

Thomas Edison's birthday became National Inventors' Day in 1983, when Congress and President Reagan chose 11 February to honour the holder of more than 1,000 patents.

Parinirvana Day, kept by many Buddhists on 15 February, marks which event in the Buddha's life?

His death at about eighty is celebrated rather than mourned, as his final release from the cycle of rebirth; temples read the sutra describing his last days.

Vasant Panchami honours which Hindu goddess?

Saraswati, goddess of learning and the arts, is honoured in yellow, the colour of the mustard fields then in bloom; many families have small children write their first letters that day.

Waitangi Day was briefly renamed what in 1974?

New Zealand Day was the name Norman Kirk's government gave the date when it became a nationwide public holiday, to signal a broader sense of nationhood; the next government restored Waitangi Day in 1976.

Which country, called Ceylon when British rule ended on 4 February 1948, celebrates Independence Day on that date?

Sri Lanka kept the name Ceylon, and the British monarch as head of state, until it became a republic in 1972.

Which Baltic state signed its Act of Independence in Vilnius on 16 February 1918?

Lithuania's original Act was lost for decades; a university professor, Liudas Mažylis, found it in a Berlin diplomatic archive in 2017, a year before the centenary.

Which American poet was born in Portland, Maine, on 27 February 1807?

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote of a 'spreading chestnut tree' in The Village Blacksmith; when the tree was felled, Cambridge schoolchildren gave him an armchair made from its wood in 1879.

February's birthstone is a variety of which mineral?

Quartz of this variety owes its colour to iron impurities and natural irradiation; heated, it turns yellow, and much of the citrine sold in shops is made that way.

Which US president, born on 9 February 1773, died one month after his inauguration?

William Henry Harrison spoke for nearly two hours at his inauguration with no coat or hat; the chill he caught was long blamed for the pneumonia that killed him 31 days into his term.

Aquarius is one of the three air signs, alongside Libra and which other?

Gemini, Libra and Aquarius form the air triplicity; despite its water-bearer symbol, Aquarius is not one of the water signs.

Pisces spans which degrees of celestial longitude?

Pisces, the twelfth sign, covers 330° to 360° of celestial longitude, the last 30° before the vernal point; its two fish are shown tied by a cord so they never part.

Which company made Sweethearts conversation hearts until it went bankrupt in 2018?

Necco's collapse left Valentine's Day 2019 without Sweethearts while new owner Spangler set up production; the hearts returned in 2020, many of them blank after printing problems.

Which British monarch died at Sandringham on 6 February 1952?

George VI died in his sleep at Sandringham on 6 February 1952, aged 56; his daughter Elizabeth, then in Kenya, became queen that day.

Galentine's Day was popularised by an episode of which sitcom?

Leslie Knope's 'Galentine's Day' episode of Parks and Recreation, aired 11 February 2010, launched the 13 February celebration of women's friendships.

Which heavyweight champion did Cassius Clay dethrone on 25 February 1964?

Sonny Liston, an 8-to-1 favourite, stayed on his stool when the bell rang for the seventh round; the new champion soon took the name Muhammad Ali.

International Mother Language Day on 21 February was first announced by which body?

UNESCO proclaimed the day in November 1999, choosing 21 February to honour the 1952 Bengali language-movement martyrs in Dhaka; the UN General Assembly endorsed it in 2002.

Which magazine debuted on 21 February 1925 with a monocled dandy on its cover?

The New Yorker was founded by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant; its prospectus declared it was 'not edited for the old lady in Dubuque'.

The Roman festival Terminalia honoured Terminus, god of what?

Boundaries were his care: each 23 February, neighbours crowned the stone marking their shared boundary with garlands and offered a lamb or a suckling pig.

The Roman Parentalia, nine days from 13 February, honoured whom?

Dead ancestors were honoured at their family tombs with garlands, grain and wine; the festival closed on 21 February with the Feralia, rites to appease the spirits of the dead.

Which Roman author recorded the Feralia festival of 21 February in his Fasti?

Ovid's Fasti gives a book to each month from January to June and then stops: he said his banishment to the Black Sea in AD 8 interrupted the poem, and no trace of the other six books survives.

Roman writers linked the Regifugium, a late-February festival, to the flight of which last king of Rome?

Tarquinius Superbus, Rome's seventh and last king, was driven out after his son's assault on Lucretia provoked a revolt; the city then became a republic.

Cupid's Greek counterpart is which god?

Eros was a slender winged youth in classical Greek art; only in the Hellenistic age did he become the chubby boy with a bow who survives as the Cupid of Valentine cards.

Whose opera Madama Butterfly flopped at its La Scala premiere on 17 February 1904?

Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly was jeered at its La Scala premiere on 17 February 1904; he withdrew it, and the revised version triumphed in Brescia that May.

