TODAY HISTORY LESSON: FEBRUARY 21
1431 England begins trial against Joan of Arc
1595 The Jesuit poet Robert Southwell is hanged for “treason,” being a Catholic.
1613 Michael Romanov, son of Patriarch of Moscow, elected first Russian Tsar of the house of Romanov
1764 John Wilkes thrown out of English House of Commons for “Essay on Women”
1775 As troubles with Great Britain increase, colonists in Massachusetts vote to buy military equipment for 15,000 men
1828 The first issue of the Cherokee Phoenix is printed, both in English and in the newly invented Cherokee alphabet.
1848 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish “The Communist Manifesto”
1849 In the Second Sikh War, Sir Hugh Gough’s well placed guns win a victory over a Sikh force twice the size of his at Gujerat on the Chenab River, assuring British control of the Punjab for years to come.
1857 Congress outlaws foreign currency as legal tender in US
1878 The world’s first telephone book is issued by the New Haven Connecticut Telephone Company containing the names of its 50 subscribers.
1885 The Washington Monument is dedicated in Washington, D.C.
1916 World War I: Battle of Verdun begins with a German offensive, leads to an estimated 1 million casualties and becomes the longest battle of the entire war (9 months)
1940 The Germans begin construction of a concentration camp at Auschwitz.
1947 Edwin Land demonstrated the Polaroid Land Camera to the Optical Society of America in New York City. It was the first camera to take, develop and print a picture on photo paper all in about 60 seconds. The photos were black and white. The camera went on sale the following year.
1956 A grand jury in Montgomery, Alabama indicts 115 in a Negro bus boycott.
1958 The peace symbol is designed by Gerald Holtom
1960 Havana places all Cuban industry under direct control of the government.
1965 El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcom X) is assassinated in front of 400 people.
1972 Richard Nixon arrives in Beijing, China, becoming the first U.S. president to visit a country not diplomatically recognized by the U.S.
1973 Israeli fighter planes shot down a Libyan Airlines jet over the Sinai Desert. More than 100 people were killed.
1981 “Yorkshire Ripper” Peter Sutcliffe, murderer of 13 women, captured
1986 AIDS patient Ryan White returns to classes at Western Middle School
1988 During a live TV broadcast, televangelist Jimmy Swaggart (age 52) admitted to visiting a prostitute, then announced he would be leaving his ministry for an unspecified length of time. (Defrocked in April by the Assemblies of God, he was ordered to stay off TV for a year, but returned after only three months)
1989 U.S. President George H.W. Bush called Ayatollah Khomeini’s death warrant against “Satanic Verses” author Salman Rushdie “deeply offensive to the norms of civilized behavior.”
2002 It was confirmed that Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was dead, allegedly murdered by Islamic militants.
2012 Eurozone finance ministers reached an agreement on a second, 130-billion bailout for Greece to help with the country’s debt crisis.
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
