What happened on 20 February?

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

1. 1874 Benjamin Disraeli's second premiership Disraeli buys the Suez Canal shares, makes Victoria Empress of India and defines Tory imperialism.
2. 1844 Born: Ludwig Boltzmann Austrian physicist; founder of statistical mechanics.
3. 1816 Rossini's The Barber of Seville Italian opera buffa in two acts; among the most popular comic operas ever written; based on Beaumarchais's play.
4. 1905 Battle of Mukden Largest land battle of the Russo-Japanese War; Japanese decisively defeat Russians; ~600,000 troops engaged.
5. 1843 Kierkegaard's Either/Or Two-volume work contrasting the aesthetic and ethical modes of life; widely read as the opening salvo of existentialist philosophy.
6. 1947 Attlee sets a deadline for leaving India Britain announces it will transfer power 'by a date not later than June 1948' and sends Mountbatten to do it — an exhausted, near-bankrupt empire fixing its own exit before knowing
7. 1986 Mir space station Fifteen years of continuous Soviet then Russian presence in orbit — fires, collisions, record-breaking stays, and post-Cold-War crews of every flag — before a controlled Pacific gr
8. 1962 John Glenn orbits the Earth Friendship 7 carries the first American around the world three times; Glenn returns a national hero — and flies again at 77 aboard the shuttle.
9. 1959 Avro Arrow cancelled Canada scraps its world-class supersonic interceptor on 'Black Friday' and cuts up the prototypes; 14,000 jobs go, many engineers to NASA — the great Canadian what-if.
10. 1858 Lord Derby's second premiership A minority Conservative ministry that transfers India to the Crown and admits Jews to parliament.