history

On 28 February 2026, Israel and the United States launched strikes across Iran. Whether this marks the beginning of the end for the Islamic Republic — or another crisis it will survive — nobody yet knows.

On 28 February 1525, the last Aztec emperor Cuauhtémoc was hanged on the orders of Hernán Cortés. What began with 500 soldiers and thirteen horses remade an entire continent.

On 27 February 380, Theodosius I issued the Edict of Thessalonica and made Nicene Christianity the only legal religion of the Roman Empire. Christianity had joined a very exclusive club.

On 26 February 1815, Napoleon escaped Elba and walked back into power without firing a shot. The gamble lasted one hundred days and ended at Waterloo.

On 25 February 1836, Samuel Colt received US Patent No. 138 for a revolving-cylinder pistol. The revolver democratised killing and America has been living with the consequences ever since.

On 24 February 1525, Charles V turned twenty-five. His birthday present was the Battle of Pavia, a captured French king, and confirmation that his was the most powerful empire Europe had seen since Rome.

On 24 February 2022, Russian forces invaded Ukraine. Four years on, the war grinds on — hundreds of thousands dead, a continent reshaped, and a causal chain that traces back to a suitcase in Taiwan.

On 23 February 1455, a goldsmith's workshop in Mainz finished printing a Latin Bible using movable metal type. Every book, newspaper, and screen that followed owes something to that press.

On 22 February 1921, a Cossack officer named Reza Khan marched on Tehran and seized power. The dynasty he founded lasted fifty-four years. Its heir now calls for revolution from a suburb of Washington.

A boy tsar in 1613, a revolutionary pamphlet in 1848, a president's flight in 2014 — all on 21 February, all part of the same unfinished argument about Russia.