History of the Day for:
February 12
- 1554: Lady Jane Grey, queen of England for 13 days, was beheaded with her husband, Lord Guildford Dudley. She was 17 years old.
- 1709: Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish seaman who inspired Daniel Defoe to write "Robinson Crusoe," was rescued from Fernandez Island after more than four years.
- 1733: The first colonists to Georgia, led by James Edward Oglethorpe, arrived in Georgia and founded Savannah, the state's first settlement.
- 1809: Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States, was born.
- 1809: Charles Darwin was born.
- 1825: The Creek Indian treaty was signed. Tribal chiefs agreed to turn over all their land in Georgia to the government and migrate west by Sept. 1, 1826.
- 1874: King David Kalakaua of the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) was the first king to visit the U.S.
- 1880: The National Croquet League was formed in Philadelphia.
- 1908: The famous New York-to-Paris auto race began.
- 1909: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded.
- 1912: Hsuan T'ung, the last Chinese emperor, abdicated.
- 1915: The cornerstone of the Lincoln Memorial was laid.
- 1924: President Calvin Coolidge made the first presidential speech on the radio.
- 1938: German troops entered Austria.
- 1944: Wendell Wilkie entered the race for president.
- 1946: World War II: Operation Deadlight ends after scuttling 121 of 154 captured U-boats.
- 1957: Researchers announced a material harder than diamonds called Borazan had been developed.
- 1961: U.S.S.R. launches Venera 1 towards Venus.
- 1966: Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, announced the Six Points in Karachi as the election manifesto of Awami League, that later led to formation of Bangladesh.
- 1973: Vietnam War: The first United States prisoners of war are released by the Viet Cong.
- 1990: Carmen Lawrence becomes the first female Premier in Australian History when she becomes premier of Western Australia.
- 1997: Hwang Jang-yop, secretary in the Workers' Party of Korea and a prime architect of North Korea's Juche doctrine, defects at the South Korean embassy in Beijing along with his aide, Kim Dok-hong.
- 1999: President Bill Clinton is acquitted by the United States Senate in his impeachment trial.
- 2000: The last Peanuts comic from Charles Schulz is published.
- 2001: NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft touchdown in the "saddle" region of 433 Eros becoming the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.
- 2002: The trial of former President of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Slobodan Miloševic begins at the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague. He dies four years later before its conclusion.
- 2002: US Secretary of Energy makes the decision that Yucca Mountain is suitable to be the site of the United States' nuclear waste repository.
- 2002: An Iran Air Tupolev Tu-154 crashes in the mountains outside Khorramabad, Iran while descending for a landing at Khorramabad Airport, killing 119.
- 2004: The city of San Francisco, California begins issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in response to a directive from Mayor Gavin Newsom.
- 2006: A powerful winter storm blankets the Northeastern United States dumping 1 to 2 feet of snow from Washington D.C. to Boston, Massachusetts. The storm dumps a record 26.9 inches of snow in New York City.
- 2007: A gunman opens fire in a mall in Salt Lake City, killing 5 people wounding 4 others in the Trolley Square shooting.
- 2009: Colgan Air Flight 3407 crashes near Buffalo in the state of New York killing 50 people.