February 21

February 21 is the 52nd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 313 days remaining, 314 in leap years.

Events

1431 - The trial of Joan of Arc begins.

1440 - The Prussian Confederation is formed.

1543 - Battle of Wayna Daga - Combined army of Ethiopian and Portuguese troops defeat 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 .

1743 - The premiere in London of George Frideric Handel's oratorio, Samson

1804 - The first self-propelling steam locomotive makes its outing at the Pen-y-Darren ironworks in Wales.

1842 - John J. Greenough patents the sewing machine.

1848 - Karl Marx publishes the Communist Manifesto.

1874 - The Oakland Daily Tribune publishes its first newspaper.

1875 - Jeanne Calment was born. She then went on to live for 122 years 164 days, the longest confirmed lifespan for any human being in history.

1878 - The first telephone book is issued in New Haven, Connecticut.

1885 - The newly completed Washington Monument is dedicated.

1893 - Thomas Edison receives two U.S. patents for a "Cut Out for Incandescent Electric Lamps" and for a "Stop Device"

1916 - World War I: In France the Battle of Verdun begins.

1925 - The New Yorker publishes its first issue.

1937 - Initial flight of the first successful flying car, Waldo Waterman's Arrowbile.

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 - Language Martyrs' Day, marking language-revolution in the then East Pakistan (currently, the independent state of People's Republic of Bangladesh)

1952 - Churchill government in the UK abolishes Identity Cards to "set the people free".

1953 - Francis Crick and James D. Watson discover the structure of the DNA molecule.

1960 - Cuban leader Fidel Castro nationalizes all businesses in Cuba.

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 Z�rich, Switzerland.

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 a Libyan Airlines jet killing 108.

1974 - The long-running Japanese comic strip Sazae-san publishes its final installment in the Asahi Shimbun.

1974 - The last Israeli soldiers leave the west bank of the Suez Canal in carrying out 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.

1988 - Jimmy Swaggart, on his own televangelism program being tapped in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, confesses that he is guilty of an unspecified sin and will be temporarily leaving the pulpit.

1995 - Serkadji prison mutiny in Algeria; 4 guards and 96 prisoners killed in a day and a half.

1995 - Steve Fossett lands in Leader, Saskatchewan, Canada becoming the first person to make a solo flight across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon.

2000 - David Letterman returns to The Late Show over a month after having an emergency quintuple heart bypass surgery.

2003 - Over 100 concert goers die in a fire during a performance of the rock band Great White.

2004 - The first European political party organization, the European Greens, is established in Rome.