Wednesday, February 21, 2018

TODAY IN HISTORY ― FEBRUARY 21

February 21 is the 52nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 313 days remaining until the end of the year (314 in leap years). This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Tuesday, Thursday or Sunday (58 in 400 years each) than on Friday or Saturday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Monday or Wednesday (56). 

NATIONAL STICKY BUN DAY 


362 – St. Athanasius returns to Alexandria. He was also called Athanasius the Great, Athanasius the Confessor or, primarily in the Coptic Orthodox Church, Athanasius the Apostolic, was the twentieth bishop of Alexandria (as Athanasius I).


1437 – James I of Scotland is assassinated in the Blackfriars monastery, Perth.

1613 – Mikhail Ithe son of Feodor Nikitich Romanov, is unanimously elected Tsar by a national assembly, beginning the Romanov dynasty of Imperial Russia.

1792 – President George Washington signs legislation creating the U.S. Postal Service.

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.


1848 – Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish The Communist Manifesto, commissioned by the Communist League and originally published in London.

1878 – The first telephone directory is issued in New Haven, CT.

1885 – The newly completed Washington Monument is dedicated.

1916 – World War I: In France, the Battle of Verdun begins. An estimate in 2000 found a total of 714,231 casualties, 377,231 French and 337,000 German, an average of 70,000 casualties for each month of the battle. The Battle of Verdun lasted for 303 days and became the longest and one of the most costly battles in human history.

1918 – The last Carolina Parakeet dies in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo.

1919 – German socialist Kurt Eisner is assassinated. His death results in the establishment of the Bavarian Soviet Republic and parliament and government fleeing Munich, Germany.

1925 – The New Yorker publishes its first issue.

1937 – The League of Nations bans foreign national "volunteers" in the Spanish Civil War.

1942 – Lt. Edward O’Hare takes off from the aircraft carrier Lexington in a raid against the Japanese position at Rabaul-and minutes later becomes America’s first flying ace. Orchard Field Airport in Chicago was renamed O'Hare in his honor, but it retained its ORD IATA code.

1945 – World War II: Japanese kamikaze planes sink the escort carrier USS Bismarck Sea and damage the USS 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.


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.

1962 - From Cape Canaveral, Florida, John Hershel Glenn, Jr. is successfully launched into space aboard the Friendship 7 spacecraft on the first orbital flight by an American astronaut.

1965 – Nation of Islam leader, Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little), is assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City.

1972 – United States President Richard Nixon visits the People's Republic of China to normalize Sino-American relations.

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 – The 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.

1986 – France and Britain able to announce that a tunnel would soon become a reality. Trains, cars and buses would be able to speed through the tunnel in less than half an hour. Construction began in December 1987 and the “chunnel” was finally completed in 1994.

1992 – Then 24-year-old John Singleton became the youngest person, and the first African American, ever to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director. Singleton also scored an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

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

2013 – At least 17 people are dead and 119 injured following several bombings in the Indian city of Hyderabad.



TODAY'S BIRTHS

1821 Charles Scribner I, American publisher, founded Charles Scribner's Sons (d. 1871)

1893 Andrés Segovia, Spanish guitarist (d. 1987)

1907 W. H. Auden, English-American poet, playwright, and composer (d. 1973)

1927Hubert de Givenchy, French fashion designer, founded Givenchy

1952 Vitaly Churkin, Russian diplomat, former Ambassador of Russia to the United Nations (d. 2017)



From Wikipedia and Google (images), ex as noted. 

No comments: