February 1, 1814 The most destructive occurs in the Philippines Mayon volcano eruption, which completely covered the city of Daraga, claiming over 1.200 victims
February 1, 1989 Due to a storm, the sinking of the Argentinean icebreaker research vessel ARA Bahia Paraiso (B-1) causes about 1.000 liters of fuel to be spilled into the Antarctic sea
February 1, 2003 During the return trip to the atmosphere after a 16-day scientific mission, the Space Shuttle Columbia it explodes in flight just over 60 kilometers above the state of Texas
February 1, 2004 A group of Russian scientists from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research of the University of Dubna and US scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Loboratory publishes in the scientific journal “Physical Review C” la synthesis of muscovium and nihonium, elements that enrich the periodic table
February 1, 1977 After a period of experimentation that lasted about a decade, RAI officially inaugurated its color broadcasts
2 February 1703 After the devastating quake of January 14, a new earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 6.7 occurs in L'Aquila which almost entirely razed the city to the ground causing over 6.000 victims and very serious damage to the artistic and architectural heritage
3 February 1966 The Soviet Luna 9 is the first Earth probe to make a soft landing on another celestial body, specifically our natural satellite, sending close-up images of the surrounding landscape
4 February 1169 Un violent earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.5 hits eastern Sicily, with its epicenter along the coast between Catania and Syracuse. The cities of Catania, Lentini, Modica and Piazza Armerina are razed to the ground, while Messina suffers the damage of the tsunami caused by the shock
4 February 1857 It is officially announced discovery of the oldest human remains ever found, which gave the name to the species: theNeanderthal man. They had been located in August 1856 by limestone excavators in a cave in the Neander Valley near Düsseldorf, Germany
4 February 1932 Belgian astronomer Eugène Joseph Delporte discovers theasteroid 1239 Queteleta
4 February 1934 German astronomer Karl Wilhelm Reinmuth discovers theasteroid 2824 Franke
4 February 1936 The radium E becomes the first radioactive element to be synthesized artificially
4 February 1983 Charles Dauguet performs the first microscope photograph of the HIV virus
5 February 62 An earthquake with a magnitude between V and VI on the Mercalli scale, described among others by Lucio Anneo Seneca, causes numerous damage to the cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae, on the slopes of Vesuvius
5 February 1783 The area of the Strait of Messina and southern Calabria is hit by the first strong shock (magnitude 5.9) of what will be remembered as a highly destructive seismic sequence for the South, with long-lasting political, economic and social repercussions
6 February 1971 Un 5.2 magnitude earthquake hits the city of Tuscania (VT). Also felt in Rome and southern Lazio, the earthquake causes damage and victims in the Viterbo area
7 February 1899 The Milan-Monza railway line is the first in Italy on which the regular service is implemented with electric self-propelled batteries
8 February 1856 French astronomer Jean Chacornac discovers theasteroid 39 Laetitia
8 February 1878 Austrian astronomer Johann Palisa discovers theasteroid 183 Istria
8 February 1889 French astronomer Auguste Honoré Charlois discovers theasteroid 283 Emma
8 February 1865 The biologist, mathematician and Augustinian monk Gregor Mendel presents his theory of inheritance for the first time, according to which in the passage from one generation to another of every species of living beings some characteristics are transmitted which influence the aesthetic aspect and the internal structure of the last born
9 February 1986 La Halley's Comet makes its last appearance within the Solar System. The next one will be in 2061
9 February 1996 In Darmstadt, Germany, a group of researchers led by Sigurd Hofmann Synthesizes Copernicium for the first time, chemical element with atomic number 112
11 February 2016 A team of scientists from the LIGO/VIRGO collaboration announces the first definite detection of gravitational waves
12 February 1854 a strong 6.2 magnitude earthquake affects the area of the current province of Cosenza, causing damage throughout central Calabria
13 February 2004 A team of researchers from Harvard University estimates that the collapsed core of BPM 37093, a white dwarf star in the constellation Centaurus, 50 light-years away from Earth, may contain a diamond with an approximate diameter of 4.000 km, or carbon subjected to enormous pressure. For this reason the star was jokingly nicknamed Lucy, from the song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" by The Beatles
13 February 2012 ESA, the European Space Agency, carries out the first launch of VEGA, the operational vector for launching small satellites into orbit developed in collaboration with ASI, the Italian Space Agency
14 February 1961 In the laboratories of the University of California, Berkeley, it comes first synthesized Laurentius, chemical element with atomic number 103
15 February 2013 Una meteor about 15 meters in diameter hits the atmosphere Earth at about 44 times the speed of sound, disintegrating in the skies above the city of Chelyabinsk, south of Russia's Ural Mountains, causing an explosion of energy equal to about 500 kilotons
