On February 20

Severe flooding and mudslides on the island of Madeira, Portugal, killed 51 people.

The Tamil Tigers attempted to crash two aircraft laden with C-4 in suicide attacks on Colombo, Sri Lanka, but the planes were shot down before they reached their targets.

At the age of 15, American figure skater Tara Lipinski became the then-youngest winner of an Olympic gold medal in the history of the Winter Olympic Games.

Appearing on the talk show Larry King Live, U.S. industrialist Ross Perot announced that he would begin a presidential campaign if "ordinary people" wanted him to run for office.

The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast voted to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia, triggering the First Nagorno-Karabakh War.

Wat Phra Dhammakaya, one of the largest Buddhist temples in Thailand, was founded in Pathum Thani.

The NASA spacecraft Ranger 8 spacecraft transmitted 7,137 photographs of the Moon in the final 23 minutes of its mission before crashing as planned into Mare Tranquillitatis.

The Project Mercury stamp, designed by Charles R. Chickering, was released to commemorate the successful space flight of Colonel John Glenn.

Canadian prime minister John Diefenbaker cancelled the Avro CF-105 Arrow (pictured) interceptor-aircraft program amid much political debate.

The Saturday Evening Post published the first of Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms, among the most widely distributed paintings ever produced, in support of U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt's Four Freedoms.

A fissure opened in a cornfield in the Mexican state of Michoacán and continued to erupt for nine years, forming the cinder cone Parícutin .

Paraguayan anarchists briefly seized the city of Encarnación as part of a larger plan to initiate a social revolution in the country.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art , today the largest art museum in the United States with a collection of more than two million works, opened in New York.

American Civil War: The Union Army suffered a one-in-three casualty rate at the Battle of Olustee near Lake City, Florida.

Polish insurgents in the Free City of Kraków led an uprising (depicted) attempting to incite a fight for national independence that was put down by the Austrian Empire nine days later.

An earthquake registering approximately 8.5 Mw devastated Concepción, Chile, and triggered a tsunami that destroyed neighbouring Talcahuano.

The Barber of Seville, an opera buffa composed by Gioachino Rossini, premiered at the Teatro Argentina in Rome to jeers from the audience.

The French colonization of Texas began with the landing of colonists led by Robert de La Salle near Matagorda Bay.