TITLE: Seven Days That Shook February 15
February 15 has witnessed explosions both man-made and cosmic, the birth of the computer age, history's largest peace march, and the dramatic end of a superpower's war. Here are seven events that make this date one of the most remarkable on the calendar.
1. 1898 - The USS Maine Explodes in Havana Harbor
On the evening of February 15, 1898, the American battleship USS Maine was resting at anchor in Havana harbor when a massive explosion ripped through its forward hull. The blast killed 266 of the ship's 354 crew members and sent the vessel to the bottom of the harbor in minutes. The Maine had been dispatched to Cuba to protect American interests during Cuba's struggle for independence from Spain. Though the true cause of the explosion remains debated to this day — theories range from an external mine to a coal bunker fire igniting the adjacent magazine — American newspapers had no such uncertainty. William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer's New York World whipped the public into a fury with sensational coverage, and "Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain!" became the war cry of a nation. Within two months, the United States declared war on Spain. The brief but consequential Spanish-American War that followed ended Spain's colonial empire in the Americas and the Pacific, and established the United States as a global power with new territories including Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.
2. 1933 - An Assassin's Bullet Misses FDR
On February 15, 1933, President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt had just finished giving an impromptu speech from the back of his open touring car at Miami's Bayfront Park when Giuseppe Zangara, an unemployed Italian-born bricklayer, opened fire from the crowd. Standing on a wobbly metal folding chair to see over the crowd, Zangara fired five shots at Roosevelt from about 25 feet away. Remarkably, none of the bullets struck their intended target. A woman standing nearby grabbed Zangara's arm, and the shots went wide. But the bullets found other victims — five people were hit, including Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak, who had been shaking Roosevelt's hand. Cermak reportedly told FDR, "I'm glad it was me instead of you," though historians debate whether those exact words were spoken. Cermak died of his wounds on March 6. Had Zangara's aim been true, American history would have been profoundly different. Roosevelt went on to lead the nation through the Great Depression and World War II, serving an unprecedented four terms. Zangara was tried, convicted, and executed in Florida's electric chair just five weeks after Cermak's death — one of the fastest progressions from crime to execution in American judicial history.
3. 1942 - The Fall of Singapore
February 15, 1942, marked what Winston Churchill called "the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history." After just one week of fighting on the island itself, British Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival surrendered Singapore and its garrison of approximately 80,000 Indian, British, and Australian troops to a Japanese force roughly half that size, commanded by General Tomoyuki Yamashita. The fall of Singapore shattered the myth of European invincibility in Asia. The so-called "Gibraltar of the East," a fortress that the British Empire had spent decades and millions of pounds fortifying, had been designed to repel a naval attack — but the Japanese came overland, cycling down the Malay Peninsula in a lightning 70-day campaign that caught the defenders completely off guard. The consequences were catastrophic. Tens of thousands of Allied prisoners of war endured brutal captivity; many were forced to build the infamous Burma Railway, where thousands perished. The fall of Singapore accelerated the end of the British Empire in Asia and fundamentally reshaped the postwar political landscape of Southeast Asia, fueling independence movements that would dismantle European colonialism across the region.
4. 1946 - ENIAC: The Giant Brain Is Switched On
On February 15, 1946, the University of Pennsylvania formally dedicated ENIAC — the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer — the world's first general-purpose electronic digital computer. Major General Gladeon Barnes pressed the button that activated the machine before an audience of military officials, scientists, and press who had dubbed it the "Giant Brain." ENIAC was a marvel of engineering excess. It contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, and 6,000 switches, weighed 30 tons, and occupied a room 50 feet long and 30 feet wide. It consumed 150 kilowatts of power — enough, according to legend, to dim the lights in an entire section of Philadelphia when it was running. Despite these demands, it could perform 5,000 additions per second, a speed that left all previous calculating machines in the dust. One of the most sobering footnotes of the dedication is who was absent. The six women who had programmed ENIAC — Kay McNulty, Betty Jennings, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Meltzer, Fran Bilas, and Ruth Lichterman — were not invited to the formal ceremony or the celebratory dinner. Their contributions went largely unrecognized for decades. Today, they are celebrated as pioneers of computer programming, and ENIAC Day is observed annually at the University of Pennsylvania.
