Holidays Calendar for February 19, 2024
Public Holidays →
USA,
American Samoa,
Guam,
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American Virgin Islands
Washington’s Birthday (Presidents’ Day)
Washington’s Birthday is a federal holiday in the United States celebrated on the third Monday of February. Colloquially, it is also widely referred to as Presidents’ Day and is often an occasion to honor all presidents of the United States, including the incumbent one.
The third Monday of February is a statutory holiday in several Canadian provinces. In most of them, it is called Family Day (Jour de la famille). Other names include Islander Day, Heritage Day, and Louis Riel Day.
Since Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the United States, it celebrates all official U.S. holidays. However, some of these holidays have different names here: for example, Presidents’ Day (the third Monday of February) is known as Día de los Próceres Puertorriqueños (Puerto Rican Heroes Day or the Day of Illustrious Puerto Ricans).
International Kazoo Day celebrates a unique musical instrument that anyone can learn to play. It is observed every February 19 by kazoo players around the world.
Mexican Army Day is observed in Mexico annually on February 19. This holiday cerebrates the foundation day of Mexican Army in 1913 and honors the 1911 Loyalty March, when President Madero was escorted by the Cadets of the Military College to the National Palace.
Russian ornithologists celebrate their professional holiday, Ornithologist Day, on February 19. It commemorates the foundation of the All-Union Ornithological Society of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union in 1983.
National Arabian Horse Day is observed annually on February 19. It was created to honor one of the oldest and most popular horse breeds in the world.
Armenia annually celebrates Book Giving Day. This holiday was resumed in 2008 under the initiative of Levon Ananyan, the late Chairman of Writers Union of Armenia.
February 19 is Vasil Levski Day in Bulgaria. He was a national hero and a political revolutionary in Bulgaria, dubbed the Apostle of Freedom.
Brâncuși Day is a Romanian observance dedicated to Constantin Brâncuși, a Romanian sculptor, painter and photographer who is considered one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th century.
Shivaji Jayanti, also known as Shiv Jayanti, is a festival and public holiday observed in the Indian state of Maharashtra. It commemorates the birth anniversary of Shivaji, an Indian warrior-king who overthrew Muslim rulers and founded the Maratha Empire that included present-day Maharashtra and some neighboring territories.
On February 19, some Pakistanis celebrate the birthday of Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, a well-known Islamic scholar and politician. This holiday doesn’t have any official status, but it is widely observed by Qadri’s supporters in Pakistan and abroad.
Coat of Arms Day is an unofficial observance held in Ukraine on February 19 every year. It commemorates the official adoption of the small coat of arms in Ukraine on this day in 1992.
February 19 is National Chocolate Mint Day. If you agree that mint and chocolate were made for each other, then celebrate this day.
Prevent Plagiarism Day, also known as Plagiarism Prevention Day, is observed annually on February 19. It is one of the many holidays and observances created by Jace Shoemaker-Galloway, nicknamed the Queen of Holidays.
Festivals on February 19, 2024
- Carnival of Basel in Basel, Switzerland
- Ice Music Festival in Geilo, Norway
- Fan Expo Vancouver in Vancouver, Canada
- Bay Area Renaissance Festival in Dade City, USA
- Spark STEM Fest in Orlando, USA
- Nice Carnival in Nice, France
- Menton Lemon Festival in Menton, France
- Canadian International AutoShow in Toronto, Canada
- New Zealand Fringe Festival in Wellington, New Zealand
- Festival du Voyageur in Winnipeg, Canada
- Adelaide Fringe in Adelaide, Australia
- Indonesia International Motor Show (IIMS) in Jakarta, Indonesia
- Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) in Berlin, Germany
- Havana International Book Fair in Havana, Cuba
- Chicago Auto Show in Chicago, USA
This Day in History
- 2019 Died: Karl Lagerfeld, German fashion designer, artist and photographer known for working with Chanel and Fendi. He also had his own label.
- 2016 Died: Umberto Eco, Italian novelist, literary critic, philosopher, semiotician, and university professor. He is best known for his novel The Name of the Rose.
- 2007 Died: Celia Franca, English-Canadian ballerina and director, the founder of the National Ballet of Canada. During the last year of her life she was in poor health after breaking vertebrae in her back and died in a hospital at the age of 85.
- 2007 Died: Janet Blair, American actress who made her career during World War II and is best remembered for her roles as Rosalind Russell's sister in My Sister Eileen and Rita Hayworth's best friend in Tonight and Every Night.
- 2006 65 miners were killed as a result of a methane explosion in a coal mine near Nueva Rosita, Mexico.
- 2004 Born: Millie Bobby Brown, British actress and producer who gained recognition for playing Eleven in the Netflix science fiction series Stranger Things.
