January 28 » Walter Arnold of East Peckham, Kent, becomes the first person to be convicted of speeding. He was fined one shilling, plus costs, for speeding at 8mph (13km/h), thereby exceeding the contemporary speed limit of 2mph (3.2km/h).
March 1 » Henri Becquerel discovers radioactive decay.
May 26 » Charles Dow publishes the first edition of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
May 26 » Nicholas II becomes the last Tsar of Imperial Russia.
August 27 » Anglo-Zanzibar War: The shortest war in world history (09:02 to 09:40), between the United Kingdom and Zanzibar.
December 30 » Filipino patriot and reform advocate José Rizal is executed by a Spanish firing squad in Manila.
Day of death February 28, 1978
The temperature on February 28, 1978 was between 4.3 °C and 12.0 °C and averaged 8.1 °C. There was -0.1 mm of rain. There was 1.7 hours of sunshine (16%). The partly clouded was. The average windspeed was 2 Bft (weak wind) and was prevailing from the south-southeast. Source: KNMI
In The Netherlands , there was from Monday, December 19, 1977 to Friday, September 11, 1981 the cabinet Van Agt I, with Mr. A.A.M. van Agt (CDA/KVP) as prime minister.
January 2 » On the orders of the President of Pakistan, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, paramilitary forces opened fire on peaceful protesting workers in Multan, Pakistan; it is known as 1978 massacre at Multan Colony Textile Mills.
January 24 » Soviet satellite Kosmos 954, with a nuclear reactor on board, burns up in Earth's atmosphere, scattering radioactive debris over Canada's Northwest Territories. Only 1% is recovered.
February 9 » The Budd Company unveils its first SPV-2000 self-propelled railcar in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
March 28 » The US Supreme Court hands down 5–3 decision in Stump v. Sparkman, a controversial case involving involuntary sterilization and judicial immunity.
April 28 » President of Afghanistan, Mohammed Daoud Khan, is overthrown and assassinated in a coup led by pro-communist rebels.
November 18 » In Jonestown, Guyana, Jim Jones led his Peoples Temple to a mass murder–suicide that claimed 918 lives in all, 909 of them in Jonestown itself, including over 270 children. Congressman Leo Ryan is murdered by members of the Peoples Temple hours earlier.
When copying data from this family tree, please include a reference to the origin: Hans Weening, "Family tree Weening", database, Genealogy Online (https://www.genealogieonline.nl/stamboom-weening/I218346.php : accessed October 21, 2026), "Geert Harms (1896-1978)".
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