Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/February 12

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 * 1502 – Queen Isabella I issued an edict outlawing Islam in the Crown of Castile, forcing virtually all her Muslim subjects to convert to Christianity.
 * 1855 – The precursor of Michigan State University in East Lansing was founded as the United States' first agricultural college.
 * 1909 – The ferry SS Penguin struck a rock in Wellington Harbour and sank, killing 75 people in New Zealand's worst maritime disaster of the 20th century.
 * 1935 – The USS Macon (ZRS-5), one of the largest helium-filled airships ever created, crashed into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California and sank<--!(contemporary artist's rendering of the crash).-->
 * 1942 – The Imperial Japanese Army initiated the Battle of Pasir Panjang in Kent Ridge Park in Singapore.
 * 1945 – A devistating tornado outbreak across Mississippi and Alabama kills 45 people and injures 427 others.
 * 1946 – African-American U.S. Army veteran Isaac Woodard was severely beaten by a South Carolina police officer and lost sight in both eyes, an incident that galvanized the civil rights movement.
 * 1947 – The French fashion company Dior unveiled its New Look collection (suit pictured), which revolutionized women's dress and re-established Paris as the centre of the fashion world after World War II.
 * 1968 – Following the deaths of two employees on the job, black sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, began a strike that lasted more than two months.
 * 1988 – While claiming the right of innocent passage through Soviet territorial waters in the Black Sea, the American cruiser USS Yorktown and destroyer USS Caron were bumped by Soviet warships.
 * 1993 – Two-year-old James Bulger was led away from New Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle, England, and murdered by two 10-year-old boys, who became the youngest convicted murderers in modern English history.
 * 2001 – The NASA space probe NEAR Shoemaker touched down on Eros, becoming the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.
 * 2009 – Just before it was scheduled to land at Buffalo Niagara International Airport, Colgan Air Flight 3407 crashed into a house in Clarence Center, New York, killing the house's occupant and all 49 people on board the aircraft.
 * 2016 – In the first meeting between the leaders of the Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church, Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow signed the Havana Declaration at José Martí International Airport in Cuba.
 * Born/died this day: | Wulfhelm |d|941| Lord Guildford Dudley |d|1554| Jan Ladislav Dussek |b|1760| Norbert Provencher |b|1787| Bobby Peel |b|1857| Eugène Atget |b|1857| Will P. Brady |b|1876| Alice Roosevelt Longworth |b|1884| Judy Blume |b|1938| Jean Eyeghé Ndong |b|1946| Eubie Blake |d|1983|  Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat |d|2015

February 12: Red Hand Day; Shrove Monday (Western Christianity, 2024)


 * 1691 – A papal conclave convened to select a new pope after the death of Pope Alexander VIII.
 * 1924 – George Gershwin's composition Rhapsody in Blue premiered at Aeolian Hall in New York.
 * 1994 – Edvard Munch's painting The Scream (pictured) was stolen from the National Gallery of Norway.
 * 2003 – Protesters in La Paz and the Bolivian government brokered a deal to end two days of rioting against a proposed salary tax.