Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/February 26

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 * 1606 – Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon made the first recorded European landing in Australia, although he believed that he was on New Guinea.
 * 1815 – Napoleon escaped from the Italian island of Elba (depicted), to which he had been exiled after the signing of the Treaty of Fontainebleau.
 * 1917 – The Original Dixieland Jass Band recorded "Livery Stable Blues", the first jazz single ever released.
 * 1935 – Adolf Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe reinstated, violating the Treaty of Versailles signed at the end of World War I.
 * 1935 – With the aid of a radio station in Daventry, England, and two receiving antennae, Scottish engineer and inventor Robert Watson-Watt first demonstrated the use of radar.
 * 1936 – Imperial Japanese Army troops attempted a coup d'etat, occupying parts of Tokyo, and killing several politicians, including finance minister Takahashi Korekiyo.
 * 1995 – Barings Bank, the oldest merchant bank in London, was declared insolvent after its head derivatives trader in Singapore, Nick Leeson, lost £827 million while making unauthorised trades on futures contracts.
 * 2008 – In the first significant cultural visit from the United States to North Korea since the Korean War, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra performed in Pyongyang.
 * 2012 – African-American teenager Trayvon Martin was killed by neighborhood-watch coordinator George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida, prompting a nationwide controversy.
 * 2013 – A hot air balloon crashed near Luxor, Egypt, killing 19 people in the deadliest ballooning disaster in history.
 * Born/died this day: | John de Vere, 12th Earl of Oxford |d|1462| Lorenzino de' Medici |d|1548|  Thomas-Alexandre Dumas |d|1806| Camille Flammarion |b|1842|  Kenneth Edgeworth |b|1880| Reginald St John Battersby|b|1900| Howard Hanson |d|1981| Joseph Wapner |d|2017 |Raosaheb Gogte |d|2000|

February 26


 * 747 BC – According to Ptolemy, the reign of the Babylonian king Nabonassar (name in Akkadian pictured) began, marking a new era characterized by the systematic maintenance of chronologically precise historical records.
 * 1914 – RMS Britannic, the third and largest Olympic-class ocean liner of the White Star Line after RMS Olympic and RMS Titanic, was launched at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast.
 * 1979 – The Superliner railcar entered revenue service with Amtrak.
 * 2014 – Former editor-in-chief of Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao Kevin Lau was stabbed, prompting concerns and protests about media freedom.