- 2002 NASA's Mars Odyssey space probe began to map the surface of Mars using its thermal emission imaging system.
- 2001 Died: Stanley Kramer, American director and producer, famous for his "message films". His most notable films are High Noon, On the Beach, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.
- 2000 Died: Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Austrian-New Zealand painter, illustrator, and architect whose architectural projects were used for numerous buildings in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, New Zealand, and the Netherlands.
- 1997 Died: Deng Xiaoping, Chinese politician, 1st Vice Premier of the People's Republic of China. Although Xiaoping never was the head of sate, he was considered the real leader of the People's Republic of China from 1978 to 1992.
- 1993 Born: Victoria Justice, American actress and singer who rose to fame on Nickelodeon, playing Lola Martinez on Zoey 101 and Tori Vega on Victorious.
- 1987 Born: Sam Reid, Australian actor best known for his roles as Father Ignatius Jones in Lambs of God, Dale Jennings in The Newsreader, and Lestat de Lioncourt in Interview with the Vampire.
- 1986 80 Tamil farm workers were massacred in Akkaraipattu, Sri Lanka, and burned by the Sri Lankan Army.
- 1985 William J. Schroeder became the first artificial heart recipient to leave hospital. He lived for 620 days after he received this artificial heart, but died of a lung infection.
- 1985 Iberia Airlines Boeing 727 crashed into Mount Oiz in Spain en route from Madrid to Bilbao. All 141 passengers aboard and the entire crew of 7 people died.
- 1980 Died: Bon Scott, Scottish-Australian singer-songwriter, best known as the lead singer of AC/DC from 1974 to 1980. Scott died of acute alcoholic poisoning.
- 1975 Died: Luigi Dallapiccola, Italian composer, known for his lyrical twelve-tone compositions. The opera Ulisse, which took him eight years to write, became his life's best work.
- 1971 Born: Lisa McCune, Australian actress, best known for roles as Senior Constable Maggie Doyle in Blue Heelers, and as Lt. Kate McGregor in Sea Patrol.
- 1967 Born: Benicio del Toro, Puerto Rican actor, best known for his roles as Javier Rodríguez in Traffic, Jack Jordan in 21 Grams, and as Che Guevara in Che.
- 1963 Born: Seal (stage name of Seal Henry Olusegun Olumide Adeola Samuel), English singer-songwriter, known for numerous international hits, including "Kiss from a Rose".
- 1962 Died: Georgios Papanikolaou, Greek-American pathologist, inventor of the Pap smear (Papanicolaou test), a common method of cervical screening.
- 1960 China successfully launched the T-7, its first sounding rocket.
- 1958 Born: Helen Fielding, English novelist and screenwriter, best known as the author of the Bridget Jones novels that were published in 40 countries and sold more than 15 million copies.
- 1956 Born: Roderick MacKinnon, American biologist, Nobel Prize laureate in Chemistry for his work on the structure and operation of ion channels.
- 1952 Died: Knut Hamsun, Norwegian author, Nobel Prize laureate for the epic novel Growth of the Soil.
- 1942 Nearly 250 Japanese warplanes attacked the northern Australian city of Darwin. 243 people were killed.
- 1939 Born: Erin Pizzey, Chinese-English activist and author. She became internationally famous after she founded Refuge, one of the first women's refuges in the modern world.
- 1914 Born: Jacques Dufilho, French actor, who is best known to the French as a comic. He starred in over 160 French films and was frequently seen in Italian films.
- 1897 Died: Karl Weierstrass, German mathematician, often regarded as the father of modern analysis. Weierstrass is known for his formalization of the definition of the continuity of a function.
- 1884 One of the largest tornado outbreaks in the U.S. history: more that 60 tornadoes struck the Southern United States.
- 1843 Born: Adelina Patti, Spanish opera singer, regarded as one of the most famous sopranos in history. Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi admired Patti and named her perhaps the finest singer who had ever lived.
- 1821 Born: August Schleicher, German linguist, best known for this work A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European Languages, in which he attempted to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European language.
- 1819 The South Shetland Islands were discovered by British explorer William Smith. He claimed them in the name of King George III.
- 1674 The Treaty of Westminster was signed by England and the Netherlands, putting an end to the Third Anglo-Dutch War. A provision of the agreement transferred the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam to England; it was renamed New York.
- 1526 Born: Carolus Clusius, Flemish botanist, widely regarded as the most influential of all 16th-century scientific horticulturists. He was the fist to study the flora of Austria.
- 1473 Born: Nicolaus Copernicus, Polish mathematician and astronomer who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather then the Earth at its center.