Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/February 23

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 * 1739 – The identity of English highwayman Dick Turpin was uncovered by his former schoolmate, who recognised his handwriting, leading to Turpin's trial.
 * 1778 – American Revolutionary War: Prussian military officer Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben arrived at Valley Forge in Pennsylvania as a volunteer for the Continental Army.
 * 1847 – Mexican–American War: The United States Army used artillery to repulse the much larger Mexican army at the Battle of Buena Vista near Saltillo.
 * 1941 – Plutonium was first chemically identified by chemist Glenn T. Seaborg and his team at the University of California, Berkeley.
 * 1943 - 35 children and 1 adult employee were killed in a fire at an orphanage in the town of Cavan, Ireland.
 * 1945 – Second World War: An Allied bombing run on Pforzheim, Germany, killed approximately 31 percent of its population and destroyed about 83 percent of its buildings.
 * 1945 – American photographer Joe Rosenthal took the Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima during the Battle of Iwo Jima, an image that was later reproduced on the Marine Corps War Memorial.
 * 1971 – Vietnam War: South Vietnamese General Đỗ Cao Trí was killed in a helicopter crash en route to taking control of the faltering Operation Lam Son 719.
 * 2008 – A B-2 Spirit stealth bomber crashed on the runway shortly after takeoff from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam in the most expensive crash in U.S. Air Force history.
 * 2017 – Syrian civil war: Allied troops led by the Turkish Armed Forces captured the city of al-Bab from the Islamic State.
 * Born/died: Herbert II, Count of Vermandois |d|943| Pope Paul II |b|1417| Balthazar Gerbier |b|1592| Nicholas Fuller |d|1620| George Frideric Handel |b|1685| Richard Price |b|1723| George Taylor |d|1781| Edmund Evans |b|1826| César Ritz |b|1850| Zygmunt Krasiński |d|1859| Anna Hofman-Uddgren |b|1868| Johnny Carey |b|1919| Horst Wessel |d|1930| L. S. Lowry |d|1976| Mido |b|1983| Lotika Sarkar |d|2013| James Herriot |d|1995| Julien Ries |d|2013

February 23: The Emperor's Birthday in Japan (1960)


 * 1854 – The Orange River Convention was signed in Bloemfontein, with the United Kingdom agreeing to recognise the independence of the Orange Free State in present-day South Africa.
 * 1886 – American inventor Charles Martin Hall discovered an inexpensive method of producing aluminium (sample pictured).
 * 1944 – In response to an insurgency in Chechnya, the Soviet Union began the forced deportation of the native Chechen and Ingush of North Caucasus.
 * 1987 – SN 1987A, a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud, was observed from Earth.
 * 2021 – Caused by gang rivalries, riots in four Ecuadorian prisons resulted in the deaths of 79 inmates.