What happened on 12 February?

5 events from the Ever-When timeline, ranked by how much they mattered.

1. 1809 Born: Charles Darwin Naturalist whose theory of evolution by natural selection reshaped biology.
2. 1809 Born: Abraham Lincoln 16th US president; led the Union through the Civil War; abolished slavery, then was assassinated.
3. 1924 Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue Jazz-symphonic fusion that fused European concert tradition with American popular idioms.
4. 1912 Abdication of Puyi The boy emperor Puyi abdicates, ending over two millennia of imperial rule in China.
5. 1909 NAACP founded Black and white activists including W. E. B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in response to the Springfield race riot