Event:
Renaud Lavillenie, French champion pole vaulter, breaks the previous height record, held by athlete Sergey Bubka, at the Pole Vault Stars meet in Donetsk, Ukraine; Lavillenie reached 6.16 meters indoors, exceeding Bubka's world record of 6.15 m indoors achieved in 1993
More Notable Events on February 15:
1995 Population of People's Republic of China hits 1.2 billion
1989 Soviet military occupation of Afghanistan ends
1939 German battleship Bismarck was launched
1933 President-elect Franklin Roosevelt survives assassination attempt
1898 USS Maine sinks in Havana harbor, cause unknown, 258 sailors die
