Highlight in History:
On Feb. 26, 1993, a bomb built by Islamic extremists exploded in the parking garage of New York's World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000 others.
On this date:
- 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from the island of Elba to begin his second conquest of France.
- 1848, the Second French Republic was proclaimed.
- 1904, the U.S.-controlled, 10-mile-wide Canal Zone was created, as a treaty between the U.S. and Panama was declared in effect. (The territory ceased to exist when it reverted to Panama in 1979.)
- 1940, the U.S. Air Defense Command was created.
- 1952, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced that the U.K. had developed its own atomic bomb.
- 1987, the Tower Commission, which probed the Iran-Contra affair, issued its report, which rebuked President Ronald Reagan for failing to control his national-security staff.
- 1995, the U.K.'s 233-year-old Barings Bank collapsed in the wake of $1.4 billion in losses run up by Singapore-based futures trader Nick Leeson.
- 2002, Angelina, Desiree, Jasmine and Joshua Meola were delivered by Caesarean section at Hamot Medical Center, becoming the first set of quadruplets born in Erie County.
- 2003, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that RICO laws cannot be used against anti-abortion protesters solely for their using "sit-ins and demonstrations that obstruct public's access" to abortion clinics.
- 2004, Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski was killed in a plane crash in southern Bosnia-Herzegovina.