2026-02-23

Riots in four Ecuadorian prisons, caused by gang rivalries, resulted in the deaths of 79 inmates.

Syrian civil war: Allied troops led by the Turkish Armed Forces captured the city of al-Bab from the Islamic State.

A B-2 Spirit stealth bomber crashed on the runway shortly after takeoff from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam in the most expensive crash in U.S. Air Force history.

SN 1987A, the first supernova that modern astronomers were able to study in great detail, was observed from Earth occurring in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Vietnam War: South Vietnamese General Đỗ Cao Trí was killed in a helicopter crash en route to taking control of the faltering Operation Lam Son 719.

Second World War: An Allied bombing run on Pforzheim, Germany, killed approximately 31 percent of its population and destroyed about 83 percent of its buildings.

American photographer Joe Rosenthal took the Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima during the Battle of Iwo Jima, an image that was later reproduced on the Marine Corps War Memorial.

In response to an insurgency in Chechnya, the Soviet Union began the forced deportation of the native Chechen and Ingush of North Caucasus.

35 children and 1 adult employee were killed in a fire at an orphanage in the town of Cavan, Ireland.

Plutonium was first chemically identified by chemist Glenn T. Seaborg and his team at the University of California, Berkeley.