Template:On this day - February 1

Agustín de Betancourt

• 55 – Cecilio of Granada, first Bishop of Iliberis, dies a martyr (b. 1st century).
• 850 – Death of Ramiro I, Monarch of Asturias (b. 790).
• 1758 – Birth of Agustín de Betancourt, Spanish civil and military engineer, architect and essayist, forerunner of radio, telegraphy and thermodynamics (d. 1824).
• 1770 – In New Orleans, the Spanish military officer and administrator Luis de Unzaga y Amézaga legalizes pharmaceutical activity in Louisiana, a pioneering step in North America.
• 1814 – In the Philippines, Mayon Volcano erupts. More than 1200 people die in what was the most devastating eruption of that volcano.
• 1815 – A Spanish army of 10 000 men under the command of General Pablo Morillo arrives in Venezuela.
• 1820 – In the north of the Province of Buenos Aires, 20 km north of the village of Pergamino, the Federal army defeats the Unitarian army at the First Battle of Cepeda. The centralized government of Buenos Aires comes to an end.
• 1851 – Honduras and El Salvador, which had invaded Guatemala, are repelled at the Battle of La Arada.
• 1873 – Death of Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Cuban poet, novelist and playwright (b. 1814).
• 1881 – The first issue of the daily La Vanguardia, one of those with the largest circulation in Spain, is published in Barcelona.
• 1881 – In Panama, the Americans begin the construction works of the transoceanic canal.
• 1861 – During the American Civil War, the state of Texas leaves the United States of America and joins the defunct Confederate States of America.
• 1901 – In Madrid (Spain), Francisco de Asís Soler and Pablo Ruiz Picasso found the magazine Arte Joven, linked to Modernism, of which 5 issues will be published with contributions from authors such as Unamuno, Pío Baroja, Salvador Rueda, Jacinto Verdaguer and Azorín.
• 1913 – In Madrid, the rebuilt Teatro de la Zarzuela, which had burned down 3 years earlier, is inaugurated.
• 1923 – After 18 months of negotiations, the Spanish prisoners held by the Rifian leader Abd el-Krim return to Spain.
• 1927 – Mexican President Plutarco Elías Calles orders all Catholic priests to register with the federal authorities.
• 1930 – In Spain, the "dictablanda" (a play on words with «dictadura», dictatorship) is established, after the appointment in Madrid of General Dámaso Berenguer as head of the Council of Ministers, charged by the King with preparing the return to the last constitutional government of the reign of Alfonso XIII.
• 1932 – Death of Agustín Farabundo Martí, Salvadoran revolutionary and communist politician (b. 1893).
• 1970 – In the Argentine city of Benavídez (Province of Buenos Aires), two trains collide, leaving 236 dead, in what was the worst railroad tragedy in the country.
• 2001 – Death of Rafael Lapesa, Spanish philologist, member of the Royal Spanish Academy and of the Royal Academy of History (b. 1908).
• 2006 – In the Madrid town of Fuenlabrada, a team of researchers discovers an important archaeological site provisionally dated between the 3rd century and the 6th, where at least 200 Visigothic tombs, a large Roman villa and two necropolises have been found.