Daily List

Today in History, February 29th

On February 29, 1504, a stranded Columbus used a predicted lunar eclipse in Jamaica. Plus Hattie McDaniel's Oscar and the Kerner report.

By Grant Oster February 29, 2024 3 min read Sources checked

Published February 29, 2024

February 29, the leap day, is best known for the night in 1504 when a stranded Christopher Columbus used a predicted lunar eclipse to win back help from the people of Jamaica. Leap days also brought Hattie McDaniel’s history-making Oscar in 1940 and the Kerner Commission report in 1968.

The big story: Columbus and the Vanishing Moon (1504)

Columbus’s fourth voyage to the Americas did not go to plan. His ships were leaking so badly after failed repairs that in June 1503 he ran them aground on Jamaica, and he and his crew were stuck there for about a year. At first the island’s Taíno people were willing to deal with the strangers, but as the months dragged on, tensions grew until an attack seemed likely. Columbus had a trick in his cabin: astronomical tables that listed coming eclipses. He told the island’s leaders that God was angry with them and would take away the moon as a sign. On the evening of February 29, 1504, right on schedule, the moon went dark in a lunar eclipse. Frightened onlookers begged for mercy. Columbus retreated to his ship, then came back to announce that God had agreed to give them a second chance. A rescue ship finally arrived that June, and Columbus never sailed to the Americas again.

More events on February 29

Year	What happened
1692	In Salem Village, Massachusetts, warrants were issued for Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne and Tituba, the first people accused in the Salem witch trials (Old Style).
1704	French and Native American forces attacked and burned the frontier town of Deerfield, Massachusetts, during Queen Anne’s War, killing dozens of residents (Old Style).
1916	The British armed merchant ship Alcantara and the German raider Greif, which had been sailing under a Norwegian flag, fought a close-range battle in the North Sea that left both ships sunk.
1940	Hattie McDaniel won best supporting actress for Gone with the Wind, the first African American to win an Academy Award.
1960	A moderate earthquake leveled much of Agadir, Morocco, killing at least 12,000 people.
1968	The Kerner Commission released its report on the urban riots of the 1960s, blaming white racism and warning that the country was drifting toward separate and unequal Black and white societies.
1980	Gordie Howe of the Hartford Whalers, age 51, became the first player to score 800 NHL goals.
2004	Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide resigned and left the country amid an armed uprising, and President George W. Bush ordered U.S. Marines to Haiti as part of an interim international force.
2020	The U.S. and the Taliban signed an agreement in Doha, Qatar, that set a timetable for withdrawing U.S. and allied troops from Afghanistan.

Born on February 29

1792: Gioachino Rossini, Italian composer of The Barber of Seville and William Tell.
1860: Herman Hollerith, inventor of the punched-card tabulating machine built for the 1890 U.S. census, an early ancestor of the computer.
1892: Augusta Savage, Harlem Renaissance sculptor and influential art teacher.