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Year
1967
Month Day
February 22

Suharto takes full power in Indonesia

On February 22, 1967, Indonesian President Sukarno surrenders all executive authority to military dictator General Haji Mohammad Suharto, remaining president in title only.

In 1965, Suharto, a senior army officer, narrowly saved Sukarno from a communist coup. In the aftermath, he moved to replace Sukarno and launched a purge of Indonesian communists that resulted in thousands of deaths. In 1967, he assumed full power and in 1968 was elected president. Reelected every five years until his forced resignation in 1998, Suharto stabilized his nation and oversaw significant economic progress. However, he was criticized for his repressive rule and for Indonesia’s 1975 invasion of East Timor, which left an estimated 100,000 Timorese dead from famine, disease, and warfare. Suharto died in 2008. 

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ALSO ON THIS DAY

Sports
1969

Barbara Jo Rubin becomes first female jockey to win race at U.S. thoroughbred track

On February 22, 1969, 19-year-old Barbara Jo Rubin becomes the first female jockey to win a race at an American thoroughbred track when she rides Cohesion to a victory by a neck over Reely Beeg in the ninth race at Charles Town, West Virginia. That she raced at all was a ...read more

Sports
1980

U.S. hockey team makes miracle on ice

In one of the most dramatic upsets in Olympic history, on February 22, 1980, the underdog U.S. hockey team, made up of college players, defeats the four-time defending gold-medal winning Soviet team at the XIII Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid, New York. The Soviet squad, ...read more

Crime
2014

'El Chapo,' the world’s most-wanted drug kingpin, is captured in Mexico

On February 22, 2014, one of the world’s most-wanted criminals, Joaquin “El Chapo” (“Shorty”) Guzmán Loera, head of the Sinaloa cartel, the world’s biggest drug trafficking organization, is arrested in a joint U.S.-Mexican operation in Mazatlán, Mexico, after outrunning law ...read more

Mexican-American War
1847

Battle of Buena Vista begins

During the Mexican-American War, Mexican General Santa Anna surrounds the outnumbered forces of U.S. General Zachary Taylor at the Angostura Pass in Mexico and demands an immediate surrender. Taylor refused, allegedly replying, “Tell him to go to hell,” and early the next morning ...read more

19th Century
1819

The U.S. acquires Spanish Florida

Spanish minister Do Luis de Onis and U.S. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams sign the Florida Purchase Treaty, in which Spain agrees to cede the remainder of its old province of Florida to the United States. Spanish colonization of the Florida peninsula began at St. Augustine ...read more

Vietnam War
1968

Tet Offensive ends

The American war effort in Vietnam was hit hard by the North Vietnamese Tet Offensive, which ended on February 22, 1968. Claims by President Lyndon Johnson that the offensive was a complete failure were misleading. Though the North Vietnamese death toll was 20 times that of its ...read more

World War II
1942

President Roosevelt to MacArthur: Get out of the Philippines

President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders Gen. Douglas MacArthur out of the Philippines, as the American defense of the islands collapses. The Philippines had been part of the American commonwealth since it was ceded by Spain at the close of the Spanish-American War. When the ...read more

first-10-presidents-washington-promo
U.S. Presidents
1732

George Washington is born

On February 22, 1732, George Washington is born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, the first of six children of Augustine and Mary Ball Washington. (Augustine had three additional children from his first marriage.) An initially loyal British subject, Washington eventually led the ...read more

Crime
2006

Gang commits largest robbery in British history

In the early morning hours of February 22, 2006, a gang of at least six men, some of them armed, steal £53 million from the Securitas bank depot in Kent, Great Britain. It was the largest such theft in British history. The plot was well planned. On the evening before, two men, ...read more

Cold War
1946

George Kennan sends “long telegram” to State Department

George Kennan, the American charge d’affaires in Moscow, sends an 8,000-word telegram to the Department of State detailing his views on the Soviet Union, and U.S. policy toward the communist state. Kennan’s analysis provided one of the most influential underpinnings for ...read more

Sports
1959

Lee Petty wins first Daytona 500

On February 22, 1959, Lee Petty defeats Johnny Beauchamp in a photo finish at the just-opened Daytona International Speedway in Florida to win the first-ever Daytona 500. The race was so close that Beauchamp was initially named the winner by William France, the owner of the track ...read more

American Revolution
1777

Archibald Bulloch dies under mysterious circumstances

On February 22, 1777, Revolutionary War leader and Georgia’s first Provisional Governor Archibald Bulloch dies under mysterious circumstances just hours after Georgia’s Council of Safety grants him the powers of a dictator in expectation of a British invasion. Bulloch was born ...read more

World War I
1917

Mussolini wounded by mortar bomb

On February 22, 1917, Sergeant Benito Mussolini is wounded by the accidental explosion of a mortar bomb on the Isonzo section of the Italian Front in World War I. Born in Predappio, Italy, in 1883, the son of a blacksmith and a teacher, Mussolini was well-read, largely ...read more