This Day in History on 8th February

The historical events hold a lot of value for aspirants who are sitting for UPSC competitive exams including the IAS Exam. 

On this page, we will list all historical events that occurred on 8th February. The students can refer to them while preparing for all competitive exams and banking exams.

Important Days

Important Events

1785: Warren Hastings, who was the Governor-General from 1774 to 1785, left India.

1849: The Roman Republic was formed.

1872: Lord Mayo, Viceroy of India, was killed by a prisoner named Sher Ali in the Andaman Islands.

1899: Ganesh Shankar Dravid and Ramchandra Shankar Dravid, who told the British government the names of the Chafekar brothers who killed W. C. Rand, were shot dead by Vasudev Chafekar and Mahadev Ranade.

1905: Ten thousand people died due to the severe cyclonic storm that struck Haiti and its surrounding islands.

1943: Freedom fighter Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose left for Japan via a ferry from Kell, Germany.

1986: Prepaid taxi service started for the first time at Delhi Airport.

1994: Cricketer Kapil Dev cracked Richard Headley’s world record for highest wickets in Test matches with 432 wickets.

1996: The U.S. Congress passes the Communications Decency Act.

2000: The government of Maharashtra decided to celebrate Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj’s birth anniversary on 19th February.


2005: Sri Lankan Civil War: Sri Lankan Tamil politician and former MP A. Chandranehru dies of injuries sustained in an ambush the previous day.


2010: A freak storm in the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan triggers a series of at least 36 avalanches, burying over two miles of road, killing at least 172 people and trapping over 2,000 travelers.


2013: A blizzard disrupts transportation and leaves hundreds of thousands of people without electricity in the Northeastern United States and parts of Canada.
2014: A hotel fire in Medina, Saudi Arabia kills 15 Egyptian pilgrims with 130 others injured.

Birth/Birth Anniversary

Zakir Hussain
Jagjit Singh

1700: Daniel Bernoulli, a Swiss mathematician, and physicist.

1828: Jules Verne, a French novelist, poet, and playwright.

1834: Dmitri Mendeleev, a Russian chemist, and inventor.

Santosh Sivan

1897: Zakir Husain, an Indian economist, politician, and the third President of India.

1941: Jagjit Singh, an Indian ghazal singer.

1925: Shobha Gurtu, an Indian singer.

1963: Mohammad Azharuddin, an Indian politician, a former cricketer.

1964: Santosh Sivan, Indian director, cinematographer, producer, and actor

Death/ Death Anniversary

1725: Peter the Great, the emperor of Russia.

Nida Fazli

1971: K. Munshi, an Indian independence movement activist, politician, writer, and educationist from the Gujarat state.

1975: Robert Robinson, a British organic chemist and Nobel laureate.

1995: Kalpana Datta, an Indian independence movement activist and a member of the armed independence movement led by Surya Sen

2016 – Nida Fazli, Indian poet and songwriter (b. 1938)

Further Reading

Month-wise This Day in History