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Today in History ~ February 21
Events1173 - Pope Alexander III canonizes Thomas Becket of Canterbury
1431 - English begin "trial" of Joan of Arc for witchcraft and heresy
1613 - Michael Romanov, son of Patriarch of Moscow, elected Russian tsar
1764 - John Wilkes thrown out of English House of Commons for "Essay on Women"
1792 - Congress passes Pres Succession Act
1795 - Freedom of worship established in France under constitution
1804 - 1st locomotive, Richard Trevithick's, runs for 1st time, in Wales
1828 - 1st American Indian newspaper in US, "Cherokee Phoenix," published [H]
1842 - 1st known sewing machine patented in US, John Greenough, Wash DC
1848 - Karl Marx's influential "Communist Manifesto" was published in London by a group called the Communist League.
1858 - Edwin T Holmes installs 1st electric burglar alarm (Boston, Mass)
1862 - Confederate Constitution & presidency are declared permanent
1862 - Texas Rangers win Confederate victory at Battle of Val Verde, NM [H]
1864 - -22] Battle at Okolona, Mississippi
1864 - 1st US Catholic parish church for blacks dedicated, Baltimore
1874 - Benjamin Disraeli replaces William Gladstone as English premier
1878 - 1st telephone book issued, (50 subscribers) by the District Telephone Co. of New Haven, Connecticut.
1885 - Washington Monument dedicated (Wash DC)
1887 - 1st US bacteriology laboratory opens (Brooklyn)
1895 - NC Legislature, adjourns for day to mark death of Frederick Douglass
1902 - Dr Harvey Cushing, US brain surgeon, does his 1st brain operation
1903 - Cornerstone laid for US army war college, Washington, DC
1910 - John Galsworthy's "Justice," premieres in London
1911 - Gustav Mahler conducts his last concert
1914 - White Wolf troops attack Zhanjiang, China
1915 - 20th Russian Army corps surrenders
1916 - Germans launched the Battle of Verdun, World War I's single longest battle. It lasted until Dec. 15, 1916, and left more than 1 million soldiers on both sides dead.
1922 - Airship Rome explodes at Hampton Roads Virginia; 34 die
1922 - Great Britain grants Egypt independence
1925 - 1st issue of "New Yorker" magazine published
1927 - Franz Lehar's opera "Zarewitsch," premieres
1930 - Marc Connelly's "Green Pastures," premieres in NYC
1931 - Alka Seltzer introduced
1932 - Camera exposure meter patented, WN Goodwin
1934 - Nicaraguan patriot/guerrilla leader Cesar Augusto Sandino was assassinated by members of the Nicaraguan National Guard and became a martyr.
1946 - Anti-British demonstrations in Egypt
1947 - Edwin H. Land publicly demonstrated his Polaroid Land camera, which could produce a black-and-white photograph in 60 seconds.
1951 - SC House urges "Shoeless Joe" Jackson be reinstated
1952 - Bangladesh Martyrs Day (martyrs of Bengali Language Movement)
1952 - Dick Button performs 1st figure skating triple jump in competition
1953 - F Crick & J Watson discover structure of DNA-molecule
1958 - Egypt-Syria as UAR elect Gamel Nasser president (99.9% vote)
1965 - Black Muslim leader Malcolm X was assassinated at a rally in New York City, by assassins identified as Black Muslims.
1970 - Pathet Lao conquerors Xieng Khuang & Muong Suy
1971 - Series of tornadoes cuts through Miss & La killing 117
1972 - President Richard Nixon becomes 1st US president to visit China as he and his wife, Pat, arrived in Shanghai.
1973 - Israeli fighter planes shot down a Libyan Airlines jet over the Sinai Desert, 106 of the 113 people aboard.
1975 - John Mitchell, HR Haldeman & John D Ehrlichman sentenced to 2-8 yrs for their
roles in Watergate Conspiracy
1977 - 74 Unification Church couples wed in NYC
1981 - Charles Rocket clearly says "fuck" on Saturday Night Live
1982 - "Ain't Misbehavin'" closes at Longacre Theater NYC after 1604 performances
1986 - Larry Wu-tai Chin, the first American found guilty of spying for China, killed himself in his Virginia jail cell.
1986 - AIDS patient Ryan White returns to classes at Western Middle School
1988 - Televangelist Jimmy Swaggert confesses his sins to his congregation
1989 - Opening arguments began in the Iran-Contra criminal trial of former national security aide Oliver North.
1989 - US busts Chinese ring, capture record 820 lbs heroin ($1B st value)
1991 - Neil Simon's "Lost in Yonkers," premieres in NYC
1992 - CIA Director Gates said his agency would "cooperate fully and willingly" with any government effort to declassify documents relating to the Kennedy assassination.
1992 - Actor Paul Reubens, a.k.a. Pee-wee Herman, produced an anti-drug video, fulfilling his sentence on a 1991
indecent exposure charge.
1992 - Kristi Yamaguchi of the United States won the gold medal in ladies' figure skating at the Albertville Olympics; Midori Ito of Japan won the silver, Nancy Kerrigan of the United States the bronze.
1992 - John Frohnmayer announced his resignation as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.
1993 - Two 10-year-old boys were charged with abducting and killing a two-year-old boy in a crime that shocked Brtain and the world.
