February 21 » An Englishman raised in Australia, Bob Fitzsimmons, fought an Irishman, Peter Maher, in an American promoted event which technically took place in Mexico, winning the 1896 World Heavyweight Championship in boxing.
March 1 » Battle of Adwa: An Ethiopian army defeats an outnumbered Italian force, ending the First Italo-Ethiopian War.
March 1 » Henri Becquerel discovers radioactive decay.
March 2 » The Battle of Adwa: The Italian Army defeated by the Ethiopian Army in Adwa, Tigray, Ethiopia.
April 6 » In Athens, the opening of the first modern Olympic Games is celebrated, 1,500 years after the original games are banned by Roman emperor Theodosius I.
April 15 » Closing ceremony of the Games of the I Olympiad in Athens, Greece.
Day of death February 12, 1961
The temperature on February 12, 1961 was between 5.5 °C and 9.4 °C and averaged 7.4 °C. There was 0.2 mm of rain during 0.3 hours. There was 2.1 hours of sunshine (22%). The partly or heavily clouded was. The average windspeed was 3 Bft (moderate breeze) and was prevailing from the west. Source: KNMI
January 23 » The Portuguese luxury cruise ship Santa Maria is hijacked by opponents of the Estado Novo regime with the intention of waging war until dictator António de Oliveira Salazar is overthrown.
February 3 » The United States Air Forces begins Operation Looking Glass, and over the next 30 years, a "Doomsday Plane" is always in the air, with the capability of taking direct control of the United States' bombers and missiles in the event of the destruction of the SAC's command post.
July 21 » Mercury program: Mercury-Redstone 4 Mission: Gus Grissom piloting Liberty Bell 7 becomes the second American to go into space (in a suborbital mission).
September 17 » The world's first retractable roof stadium, the Civic Arena, opens in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
September 18 » U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld dies in an air crash while attempting to negotiate peace in the Katanga region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
October 30 » Due to "violations of Vladimir Lenin's precepts", it is decreed that Joseph Stalin's body be removed from its place of honour inside Lenin's tomb and buried near the Kremlin Wall with a plain granite marker.
When copying data from this family tree, please include a reference to the origin: L.C. Geerts, "Family tree Geerts / de Waal", database, Genealogy Online (https://www.genealogieonline.nl/stamboom-geerts/I2011.php : accessed February 1, 2026), "Maria Leijten (1896-1961)".
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