Explore 12 February

Explore 12 February: China’s last emperor gives up the throne, Pedro de Valdivia founds Santiago, San Martín’s army wins Chile’s freedom at Chacabuco and the Soviet Union arrests Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Meet Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln, both born on 12 February 1809.

This day through time →11 verified events across 4 eras

⌛11Full
Timeline ◈4Historic
Moments ♙7Born
Today ✦6Lives
Remembered ◉2Firsts &
Discoveries ☆1Sporting
Moments ♫1Culture
Stories

Puyi, the Xuantong Emperor, as a small child, in a Bain News Service photograph (Library of Congress).

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Bain News Service, publisher · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

1912

China’s last emperor gives up the throne

Puyi was not yet three when he became emperor of China in 1908, and the Qing dynasty that had ruled since 1644 was already weakened by foreign wars, rebellion and failed reforms. In October 1911 an army mutiny at Wuchang set off a revolution, and province after province declared against the Qing.

The court turned to the general Yuan Shikai, who negotiated with the revolutionaries instead of crushing them. On 12 February 1912 an edict issued in the six-year-old emperor’s name gave up the throne and handed sovereignty to the people. More than two thousand years of imperial rule in China ended, and Yuan became president of the new Republic of China. Puyi was allowed to go on living in the Forbidden City until 1924.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Puyi ↗

Pedro de Valdivia in armour, a portrait of 1854 given by Queen Isabella II of Spain to the city of Santiago.

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Federico de Madrazo y Kuntz · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

1541

Pedro de Valdivia founds Santiago

The Spanish conquistador Pedro de Valdivia, a veteran of the conquest of Peru, set out south in 1540 with a small band of Spaniards and many Indigenous auxiliaries, crossing the Atacama Desert to reach the fertile central valley of Chile.

On 12 February 1541 he founded the city of Santiago del Nuevo Extremo beside the Mapocho River, at the foot of the hill the local people called Huelén, now Santa Lucía. It was laid out on a grid of square blocks around a main square. Within months a Mapuche-led attack burned much of the new town, but it was rebuilt and became the base for the Spanish conquest of Chile, and today it is the country’s capital.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Memoria Chilena, National Library of Chile: the founding of Santiago ↗

The Chilean and Argentine army on its way to the Battle of Chacabuco, led by José de San Martín, painted by Pedro Subercaseaux in 1908.

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Pedro Subercaseaux · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

1817

San Martín’s army crosses the Andes and wins at Chacabuco

In 1814 Spanish royalist forces had crushed Chile’s first bid for independence. Across the Andes in Mendoza, the Argentine general José de San Martín trained an Army of the Andes, joined by Chilean exiles under Bernardo O’Higgins.

In January 1817 about 5,000 men crossed the mountains by high passes in a gruelling march of three weeks. On 12 February they met the royalists at Chacabuco, north of Santiago. O’Higgins’s troops were driven back at first, but a cavalry charge ordered by San Martín broke the Spanish line. The patriots entered Santiago days later, O’Higgins became Chile’s supreme director, and a year later, on 12 February 1818, Chile formally declared its independence.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Battle of Chacabuco ↗

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn at Heinrich Böll’s house in West Germany, days after his expulsion, February 1974.

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Bert Verhoeff for Anefo · CC0Resized and cropped for display.

1974

The Soviet Union arrests Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn spent eight years in Soviet labour camps for criticising Stalin in a private letter. His short novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, published in 1962, was the first open account of the camps, and he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970, but his later books could only be published abroad.

In December 1973 the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago, his history of the Soviet camp system, appeared in Paris. On 12 February 1974 he was arrested at his Moscow flat and charged with treason, and the next day he was stripped of his citizenship and put on a plane to West Germany. He lived in exile, mostly in the United States, until he returned to Russia in 1994.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Center: timeline ↗

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PEOPLE

Born Today

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Friedrich von Amerling · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

Born 1768

Francis II

Last Holy Roman Emperor, who became Francis I, the first emperor of Austria.

