February 26 in History

The Beach Pneumatic Transit was an early technology demonstrator for underground public transit in New York City. Running on pneumatic power, it was built by Alfred Ely Beach between 1869 and early 1870. The original terminus resided in the basement of the Rogers Peet Building in Lower Manhattan, near the old City Hall station. A one-car shuttle carried riders between the building and a dead end approximately 300 feet (91 m) away. Despite ambitious plans to construct stations along a five-mile route to Central Park, the project never expanded beyond the short demonstration track and closed in 1873.

Kinemacolor was the first commercially successful colour motion picture process. Used commercially from 1909 to 1915, it was invented by George Albert Smith in 1906. It was a two-colour additive colour process, photographing a black-and-white film behind alternating red/orange and blue/green filters and projecting them through red and green filters. It was demonstrated several times in 1908 and first shown to the public in 1909. From 1909 on, the process was known and trademarked as Kinemacolor and was marketed by Charles Urban's Natural Color Kinematograph Company, which sold Kinemacolor licences around the world.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th president of the United States, serving from 1913 to 1921. He was the only Democrat to serve as president during the Progressive Era, when Republicans dominated the presidency and legislative branches. As president, Wilson made significant economic reforms and led the United States through World War I. He was the leading architect of the League of Nations, and his stance on foreign policy came to be known as Wilsonianism.

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Germany during the Nazi era from 1933 until his suicide in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor of Germany in 1933 and then taking the title of Führer und Reichskanzler in 1934. Germany's invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 under his leadership marked the outbreak of the Second World War. Throughout the ensuing conflict, Hitler was closely involved in the direction of German military operations and was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust, the genocide of about six million Jews and millions of other victims.

The February 26 incident , also known as the 2–26 incident, was an attempted coup d'état in the Empire of Japan on 26 February 1936. It was organized by a group of young Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) officers with the goal of purging the government and military leadership of their factional rivals and ideological opponents.

Charles Vincent Massey was a Canadian diplomat and statesman who served as the 18th governor general of Canada from 1952 to 1959. Massey was the first governor general of Canada to be born in Canada.

Kyiv, also Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both banks of the Dnieper River. As of January 2022, the population of Kyiv was 2,952,301, making it the seventh-most populous city in Europe. Kyiv is an important industrial, scientific, educational, and cultural center. It is home to high-tech industries, higher education institutions, and historical landmarks. The city has an extensive public transport system, which includes the Kyiv Metro.

The secretary-general of the United Nations is the chief administrator of the United Nations who oversees the United Nations Secretariat, one of the six principal organs of the United Nations, it also represents all 193 nations on the global stage.

Foreign relations between Egypt and Israel, which dated back to the 1948 Arab–Israeli War culminated in the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and was followed by the 1979 Egypt–Israel peace treaty a year after the Camp David Accords, mediated by U.S. president Jimmy Carter. Full diplomatic relations were established on January 26, 1980, and the formal exchange of ambassadors took place one month later, on February 26, 1980, with Eliyahu Ben-Elissar serving as the first Israeli Ambassador to Egypt, and Saad Mortada as the first Egyptian Ambassador to Israel. Egypt has an embassy in Tel Aviv and a consulate in Eilat. Israel has an embassy in Cairo and a consulate in Alexandria. Their shared border has two official crossings, one at Taba and one at Nitzana. The crossing at Nitzana is for commercial and tourist traffic only. The two countries' borders also meet at the shoreline of the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea.

The First Nagorno-Karabakh War was an ethnic and territorial conflict that took place from February 1988 to May 1994 in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in southwestern Azerbaijan between the majority ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh backed by Armenia, and the Republic of Azerbaijan with support from Turkey. As the war progressed, Armenia and Azerbaijan, both former Soviet republics, entangled themselves in protracted, undeclared mountain warfare in the mountainous heights of Karabakh as Azerbaijan attempted to curb the Karabakh Movement.

Barings Bank was a British merchant bank based in London. It was one of England's oldest merchant banks after Berenberg Bank, Barings' close collaborator and German representative. It was founded in 1762 by Francis Baring, a British-born member of the German–British Baring family of merchants and bankers.

The Burlington VIA train derailment was a derailment that occurred on February 26, 2012, in the Aldershot neighbourhood of Burlington, Ontario, Canada, resulting in deaths of the 3 engineers in the locomotive and 46 injuries. There were 75 passengers and four crew members on board at the time of the accident. The derailment occurred in an industrial area east of Aldershot GO Station. The official report into the accident was released on June 10, 2013, by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) indicating that the crew misinterpreted the signal causing them to believe that they were authorized to proceed at track speed, when in fact they were authorized only for slow speed—a maximum of 15 mph (24 km/h)—in order to switch tracks.

A hot air balloon is a lighter-than-air aircraft consisting of a bag, called an envelope, which contains heated air. Suspended beneath is a gondola or wicker basket, which carries passengers and a source of heat, in most cases an open flame caused by burning liquid propane. The heated air inside the envelope makes it buoyant, since it has a lower density than the colder air outside the envelope. As with all aircraft, hot air balloons cannot fly beyond the atmosphere. The envelope does not have to be sealed at the bottom, since the air inside the envelope is at about the same pressure as the surrounding air. In modern sport balloons the envelope is generally made from nylon fabric, and the inlet of the balloon is made from a fire-resistant material such as Nomex. Modern balloons have been made in many shapes, such as rocket ships and the shapes of various commercial products, though the traditional shape is used for most non-commercial and many commercial applications.

The Zamfara kidnapping was the abduction of 279 female students aged between 10 and 17 during a raid by armed bandits on 26 February 2021. The kidnapping occurred at the Government Girls Science Secondary School, a boarding school in Jangebe, in Zamfara State, Nigeria. All hostages were released by the bandits on 2 March 2021, though claims vary as to the negotiation methods used by the Nigerian government in order to facilitate their release.