1994 - Longtime CIA counterintelligence officer Aldrich Ames and his wife were arrested and charged with selling
information to the Soviet Union and Russia.
1995 - A Russian commission estimated as many as 24,400 civilians had died in the two-month uprising in the separatist republic of Chechnya.
1995 - Chicago stockbroker Steve Fossett became the first person to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon, landing in Leader, Saskatchewan, Canada.
1997 - Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr reversed his decision to resign.
1997 - The space shuttle Discovery returned to earth after a mission to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope.
1997 - A bomb exploded at a gay and lesbian nightclub in Atlanta, injuring five people.
2000 - Consumer advocate Ralph Nader announced his entry into the presidential race, bidding for the nomination of the Green Party.
2001 - The investigation into the last-minute presidential pardons granted by Bill Clinton widened with word that Clinton's brother-in-law had been paid to lobby (successfully) for the pardons of two convicted felons and that Clinton's half-brother, Roger -- himself the recipient of a presidential pardon -- had sought pardons for six other people.
2001 - The Supreme Court ruled that state workers cannot use an important federal disability-rights law to win money damages for on-the-job discrimination.
Birthdays Today
1674 - Johann Augustin Kobelius, composer
1690 - Christoph Stoltzenberg, composer
1728 - Peter III, Kiel Germany, Russian Tsar (1762)/husband of Catherine
1794 - Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, president of Mexico -- stormed Alamo
1795 - Francisco Manuel da Silva, composer
1801 - John Henry Newman, England, cardinal/author (Dream of Gerontius)
1802 - George Douglas Ramsey, Bvt Major general (Union Army), died in 1882
1814 - Nicolo Gabrielli, composer
1821 - Charles Scribner, US, music publisher (Scribner Catalog)
1836 - Leo Delibes, Saint-Germain-du-Val France, ballet composer (Coppelia)
1844 - Charles-Marie Widor, Lyons France, composer/prof (Paris Conservatory)
1867 - Otto Hermann Kahn, banker, organized Metropolitan Opera Co
1876 - Constantin Brancusi, Romanian/French sculptor (Princesse X)
1892 - Edna St Vincent Millay, poet/writer/feminist
1893 - Andres Segovia, Linares Spain, classical guitarist
1903 - Anais Nin, Paris, novelist (Winter of Artifice, House of Incense)
1907 - Wystan Hugh Auden, US, poet (Age of Anxiety-Pulitzer 1948)
1914 - Zachary Scott (actor: Flamingo Road, The Young One, The Southerner, Appointment in Honduras)
1915 - Ann (Clara) Sheridan (actress: Appointment in Honduras, The Man Who Came to Dinner)
1921 - Albert Axelrod (fencer) (we don't get many of these)
1922 - Murray "the K" Kaufman, NYC DJ (5th Beatle)
1925 - Jack Ramsey (basketball coach)
1925 - Sam Peckinpah (director: Convoy, The Getaway, The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs)
1927 - Erma Bombeck (Fiste) (humorist, columnist, writer: The Grass Is Always Greener over the Septic Tank)
1927 - Hubert de Givenchy, Beauvais France, fashion designer (Audrey Hepburn)
1933 - Nina Simone (Eunice Waymon) (singer: I Loves You Porgy; song writer: To be Young Gifted and Black)
1936 - Barbara Jordon (lawyer, educator, U.S. Congresswoman)
1937 - Gary Lockwood (Yusolfsky) (actor: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Terror in Paradise, Firecreek)
1937 - Ron Clarke (runner)
1938 - Ernie McMillan (football)
1939 - Richard Beymer (actor: The Diary of Anne Frank, West Side Story, Twin Peaks, The Longest Day)
1940 - Peter Gethin (auto racer)
1940 - Peter McEnery (actor: I Killed Rasputin, Negatives, Victim, Pictures)
1943 - David Geffen (record executive: Geffen Records; partner in famous Dreamworks film production company)
1943 - Jack Billingham (baseball)
1946 - Alan Rickman, actor (Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, Rasputin, Die Hard)
1946 - Danny Grant (hockey)
1946 - John Voss (hockey)
1946 - Tricia Nixon (Cox) (daughter of 37th U.S. President Richard M. Nixon)
1951 - Bill Olds (football)
1953 - Jim Pietrzak (football)
1953 - Ken Huff (football: Washington Redskins Guard: Super Bowl XVIII)
Famous deaths
0556 - Maximianus van Ravenna, bishop (Basilica S Stefano), dies
1554 - Hieronymus Bock, German doctor (founder of modern botany), dies
1595 - Robert Southwell, English Jesuit/poet, hanged
1677 - [Benedictus] Baruch Spinoza, philosopher, dies at 44
1803 - Edward Despard, last person drawn & quartered in England
1852 - Nikolai Gogol, Russian playwright (Dead Soles), dies
1956 - Edwin Franko Goldman, composer, dies at 78
1965 - Malcolm X, [Little], black Moslem leader, assassinated in NYC at 39
1991 - Margot Fonteyn, ballerina (1st lady of British Ballet), dies at 71
1993 - Ferrucci Lamborghini, car maker (Lamborghini), dies at 76
1995 - Robert Bolt, Brit playwright (Doctor Zhivago, Man for All Seasons, Bounty), dies at 70
1996 - Morton Gould, composer, dies at 82
If you have other Birthdays or events to add for this day please E-mail me
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