History of the Day for:
February 22
- 1732: George Washington, the first president of the United States, was born at his parents' plantation in the Virginia Colony.
- 1856: The first national meeting of the Republican Party took place in Pittsburgh.
- 1860: The first organized baseball game was played in San Francisco.
- 1876: Johns Hopkins University opened.
- 1879: Frank Winfield Woolworth opened a 5-cent and 10-cent store in Utica, N.Y.
- 1889: President Cleveland signed a bill to admit the Dakotas, Montana and Washington state to the Union.
- 1900: Hawaii became a U.S. territory.
- 1934: Frank Capra's romantic comedy "It Happened One Night," starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, opened at New York's Radio City Music Hall.
- 1942: World War II: President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders General Douglas MacArthur out of the Philippines as American defenses collapses.
- 1943: World War II: Members of White Rose are executed in Nazi Germany.
- 1944: World War II: American aircraft bombard the Dutch towns of Nijmegen, Arnhem, Enschede and Deventer by mistake, resulting in 800 dead in Nijmegen alone.
- 1948: Communist coup in Czechoslovakia.
- 1956: Elvis Presley logged his first hit in Billboard's top 10: "Heartbreak Hotel."
- 1958: Egypt and Syria join to form the United Arab Republic.
- 1959: The first Daytona 500 Auto Race on the new International Speedway at Daytona Beach was held. Lee Petty won it with an average speed of 135.521 mph.
- 1967: The "sling-shot" goal post and a six-foot-wide border around the field were standardized in the NFL.
- 1980: In a stunning upset, the United States Olympic hockey team defeated the Soviets at Lake Placid, N.Y., 4-3. The U.S. team went on to win the gold medal by downing Finland.
- 1984: A 12-year-old Houston boy known publicly only as "David," who'd spent most his life in a plastic bubble because he had no immunity to disease, died 15 days after being removed from the bubble for a bone-marrow transplant.
- 1986: Start of the People Power Revolution in the Philippines.
- 1994: Aldrich Ames and his wife are charged by the United States Department of Justice with spying for the Soviet Union.
- 1995: The Corona reconnaissance satellite program, in existence from 1959 to 1972, is declassified.
- 1997: In Roslin, Scotland, scientists announce that an adult sheep named Dolly had been successfully cloned.
- 2002: Angolan political and rebel leader Jonas Savimbi is killed in a military ambush.
- 2006: At least six men stage Britain's biggest robbery ever, stealing £53m (about $92.5 million or 78€ million) from a Securitas depot in Tonbridge, Kent.