What happened on your birthday?

What’s Your Vietnam War Draft Lottery Number?

The Vietnam War draft lottery ran from 1969 to 1972. If you were born on February 23, would your number have been called?

  • Vietnam War 1969 Lottery
    CalledDrafted
    57
  • Vietnam War 1970 Lottery
    Not CalledNot drafted
    351
  • Vietnam War 1971 Lottery
    Not CalledNot drafted
    116
  • Vietnam War 1972 Lottery
    Not CalledNot drafted
    247

Read on to learn more about the Vietnam war draft lottery.





more events on February 23

  • 1991

    French forces unofficially start the Persian Gulf ground war by crossing the Saudi-Iraqi border.

  • 1972

    Black activist Angela Davis is released from jail where she was held for kidnapping , conspiracy and murder.

  • 1967

    American troops begin the largest offensive of the war, near the Cambodian border.

  • 1964

    The U.S. and Britain recognize the new Zanzibar government.

  • 1960

    Whites join Negro students in a sit-in at a Winston-Salem, N.C. Woolworth store.

  • 1955

    Eight nations meet in Bangkok for the first SEATO council.

  • 1954

    Mass innoculation begins as Salk’s polio vaccine is given to children for first time.

  • 1950

    New York’s Metropolitan Museum exhibits a collection of Hapsburg art. The first showing of this collection in the U.S.

  • 1947

    Several hundred Nazi organizers are arrested in Frankfurt by U.S. and British forces.

  • 1946

    Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita is hanged in Manila, the Philippines, for war crimes.

  • 1945

    U.S. Marines plant an American flag atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima.

  • Eisenhower opens a large offensive in the Rhineland.

  • 1944

    American bombers strike the Marianas Islands bases, only 1,300 miles from Tokyo.

  • 1942

    A Japanese submarine shells an oil refinery near Santa Barbara, California, the first Axis bombs to hit American soil.

  • 1938

    Twelve Chinese fighter planes drop bombs on Japan.

  • 1936

    In Russia, an unmanned balloon rises to a record height of 25 miles.

  • 1926

    President Calvin Coolidge opposes a large air force, believing it would be a menace to world peace.

  • 1924

    Allan MacLeod Cormack, physicist, developed the CAT scan.

  • 1921

    An airmail plane sets a record of 33 hours and 20 minutes from San Francisco to New York.

  • 1916

    Secretary of State Lansing hints that the U.S. may have to abandon the policy of avoiding “entangling foreign alliances”.

  • 1904

    William Shirer, CBS broadcaster and author (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich).

  • Japan guarantees Korean sovereignty in exchange for military assistance.

  • 1901

    Britain and Germany agree on a boundary between German East Africa and Nyasaland.

  • 1899

    Erich Kastner, German poet, novelist and children’s author (Emil and the Detectives).

  • 1898

    Writer Emile Zola is imprisoned in France for his letter J’accuse in which he accuses the French government of anti-semitism and the wrongful imprisonment of army captain Alfred Dreyfus.

  • 1885

    John Lee survives three attempts to hang him in Exeter Prison, as the trap fails to open.

  • 1883

    Victor Fleming, film director (The Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind)

  • 1868

    W.E.B. [William Edward Burghardt] Du Bois, U.S. historian and civil rights leader, founder of what became the NAACP.

  • 1861

    Texas becomes the seventh state to secede from the Union.

  • 1854

    Great Britain officially recognizes the independence of the Orange Free State.

  • 1847

    Forces led by Zachary Taylor defeat the Mexicans at the Battle of Buena Vista.

  • 1846

    The Liberty Bell tolls for the last time, to mark George Washington’s birthday.

  • 1836

    The Alamo is besieged by Santa Anna.

  • 1821

    Poet John Keats dies of tuberculosis at the age of 25.

  • 1778

    Baron von Steuben joins the Continental Army at Valley Forge.

  • 1743

    Meyer Amschel Rothschild, banker and founder of the Rothschild dynasty in Europe.

  • 1685

    George F. Handel, German composer.

  • 1633

    Samuel Pepys, English diarist.

  • 1615

    The Estates-General in Paris is dissolved, having been in session since October 1614.

  • 1574

    The 5th War of Religion breaks out in France.

  • 1540

    Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado begins his unsuccessful search for the fabled Seven Cities of Gold in the American Southwest.

  • 1516

    The Hapsburg Charles I succeeds Ferdinand in Spain.

  • 303

    Emperor Diocletian orders the general persecution of Christians in Rome.