Allan Aubrey Boesak is a South African Dutch Reformed Church cleric, politician and anti-apartheid activist. He was sentenced to prison for fraud in 1999 but was subsequently granted an official pardon and reinstated as a cleric in late 2004.

Historical Events

1945World War II: During the Battle of Iwo Jima, a group of United States Marines reach the top of Mount Suribachi on the island and are photographed raising the American flag.^[†]

The Battle of Iwo Jima was a major battle in which the United States Marine Corps (USMC) and United States Navy (USN) landed on and eventually captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) during World War II. The American invasion, designated Operation Detachment, had the goal of capturing the island with its two airfields: South Field and Central Field.

1945World War II: The 11th Airborne Division, with Filipino guerrillas, free all 2,147 captives of the Los Baños internment camp, in what General Colin Powell later would refer to as "the textbook airborne operation for all ages and all armies."^[†]

The 11th Airborne Division is a United States Army multirole infantry division made up of specialized light infantry and airborne infantry based in Alaska.

1945World War II: The capital of the Philippines, Manila, is liberated by combined Filipino and American forces.^[†]

The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of 7,641 islands, with a total area of roughly 300,000 square kilometers, which are broadly categorized in three main geographical divisions from north to south: Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. With a population of over 110 million, it is the world's twelfth-most-populous country.

1945World War II: Capitulation of German garrison in Poznań. The city is liberated by Soviet and Polish forces.^[†]

Nazi Germany, officially the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictatorship. The Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", referred to the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and German Empire (1871–1918). The Third Reich, which the Nazis referred to as the Thousand-Year Reich, ended in May 1945, after 12 years, when the Allies defeated Germany and entered the capital, Berlin, ending World War II in Europe.

1945World War II: The German town of Pforzheim is annihilated in a raid by 379 British bombers.^[†]

Pforzheim is a city of over 135,000 inhabitants in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg, in the southwest of Germany.

1945American Airlines Flight 009 crashes near Rural Retreat, Virginia, killing 17.^[†]

American Airlines Flight 009 was a flight from New York City to Los Angeles. On the morning of February 23, 1945, while flying over Rural Retreat, Virginia, on the Washington-Nashville leg, the Douglas DC-3 struck the wooded summit of Glade Mountain in the Appalachian Mountains, killing 17 of the 22 occupants on board.

Headlines from February 23, 1945

VOLCANO IS SEIZED; MARINES INCH AHEAD ON RUGGED HILLS OF IWO

VAST AREA BLASTED; West, Central and South Germany Hit at Rate of 100 Tons a Minute 14,000 BOMBS USED More Than 110 Railway Areas Struck--Lines Cut in 279 Places RAF Carries On at Night 14,000 Bombs Dropped VAST AREA BLASTED BY FIVE AIR FORCES Blow Planned for Weeks 15th and 12th Hit Wide Area

FULL VICTORY NEAR, STALIN PROCLAIMS; He Puts Nazis' 40-Day Loss at 1,150,000 Men--Koneff Masses on the Neisse FULL VICTORY NEAR, STALIN PROCLAIMS Koneff Widens River Line Swiss Free Interned Americans

MAYOR PROMISES 'SENSIBLE' CURFEW; Says He Intends to Construe WMC Order in Keeping With City's Special Conditions

Notable Births

Historical Events