5. 1989 - The Last Soviet Soldier Leaves Afghanistan
On February 15, 1989, General Boris Gromov, commander of the Soviet 40th Army, walked across the Friendship Bridge spanning the Amu Darya River from Afghanistan into the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. He was the last Soviet soldier to leave Afghan soil, ending a nine-year military occupation that had cost over 15,000 Soviet lives and an estimated one million Afghan civilian deaths. The Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Eve 1979 to prop up a failing communist government, expecting a quick stabilization. Instead, they found themselves mired in a guerrilla war against mujahideen fighters who were supplied with American Stinger missiles and funded by the CIA, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. The conflict became the Soviet Union's Vietnam — a quagmire that drained resources, demoralized the military, and eroded public faith in the government. The withdrawal, completed one month ahead of schedule under the Geneva Accords of 1988, was a defining moment of the Cold War's endgame. Within three years, the Soviet Union itself would cease to exist. Afghanistan, meanwhile, descended into civil war, eventually leading to the rise of the Taliban. The echoes of February 15, 1989, reverberated all the way to the American withdrawal from the same country in August 2021.
6. 2003 - The World Says No to War
February 15, 2003, saw the largest coordinated protest in human history. Across more than 600 cities on every inhabited continent, an estimated 6 to 30 million people marched against the impending U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. From London to Sydney, Rome to New York, Baghdad to Buenos Aires, the message was unified: give peace a chance. Rome's demonstration alone drew an estimated three million people, earning it a Guinness World Record as the largest anti-war rally ever. In London, over a million marchers filled the streets — the largest protest in British history. In New York, hundreds of thousands gathered despite being denied a march permit and having to rally in place in freezing temperatures. Even in Antarctica, a small group of researchers held signs at McMurdo Station. The protests ultimately failed to prevent the invasion, which began on March 20, 2003. But they represented something unprecedented: a global citizenry mobilizing in real time against a war before it had even started. The New York Times described the demonstrations as revealing "two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion." The day remains a landmark in the history of mass protest and a powerful reminder of both the potential and the limitations of popular dissent.
7. 2013 - A Meteor Strikes Russia
At 9:20 AM local time on February 15, 2013, a brilliant fireball streaked across the sky above Chelyabinsk, Russia, turning night-bright for a few seconds before exploding with a force estimated at 30 times the Hiroshima atomic bomb. The 20-meter asteroid had entered Earth's atmosphere at roughly 40,000 miles per hour and detonated at an altitude of about 14 miles — close enough to devastate the city below. The shockwave that followed shattered windows across six cities, damaged over 7,200 buildings, and injured nearly 1,500 people, most from flying glass. Dashcam footage captured by Russian drivers — a common feature in Russian vehicles for insurance purposes — provided the world with stunning, real-time video of the event. The largest recovered fragment, weighing 654 kilograms, was later pulled from the bottom of Lake Chebarkul. The Chelyabinsk event was the largest natural object to enter Earth's atmosphere since the 1908 Tunguska event in Siberia, and it served as a dramatic wake-up call for planetary defense. Remarkably, it occurred on the very same day that asteroid 2012 DA14 made a close flyby of Earth — a coincidence that underscored how vulnerable our planet remains to impacts from space. NASA and other agencies have since accelerated efforts to detect and track near-Earth objects, a mission that owes much of its urgency to one explosive morning over Russia. February 15 reminds us that history is not a distant abstraction — it is the accumulation of single days when the world shifted beneath people's feet. From harbors and battlefields to laboratories and city streets, the events of this date connect us across centuries. They remind us that explosions can start wars or advance science, that courage can come from a crowd of millions or a single person standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that the sky itself can deliver a humbling reminder of our place in the cosmos. Every February 15 carries the weight of all the ones that came before it.