February 21

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2006 Calendar

February 21 is the 52nd day of a year.

[edit] Events

362 - Athanasius returns to Alexandria
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; League of Nations banned foreign national "volunteers" in the Spanish Civil War.
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 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 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.