16 February 1937 US chemist Wallace Carothers gets the patent for nylon, a synthetic fiber used as a textile fiber and to produce small objects. The recognition comes two years after first synthesizing the fiber in a laboratory of the American chemical company DuPont
16 February 2005 In Italy The Kyoto Protocol enters into force, an international treaty aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere
17 February 1932 The English physicist James Chadwick experimentally establishes theexistence of the neutron, a neutral heavy particle whose presence in the atomic nucleus had been hypothesized as early as the XNUMXs
18 February 1925 The entrepreneur Giovanni Treccani and the philosopher Giovanni Gentile they found the Treccani Institute in Rome, a national publishing house known for having published, starting from 1929, the first edition and the following seven appendices of the Italian Encyclopaedia of Sciences, Letters and Arts, more commonly known as "La Treccani"
18 February 1930 American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovers the dwarf planet Pluto, for years considered the ninth planet of the Solar System
18 February 2021 The NASA rover Perseverance, launched on July 30, 2020 from the US base at Cape Canaveral, successfully lands on Mars starting the exploratory phase of the Mars 2020 mission, developed with the aim of identifying traces of possible biological life on the red planet
19 February 1878 US inventor Thomas Edison obtains patent forinvention of the phonograph, a device designed to be able to record and reproduce sound
19 February 2002 Space probe 2001 Mars Odyssey of NASA, orbiting Mars since 2001, start the mission of mapping the planet (the operation will end in August 2004)
20 February 1835 Un 8.5 magnitude earthquake hits Concepción, in Chile, causing the destruction of almost all the building heritage of the city and a tsunami that affects a large area with waves between 7 and 24 meters high
20 February 1943 In the state of Michoacán, Mexico, the first eruption takes place which will lead to the formation of the Paricutín volcano, the 'youngest' volcano in the world
20 February 1996 The Japanese astronomer Yukio Sakurai announces the discovery, in the constellation of Sagittarius, of a variable star (whose apparent brightness changes over time) renamed Sakurai's object
21 February 1918 Dies in captivity in the Cincinnati Zoo, Ohio, the last specimen of Carolina parakeet, the only parrot species in North America, now extinct
21 February 1953 James Watson and Francis Crick publish in the scientific journal "Nature" an article announcing the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA
21 February 2020 It is registered in Codogno, in the province of Lodi, the first infection with COVID-19 in Italy
22 February 1978 It is launched into orbit Navstar 1, the first of the original 24 GPS satellites developed and funded by the US Department of Defense
22 February 1931 In Castellammare di Stabia (NA) the Amerigo Vespucci is launched, the sailing ship of the Italian Navy still in service and used for the training of the students of the Naval Academy of Livorno
22 February 1997 Scientists from Scotland's Roslin Institute announce the birth, which took place in the previous month of July, of Dolly the sheep, the first sheep as well as the first mammal to have been successfully cloned from a somatic cell of an adult individual
23 February 1886 The American chemist Charles Martin Hall, independently and simultaneously with the French scientist Paul Héroult, develops the Hall-Héroult process: this is the only industrial process used for the production of aluminum not deriving from waste recycling
23 February 1887 Un 6.5 magnitude earthquake hits Diano Marina, in the province of Imperia, seriously damaging the Ligurian province and part of south-eastern France
23 February 1892 In Berlin, the German engineer Rudolf Diesel deposits the patent for the diesel enginewhich bears his name
23 February 1987 In the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, the Supernova 1987A is visible from Earth
24 February 1939 During the works at the Circeo, in a cave owned by the Guattari family, a skull attributed to Neanderthal man
26 February 1606 The Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon sighted and drew the things of the Cape York Peninsula for the first time, in the current Australian state of Queensland: the event is remembered as the discovery of Australia
26 February 1991 The British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee releases WorldWideWeb, the first web browser and editor ever made
27 February 1700 English explorer William Dampier is the first European to visit the island of New Britain, in the Pacific Ocean, giving it the Latin name of Nova Britain. Today it is the largest island in the Bismark Archipelago, belonging to Papua New Guinea.
27 February 1940 At the University of California, Berkeley, Martin Kamen and Sam Ruben discover carbon-14, a radioactive isotope of carbon, the existence of which had been hypothesized six years earlier
February 29, 45 BC After the reorganization imposed by Julius Caesar, with the help of experts and mathematicians, to the chaotic situation of the Roman calendar, the "debut" first leap year of the Julian calendar
29 February 1968 British astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell, under the direction of her thesis advisor Antony Hewish, observes the first pulsar, an ultra-compact rotating star that emits radiation at regular intervals as if it were a celestial beacon