Which dog show, first held in 1877, returned to Madison Square Garden in February 2025 after four years away?

Westminster moved outdoors in 2021 because of the pandemic, first to the Lyndhurst estate and then to the US Open tennis grounds, before going back to the Garden in 2025.

What name did the Boy Scouts of America, founded in February 1910, adopt in 2025?

The rebrand to Scouting America took effect on 8 February 2025, the organisation's 115th anniversary, reflecting the admission of girls to all its programmes since 2019.

Which amendment, ratified on 3 February 1870, barred denying the vote on account of race?

The Fifteenth was the last of the three Reconstruction Amendments, but literacy tests and other devices gutted it in the South until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Which German city was devastated by Allied firebombing on 13 to 15 February 1945?

Dresden's firestorm killed up to 25,000 people; among the American prisoners who survived it was Kurt Vonnegut, who turned the experience into his novel Slaughterhouse-Five.

Russia's February Revolution began with protests against what?

Food rationing and bread shortages brought crowds onto Petrograd's streets on 23 February 1917 (8 March in the West), International Women's Day; a week later Nicholas II had abdicated.

In which Soviet city did the German 6th Army's last troops surrender on 2 February 1943?

Stalingrad's trapped army was led by Friedrich Paulus; Hitler made him a field marshal because none had ever surrendered, and Paulus gave himself up the day after hearing the news.

Which future state did Mexico cede on 2 February 1848, nine days after gold was found there?

California's gold turned up at Sutter's Mill on 24 January 1848; the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo then gave the United States 55 percent of Mexico's territory for $15 million, just as the rush began.

Which president's recalled envoy signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo anyway?

James K. Polk fired the envoy, Nicholas Trist, for his defiance, yet sent the treaty to the Senate because it secured the territory he wanted and ended the Mexican-American War.

Which French fortress town was the target of the German offensive launched on 21 February 1916?

Verdun, on the River Meuse, held out through nearly ten months of fighting, the longest battle of the First World War; the German chief of staff later wrote that he had aimed to bleed the French army white.

Which Pacific island did US Marines invade on 19 February 1945 to seize its airfields?

Iwo Jima's famous flag photograph, taken on Mount Suribachi four days into the battle, shows the second flag raised that day: a larger one sent up to replace the first.

Who was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, on 4 February 1913?

Rosa Parks was no accidental protester: an activist for a dozen years, she had attended a desegregation workshop at Tennessee's Highlander Folk School months before she refused to give up her bus seat in 1955.

Which Sonny and Cher song wakes Phil Connors every morning in Groundhog Day?

I Got You Babe plays on the clock radio each time the day restarts; writer Danny Rubin opened his first draft with Phil already trapped and predicting the DJs' banter.

Bill Murray's Groundhog Day character works as what?

A TV weatherman from Pittsburgh, Phil Connors is sent to cover the groundhog; the real animal bit Bill Murray twice during filming, breaking the skin through his gloves.

Which West African country, the smallest on the continent's mainland, celebrates independence on 18 February?

The Gambia won independence from Britain on 18 February 1965; its borders, drawn by an 1889 Anglo-French agreement, simply follow both banks of the Gambia River through Senegal.

Which comic strip's final original instalment ran on 13 February 2000?

Peanuts ended with a farewell Sunday strip on 13 February 2000, the day after Charles Schulz died; Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side had both bowed out in 1995.

Which Scandinavian country celebrates Mother's Day on the second Sunday of February?

Norway keeps Morsdag on the second Sunday of February, not in May like the American original; it was first marked on 9 February 1919, and two Oslo women enlisted charities, shops and the press to establish it.

Which awareness day is observed on the last day of February?

Rare Disease Day, launched by EURORDIS in 2008, sits on the last day of February so that in leap years it falls on 29 February, itself a rare date.

Which British explorer was killed at Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii, on 14 February 1779?

James Cook died in a clash on the shore after he tried to take the Hawaiian ruler Kalaniʻōpuʻu hostage to force the return of a stolen boat.

Which state was admitted on Valentine's Day 1859, though locals heard the news a month later?

Oregon became the 33rd state on 14 February 1859, but nobody living there knew it until the news finally arrived on 15 March.

Hattie McDaniel became the first Black Oscar winner on 29 February 1940 for her role in which film?

Gone with the Wind won her Best Supporting Actress, yet at the ceremony she was kept apart from her co-stars, at a segregated table against the far wall of the room.

Which CBS series ended on 28 February 1983 with a finale watched by roughly 106 million Americans?

M*A*S*H bowed out with a two-and-a-half-hour film that outdrew that year's Super Bowl, and its ad slots cost more than the big game's too.

Which Apollo 14 commander hit two golf balls across the lunar surface in February 1971?

Alan Shepard had fitted a six-iron head to the handle of a sampling tool, and his suit was so stiff that he could only swing one-handed.

