This Day in History

Feb 26, 2023 News

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February 26, 1815

Napoleon’s escape from Elba

Forced to abdicate as French emperor in 1814, Napoleon escaped from exile on the island of Elba this day in 1815 and, gathering support en route, retook power on his return to Paris on March 20, ushering in the Hundred Days.

February 26, 2012

Florida teen Trayvon Martin is shot and killed

On February 26, 2012, Trayvon Martin, an African American teen walking home from a trip to a convenience store, is fatally shot by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer patrolling the townhouse community of the Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman later claimed to have shot the unarmed 17-year-old out of self-defense during a physical altercation.

After police initially opted not to arrest Zimmerman, whose father is white and mother is Hispanic, the case sparked protests and ignited national debates about racial profiling and self-defense laws.

Zimmerman later was charged with second-degree murder. Following a high-profile trial that riveted America, he was acquitted of the charges against him. The term “Black lives matter” was then used for the first time by organizer Alicia Garza in a July 13, 2013 Facebook post in response to Zimmerman’s acquittal. The phrase spread widely and became a rallying cry against racial injustice.

February 26, 1993

World Trade Centre is Bombed

At 12:18 p.m., a terrorist bomb explodes in a parking garage of the World Trade Center in New York City, leaving a massive, multi-story crater and causing the collapse of several steel-reinforced concrete floors in the vicinity of the blast.

Although the terrorist bomb failed to critically damage the main structure of the skyscrapers, six people were killed and more than 1,000 were injured. The World Trade Center itself suffered more than $500 million in damage. After the attack, authorities evacuated 50,000 people from the buildings, hundreds of whom were suffering from smoke inhalation. The evacuation lasted the whole afternoon.

City authorities and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) undertook a massive manhunt for suspects, and within days several radical Islamic fundamentalists were arrested. In March 1994, Mohammed Salameh, Ahmad Ajaj, Nidal Ayyad, and Mahmoud Abouhalima were convicted by a federal jury for their role in the bombing, and each was sentenced to life in prison. Salameh, a Palestinian, was arrested when he went to retrieve the $400 deposit he had left for the Ryder rental van used in the attack. Ajaj and Ayyad, who both played a role in the construction of the bomb, were arrested soon after. Abouhalima, who helped buy and mix the explosives, fled to Saudi Arabia but was caught in Egypt two weeks later.

The mastermind of the attack—Ramzi Ahmed Yousef—remained at large until February 1995, when he was arrested in Pakistan. He had previously been in the Philippines, and in a computer he left there were found terrorist plans that included a plot to kill Pope John Paul II and a plan to bomb 15 American airliners in 48 hours. On the flight back to the United States, Yousef reportedly admitted to a Secret Service agent that he had directed the Trade Center attack from the beginning and even claimed to have set the fuse that exploded the 1,200-pound bomb. His only regret, the agent quoted Yousef saying, was that the 110-story tower did not collapse into its twin as planned—a catastrophe that would have caused thousands of deaths.

February 26, 1935

Hitler authorizes the founding of the Reich Luftwaffe

On February 26, 1935, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler signs a secret decree authorizing the founding of the Reich Luftwaffe as a third German military service to join the Reich army and navy. In the same decree, Hitler appointed Hermann Goering, a German air hero from World War I and high-ranking Nazi, as commander in chief of the new German air force.

The Versailles Treaty that ended World War I prohibited military aviation in Germany, but a German civilian airline—Lufthansa—was founded in 1926 and provided flight training for the men who would later become Luftwaffe pilots. After coming to power in 1933, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler began to secretly develop a state-of-the-art military air force and appointed Goering as German air minister. (During World War I, Goering commanded the celebrated air squadron in which the great German ace Manfred von Richthofen–“The Red Baron”–served.) In February 1935, Hitler formally organized the Luftwaffe as a major step in his program of German rearmament.

The Luftwaffe was to be un-camouflaged step-by-step so as not to alarm foreign governments, and the size and composition of Luftwaffe units were to remain secret as before. However, in March 1935, Britain announced it was strengthening its Royal Air Force (RAF), and Hitler, not to be outdone, revealed his Luftwaffe, which was rapidly growing into a formidable air force.

February 26, 1935

British physicist Sir Robert Watson-Watt first demonstrated the uses of radar technology

British physicist James Clerk Maxwell developed equations governing the behaviour of electromagnetic waves in 1864. Inherent in Maxwell’s equations are the laws of radio-wave reflection, and these principles were first demonstrated in 1886 in experiments by the German physicist Heinrich Hertz. Some years later a German engineer Christian Hulsmeyer proposed the use of radio echoes in a detecting device designed to avoid collisions in marine navigation. The first successful radio range-finding experiment occurred in 1924, when the British physicist Sir Edward Victor Appleton used radio echoes to determine the height of the ionosphere, an ionized layer of the upper atmosphere that reflects longer radio waves.

The first practical radar system was produced in 1935 by the British physicist Sir Robert Watson-Watt, and by 1939 England had established a chain of radar stations along its south and east coasts to detect aggressors in the air or on the sea.

In 1935 Watson-Watt wrote a paper entitled “The Detection of Aircraft by Radio Methods”. This was presented to Henry Tizard, the chairman of the Committee for the Scientific Survey of Air Defence. Tizard was impressed with the idea and on 26th February 1935, Watson-Watt demonstrated his ideas at Daventry. His idea was based on the bouncing of a radio wave against an object and measuring its travel to provide targeting information. It was called radar (radio detection and ranging). As a result, he was appointed head of the Bawdsey Research Station in Felixstowe.

By the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, Watson-Watt had designed and installed a chain of radar stations along the East and South coast of England. In the same year two British scientists were responsible for the most important advance made in the technology of radar during World War II.

Radar was also used by ships and aircraft during the war. Germany was using radar by 1940 but Japan never used it effectively. The United States had a good radar system and it was able to predict the attack on Pearl Harbor an hour before it happened.

Britain tended to have the best radar system during the early stages of the war and in 1940 the invention of the Magnetron cavity resonator enabled more centimetric waves to be transmitted. It also enabled more compact high-frequency sets to be used by aircraft in the Royal Air Force.

 

 

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