February 21 - Events

Events

• 362 – Athanasius returns to Alexandria.
• 1245 – Thomas, the first known Bishop of Finland, is granted resignation after confessing to torture and forgery.
• 1440 – The Prussian Confederation is formed.
• 1543 – Battle of Wayna Daga – A combined army of Ethiopian and Portuguese troops defeats a Muslim army led by Ahmed Gragn.
• 1613 – Mikhail I is elected unanimously as Tsar by a national assembly, beginning the Romanov dynasty of Imperial Russia.
• 1804 – The first self-propelling steam locomotive makes its outing at the Pen-y-Darren Ironworks in Wales.
• 1808 – Without a previous declaration of war, Russian troops cross the border to Sweden at Abborfors in eastern Finland, thus beginning the Finnish war, in which Sweden will lose the eastern half of the country (i.e. Finland) to Russia.
• 1842 – John Greenough is granted the first U.S. patent for the sewing machine.
• 1848 – Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish The Communist Manifesto.
• 1862 – American Civil War: Battle of Valverde is fought near Fort Craig in New Mexico Territory.
• 1874 – The Oakland Daily Tribune publishes its first edition.
• 1878 – The first telephone book is issued in New Haven, Connecticut.
• 1885 – The newly completed Washington Monument is dedicated.
• 1913 – Ioannina is incorporated into the Greek state after the Balkan Wars.
• 1916 – World War I: In France, the Battle of Verdun begins.
• 1918 – The last Carolina Parakeet dies in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo.
• 1919 – Kurt Eisner, German socialist, is assassinated. His death results in the establishment of the Bavarian Soviet Republic and parliament and government fleeing Munich, Germany.
• 1921 – Constituent Assembly of the Democratic Republic of Georgia adopts the country's first constitution.
• 1925 – The New Yorker publishes its first issue.
• 1937 – Initial flight of the first successful flying car, Waldo Waterman's Arrowbile.
• 1937 – The League of Nations bans foreign national "volunteers" in the Spanish Civil War.
• 1945 – World War II: Japanese Kamikaze planes sink the escort carrier Bismarck Sea and damage the Saratoga.
• 1947 – In New York City, Edwin Land demonstrates the first "instant camera", the Polaroid Land Camera, to a meeting of the Optical Society of America.
• 1948 – NASCAR is incorporated.
• 1952 – The British government, under Winston Churchill, abolishes identity cards in the UK to "set the people free".
• 1952 – The Bengali Language Movement protests occur at the University of Dhaka in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).
• 1958 – The Peace symbol, commissioned by Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in protest against the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, is designed and completed by Gerald Holtom.
• 1965 – Malcolm X is assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City by members of the Nation of Islam.
• 1970 – Swissair Flight 330: A mid-air bomb explosion and subsequent crash kills 38 passengers and nine crew members near Zürich, Switzerland.
• 1971 – The Convention on Psychotropic Substances is signed at Vienna.
• 1972 – President Richard Nixon visits the People's Republic of China to normalize Sino-American relations.
• 1972 – The Soviet unmanned spaceship Luna 20 lands on the Moon.
• 1973 – Over the Sinai Desert, Israeli fighter aircraft shoot down Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 jet killing 108.
• 1974 – The last Israeli soldiers leave the west bank of the Suez Canal pursuant to a truce with Egypt.
• 1975 – Watergate scandal: Former United States Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman are sentenced to prison.
• 1976 – The inaugural Winter Paralympic Games opened in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden.
• 1995 – Steve Fossett lands in Leader, Saskatchewan, Canada becoming the first person to make a solo flight across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon.