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February 23, 1944

Revisit the news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.

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Headlines from February 23, 1944

KRIVOI ROG SEIZED; Russians Smash Bastion of Dnieper Bend, Take 300 Points in North STALIN SEES FOE'S DEFEAT 75% of Occupied Land Rewon, Nazis Put in Hopeless Plight, He Tells the Red Army KRIVOI ROG SEIZED; RUSSIANS ROLL ON

By W.h. Lawrenceby Cable To the New York Times

Stalin order of day and salvos announce Krivoi Rog capture; significance noted; Gers rept city evacuated; Russians take Mikhailovski, Bukino and points in Luga, Lake Ilmen and Kholm areas; Gers rept Russian attacks in White Russia and Velikiye Luki area; Helsinki repts Ger order to evacuate Estonia oil shale indus plants; USSR replies to Ger denials of Cherkassy losses; Stalin revs USSR gains in yr, tribute to army; map

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Notable Births

Bernard Cornwell

1944Bernard Cornwell, English author and educator[†]

Bernard Cornwell is an English author of historical novels and a history of the Waterloo campaign. He is best known for his long-running series of novels about Napoleonic Wars rifleman Richard Sharpe. He has also written The Saxon Stories, a series of thirteen novels about the unification of England.

Florian Fricke

1944Florian Fricke, German keyboard player and composer (died 2001)[†]

Florian Fricke was a German musician who started his professional career with electronic music, using the Moog synthesizer, and was a founding member of the Krautrock band Popol Vuh.

Johnny Winter

1944Johnny Winter, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (died 2014)[†]

John Dawson Winter III was an American singer, guitarist, songwriter, and record producer. Winter was known for his high-energy blues rock albums, live performances, and slide guitar playing from the late 1960s into the early 2000s. He also produced three Grammy Award-winning albums for blues singer and guitarist Muddy Waters. After his time with Waters, Winter recorded several Grammy-nominated blues albums. In 1988, he was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame and in 2003, he was ranked 63rd in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".

Notable Deaths

Leo Baekeland

1944Leo Baekeland, Belgian-American chemist and engineer (born 1863)[†]

Leo Hendrik Baekeland was a Belgian chemist. Educated in Belgium and Germany, he spent most of his career in the United States. He is best known for the inventions of Velox photographic paper in 1893, and Bakelite in 1907. He has been called "The Father of the Plastics Industry" for his invention of Bakelite, an inexpensive, non-flammable and versatile plastic, which marked the beginning of the modern plastics industry.

Historical Events

Soviet Union

1944The Soviet Union begins the forced deportation of the Chechen and Ingush people from the North Caucasus to Central Asia.[†]

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), commonly referred to as the Soviet Union or Russia, was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until it dissolved in 1991. During its existence, it was the largest country by area, extending across eleven time zones and sharing borders with twelve countries, and the third-most populous country. An overall successor to the Russian Empire, it was nominally organized as a federal union of national republics, the largest and most populous of which was the Russian SFSR. In practice, its government and economy were highly centralized. As a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), it was the flagship communist state. Its capital and largest city was Moscow.