this day in history

On 3 March 1861, Alexander II freed twenty-three million Russian serfs. For his troubles, he was blown apart by a bomb twenty years later. The country he tried to modernise would soon tear itself to pieces.

On 2 March 1797, the Bank of England issued its first £1 and £2 banknotes — emergency paper to replace vanishing gold. The crisis measure became permanent. We still live with the consequences.

On 1 March 1692, three women were brought before magistrates in Salem Village, Massachusetts — the first act in a drama that would leave nineteen dead. The trials were small by European standards. The psychology behind them was not.

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.