In which African country was Princess Elizabeth staying in February 1952 when she became queen?

Kenya was the first stop on a long royal tour, and she had just come back from the Treetops Hotel when word of her father's death reached Sagana Lodge.

Which cartoon duo made their debut on 10 February 1940 in the MGM short Puss Gets the Boot?

Tom and Jerry went by other names in that first short: the cat was called Jasper, and the mouse had no name on screen at all.

On 17 February 1972, which car overtook the Model T as the most-produced automobile in history?

The VW Beetle passed 15 million built that day, ending a record the American car had held for nearly 50 years.

The Old Farmer's Almanac names the full moon of February after which of these?

Snow gives the February full moon its name because the month is, on average, the snowiest of the year in the United States; a Cherokee name for it is the Hungry Moon.

Gerald Holtom presented which now-famous symbol on 21 February 1958 for a British anti-nuclear march?

The peace sign is built from flag signals: Holtom laid the semaphore positions for N and D, for nuclear disarmament, over each other inside a ring.

Pittsburgh schoolchildren began testing Jonas Salk's vaccine on 23 February 1954 against which illness?

Polio was the target, and Salk had shown his faith in the shot the year before by vaccinating his own children with it.

Which Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera turns on its hero Frederic having been born on 29 February?

The Pirates of Penzance binds him to the gang until his twenty-first birthday, and with one birthday every four years that will not arrive until he is in his eighties.

Which cardigan-wearing host's children's show made its US national debut on 19 February 1968?

Fred Rogers had first made the show in Toronto for the CBC, whose designers built the trolley and castle he carried home, and his mother knitted the cardigans.

Which First Lady led television viewers on a tour of the restored White House on Valentine's Day 1962?

Jackie Kennedy drew more than eighty million viewers, who were getting their first look at the $2 million restoration she had helped to direct.

Since 1994, February has been a national month in the United States devoted to feeding which animals?

Wild birds find February one of the hardest months of the year, an Illinois congressman argued when he read the idea into the Congressional Record.

Which Mark Twain novel reached American readers in February 1885, only for several libraries to ban it?

Huckleberry Finn had come out in Britain two months earlier, and the public library in Concord, Massachusetts, shut it out as too coarse.

Which state's town of Anthony declared itself Leap Year Capital of the World in February 1988?

Texas has the title-holder, which also started an international birthday club for leaplings, the people born on 29 February.

From which space shuttle did Bruce McCandless make the first untethered spacewalk on 7 February 1984?

Challenger was about 320 feet away when a famous photograph caught him flying free, held aloft by a jet pack called the Manned Maneuvering Unit.

Which US president landed in Beijing on 21 February 1972 for a groundbreaking week-long visit to China?

Richard Nixon shook hands with Mao Zedong that same day, and he later called the trip the week that changed the world.

Joe Rosenthal's photograph of 23 February 1945 shows Marines raising a flag on which Iwo Jima mountain?

Mount Suribachi saw two flags go up that day, and the famous picture shows the second, a larger replacement raised by different Marines.

Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon formally opened which pharaoh's burial chamber on 16 February 1923?

Tutankhamun's tomb had been found the previous November, but it took until mid-February to empty the treasure-packed antechamber that stood in the way.

A small Alabama firm made the first US 9-1-1 call on 16 February 1968, beating which telecom giant?

AT&T had picked the three digits itself, yet the Alabama Telephone Company rushed a system into the town of Haleyville two weeks before the giant's own launch in Indiana.

Which revolutionary was sworn in as prime minister of Cuba on 16 February 1959, weeks after Batista fled?

Fidel Castro kept the post until 1976, then swapped the title for president and held on to power for another three decades.

Which hot-tempered tennis champion was born in Wiesbaden, West Germany, on 16 February 1959?

John McEnroe arrived while his American father was stationed there with the US Air Force, and the family was soon back in New York.

The Ash Wednesday bushfires of 16 February 1983 brought over 180 fires in twelve hours to which country?

Australia would not see deadlier fires until Black Saturday in 2009; gusts of up to 110 km/h drove the flames through Victoria and South Australia.

Which general won the nickname Unconditional Surrender when Fort Donelson fell on 16 February 1862?

Ulysses S. Grant had answered a request for terms with a blunt demand to give up outright, and the win lifted him from obscurity to major general.

Which climate treaty, adopted in 1997, had to wait until 16 February 2005 before it entered into force?

The Kyoto Protocol needed ratifiers responsible for 55 percent of industrialised countries' emissions, a bar it cleared only when Russia joined in late 2004; the United States never ratified it.

The Day of the Shining Star, a North Korean public holiday on 16 February, marks the birth of which leader?

Kim Jong Il's official story has him born in 1942 in a secret camp on Mount Paektu, but historians place his birth a year earlier, at a Soviet army camp in Russia's Far East.

