February 18

Without a battle, al-Kamil ceded Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth for ten years, keeping the Haram in Muslim hands. A month later Frederick wore his crown in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Both sides’ clerics were outraged.

He was 78, grown obese and gouty, and had lost his wife Chabi and his chosen heir. His grandson Temür succeeded him.

Tolui’s fourth son was elected at his own headquarters in Kaiping, later Shangdu. He ruled as Great Khan and, from 1271, as emperor of China, but the western khanates never fully accepted him. After him the title was honoured in name only.

He died in the town where he had been born, on a journey to settle a quarrel between the counts of Mansfeld. A slip of paper found after his death ended: “We are beggars. This is true.”

Drafted with the British and French ambassadors, it promised full equality to Christians and Jews in taxes, schools, courts and state service. Many Muslims resented it, and some Greek Orthodox clergy disliked it too.

On the portico of the Alabama capitol, Davis took the oath as provisional president of the Confederacy. A star set in the portico floor marks the spot where he stood.

After an unwanted British visit ended in the killing of most of its party, a punitive force took and burned the city and exiled Oba Ovonramwen. Soldiers looted thousands of brass and ivory works; some have been returned to Nigeria since 2022.

At an exhibition in Allahabad, the French pilot Henri Pequet carried about 6,500 letters across the Yamuna to Naini, some 10 kilometres, in a Humber biplane: the first official airmail anywhere.

Returning from 87°32′ S, Teddy Evans collapsed with scurvy. Lashly stayed with him and Tom Crean walked alone for help: 35 statute miles in about eighteen hours, on three biscuits and two sticks of chocolate, reaching Hut Point half an hour ahead of a blizzard. Evans was saved.

Germany’s “Operation Punch”. Its armies advanced up to 240 kilometres in a week, mostly by train and against almost no resistance, and took Dvinsk on the first day. Lenin threatened to resign unless the party accepted the German terms.

Ratings on HMIS Talwar in Bombay struck over food and racism, and the strike spread to some 20,000 sailors on ships and shore stations. Britain could no longer count on its Indian forces.

State troopers broke up a night march in Marion. Jackson, 26, a deacon, was shot by trooper James Bonard Fowler while shielding his mother in a café, and died eight days later. His death led to the plan to march to Montgomery. Fowler pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2010.

Enterprise rode on the back of a modified Boeing 747: five captive flights unmanned, three with a crew aboard, then five free flights gliding down to the runways at Edwards.