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Charles_Darwin_seated.jpg: Henry Maull (1829–1914) and John Fox (1832–1907) (Maull & Fox) [3] derivative work: Beao · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

Born 1809

Charles Darwin

English naturalist whose On the Origin of Species set out the theory of evolution by natural selection.

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Alexander Gardner · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

Born 1809

Abraham Lincoln

Sixteenth president of the United States, who led the Union through the Civil War and ended slavery.

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United States Army · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

Born 1893

Omar Bradley

American general who commanded US ground forces in Normandy in 1944.

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Unknown authorUnknown author · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

Born 1934

Bill Russell

American basketball player who won eleven NBA titles with the Boston Celtics.

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Yaakov Saar · CC BY-SA 3.0Resized and cropped for display.

Born 1942

Ehud Barak

Israeli general and prime minister from 1999 to 2001.

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Kevin Paul · CC BY 4.0Resized and cropped for display.

Born 1980

Christina Ricci

American actress of The Addams Family and Wednesday.

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IDEAS THAT CHANGED THINGS

Firsts, Science & Discoveries

The asteroid Eros, photographed by NEAR Shoemaker from orbit.

Image credit

NASA/NEAR Project (JHU/APL). · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

2001

A spacecraft lands on an asteroid for the first time

NASA’s NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft, built by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, went into orbit around the asteroid Eros in February 2000 and spent a year mapping it. Eros is about 33 kilometres long and shaped something like a peanut.

The craft was never designed to land, but at the end of its mission controllers steered it down to the surface. On 12 February 2001 it touched down gently, sending back close-up pictures during its descent, and to everyone’s surprise it kept working on the surface for about two more weeks. It was the first spacecraft ever to land on an asteroid.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: NASA Science: NEAR Shoemaker ↗

A Soviet stamp of 1961 marking the launch of the Venus probe on 12 February 1961, showing the craft and its path from Earth to Venus.

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Post of the Soviet Union. · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

1961

The Soviet Union launches the first probe towards Venus

On 12 February 1961 the Soviet Union launched Venera 1 from Baikonur. It became the first spacecraft sent on a course to another planet.

Seven days later, about two million kilometres from Earth, contact was lost, probably because of a failure in the craft’s systems. Venera 1 is thought to have passed Venus at a distance of about 100,000 kilometres without sending back any data. The Soviet Venera programme went on to land the first probes on Venus in the 1970s.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive: Venera 1 ↗

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SPORTING HISTORY

Sporting Moments

The Lysgårdsbakken ski jumps at Lillehammer, where the opening ceremony was held, in summer 2007.

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Gorik Francois from Zoutleeuw, Belgium · CC BY-SA 2.0Resized and cropped for display.

1994

The Winter Olympics open in Lillehammer

The small Norwegian town of Lillehammer was chosen to host the Winter Olympics of 1994, the first to be held two years after the Summer Games instead of in the same year.

On 12 February 1994 King Harald V declared the Games open at the foot of the Lysgårdsbakken ski jumps, in a ceremony that mixed Norwegian folklore with modern staging. Crowds of Norwegians lined the cross-country trails, and the Games were widely praised for their friendly atmosphere and their care for the environment.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Olympics.com: Lillehammer 1994 ↗

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MUSIC • FILM • BOOKS • CULTURE

Culture Stories

George Gershwin, photographed in 1937 (Library of Congress).

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Carl Van Vechten · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

1924

George Gershwin plays Rhapsody in Blue for the first time

The bandleader Paul Whiteman planned a concert in New York to show that jazz belonged in the concert hall, and he asked the 25-year-old George Gershwin for a new piece. Gershwin wrote it in a few weeks, and Whiteman’s arranger Ferde Grofé orchestrated it.

On the afternoon of 12 February 1924, at a concert billed as ‘An Experiment in Modern Music’ in the Aeolian Hall, Gershwin played the piano part himself, partly improvising. The work opens with a famous rising clarinet glissando, and its blend of jazz and classical music made it one of the best-known American compositions of the century.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Library of Congress, Songs of America: Rhapsody in Blue ↗

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LIVES REMEMBERED