Stephen Decatur raided which North African harbour on 16 February 1804 to burn the captured USS Philadelphia?

Tripoli lost its prize frigate without a single American death, a raid Lord Nelson is said to have called the most bold and daring act of the age.

Which ventriloquist, the partner of the wisecracking dummy Charlie McCarthy, was born on 16 February 1903?

Edgar Bergen became a star on radio, of all places, where nobody could see the dummy or his lips, and his daughter is the actress Candice Bergen.

Which video-sharing site was founded on Valentine's Day 2005 by three former PayPal employees?

YouTube's founders, Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, could afford the gamble because eBay's takeover of PayPal had already made them wealthy.

The Roslin Institute announced on 22 February 1997 that it had cloned a sheep, which was given what name?

Dolly was grown from a mammary gland cell, which is why the Scottish team named her after the country singer Dolly Parton.

Which Black leader was shot dead at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan on 21 February 1965?

Malcolm X was 39 and about to address a 400-strong meeting of the Organization of Afro-American Unity when the gunfire began.

The Lateran Treaty, signed on 11 February 1929, recognised which tiny territory as an independent state?

Vatican City came out of a deal between Pope Pius XI and Mussolini's Italy that settled a long-running standoff known as the Roman question.

Which composer played the piano at the premiere of Rhapsody in Blue in New York on 12 February 1924?

George Gershwin said the themes had come to him on a train to Boston, in the rattle of the wheels, and he improvised part of his solo on the day.

On 24 February 1868, who became the first US president to be impeached by the House of Representatives?

Andrew Johnson then kept his job by a single vote, when the Senate fell just short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict him.

Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith founded which studio on 5 February 1919?

United Artists gave the four stars control of their own work and money, just as producers were tightening their grip on salaries and creative decisions.

Which IBM computer won a game against world chess champion Garry Kasparov on 10 February 1996?

Deep Blue was the first machine to beat a reigning champion at tournament time controls, though Kasparov fought back to take that first match 4-2.

Francis Crick told a Cambridge pub on 28 February 1953 of a DNA breakthrough made with which colleague?

James Watson tells the story in his book The Double Helix, and The Eagle, where the pair lunched regularly, now marks the moment with a plaque by its door.

Which reference work published its first instalment, covering only A to Ant, on 1 February 1884?

The Oxford English Dictionary had been in the works since 1857, and its first 352-page part still got no further than the word ant.

On Valentine's Day in Japan, who by long-standing custom gives chocolate to whom?

Women to men is the rule, possibly because a chocolate executive mistranslated the custom in an early campaign, and men return the favour a month later on White Day.

Which British chocolate maker introduced heart-shaped boxes of chocolates for Valentine's Day in 1868?

Cadbury had been selling decorated Fancy Boxes of chocolates since 1861 before it thought to make them in the shape of a heart.

Ash Wednesday, which often falls in February, opens which Christian season of fasting before Easter?

Lent brings weeks of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, and many churchgoers begin it by receiving a smudge of ash on the forehead as a sign of repentance.

What name is given to the social clubs that stage the parades and balls of the New Orleans Mardi Gras?

Krewes owe their odd spelling to Ye Mistick Krewe of Comus, a New Orleans club thought to have coined the word as a mock-antique flourish.

Tết, a Lunar New Year festival in late January or February, is the biggest holiday of which country?

Vietnam welcomes the arrival of spring with the festival, whose full name translates as the feast of the first day.

In Mexico, whoever finds the figurine in the Epiphany cake must provide which dish for Candlemas, 2 February?

Tamales are thought to echo the maize offerings of Mexico's pre-Christian past, and families share them after dressing a figure of the Christ Child.

Which country marks National Flag Day on 15 February, the date in 1965 when its new design took effect?

Canada had its maple leaf design proclaimed by Elizabeth II weeks earlier, though the anniversary only became an official observance in 1996.

Which architect designed the Sambadrome, the purpose-built parade ground of Rio de Janeiro's Carnival?

Oscar Niemeyer tucked 115 classrooms underneath the grandstands, so the Sambadrome doubles as a school for the rest of the year.

Which indigenous people of Arctic Europe celebrate their national day on 6 February?

Sámi delegates first gathered in Trondheim in 1917, and a 1992 conference chose the anniversary as a day to fly their flag and sing their anthem.

Runners in Olney, England, race with frying pans each Shrove Tuesday against rivals in which Kansas town?

Liberal has taken on Olney since 1950, in a contest that honours a 1445 legend of a housewife who ran to church still clutching her pan.

Which actor, who played Kunta Kinte in Roots and hosted Reading Rainbow, was born on 16 February 1957?

LeVar Burton was born in Landstuhl, West Germany, where his father was stationed with the Army Signal Corps.