February 21 facts for kids

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).

Events

Up to 1900

• 362 – Athanasius returns to Alexandria.
• 1245 - Bishop Thomas, the first-known Bishop of Finland, is granted resignation after confessing to torture and forgery.
• 1431 – The trial of Joan of Arc begins.
• 1437 - King James I of Scotland is murdered.
• 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.
• 1808 - Without a previous declaration of war, Russian troops enter then-Swedish territory in Eastern Finland, starting the Finnish War, which later results in Russia taking control of Finland.
• 1842 – John J. Greenough patents the sewing machine.
• 1848 – Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish The Communist Manifesto.
• 1858 - Corinth, Greece, is destroyed by an earthquake. The city is rebuilt 6 kilometers away.
• 1862 - American Civil War: The Battle of Valverde is fought near Fort Craig in the New Mexico territory.
• 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".

1901 – 1950

• 1902 - Harvey Cushing carries out the first brain surgery.
• 1907 - British passenger ship Berlin sinks in a storm in the harbor of Hoek van Holland, Netherlands, killing 128 people.
• 1913 - Ioannina is incorporated into the Greek state after the Balkan Wars.
• 1916 – World War I: In France the Battle of Verdun begins.
• 1918 - The last-surviving Carolina Parakeet dies in Cincinnati Zoo, making the species extinct.
• 1919 - German socialist Kurt Eisner is assassinated.
• 1921 - The Republic of Georgia's first Constitution is adopted.
• 1921 - Persian Prime Minister Fathollah Akbar Sepahdar is removed from power in a coup.
• 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.
• 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.

1951 – 2000

• 1952 – Language Martyrs' Day, marking language-revolution in the then East Pakistan through Bengali Language Movement (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.
• 1958 - The peace symbol, commissioned by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in protest against the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, is designed and completed by Gerald Holtom.
• 1960 – Cuban leader Fidel Castro nationalizes all businesses in Cuba.
• 1960 - The first Olympic biathlon is held, during the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, California. Over 20 kilometers, Sweden's Klas Lestander becomes the first Olympic champion in this event.
• 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.
• 1976 - The first Winter Paralympics are held in Ornskoldsvik, Sweden.
• 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.
• 1995 - Jeanne Calment reaches the age of 120 years, the first person known to have reached this age.
• 2000 – David Letterman returns to The Late Show over a month after having an emergency quintuple heart bypass surgery.

From 2001

• 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.
• 2005 - A series of avalanches kill over 100 people in Kashmir.
• 2006 – The United Kingdom's biggest-ever cash robbery is carried out at a depot in Kent, England.
• 2007 - Then-Prime Minister of Italy Romano Prodi attempts to resign, but his resignation is rejected by President of Italy Giorgio Napolitano.
• 2012 - EU finance ministers reach an agreement on a 30 billion-Euro bailout for Greece.
• 2013 - A bombing in Damascus, Syria, kills at least 53 people.
• 2013 - Two bomb blasts in Hyderabad, India, kill 17 people.

Births

Up to 1900

• 1397 - Isabella of Portugal, Duchess of Burgundy (d. 1471)
• 1484 - Elector Joachim I of Brandenburg (d. 1535)
• 1556 - Sethus Calvisius, German composer, chronicler and astronomer (d. 1615)
• 1591 - Gerard Desargues, French mathematician and architect (d. 1661)
• 1594 - John Ernest I, Duke of Saxe-Weimar (d. 1626)
• 1705 - Edward Hawke, 1st Baron Hawke, English admiral (d. 1781)
• 1723 - Louis-Pierre Anquetil, French historian (d. 1808)
• 1728 - Tsar Peter III of Russia (d. 1762)
• 1779 - Friedrich Carl von Savigny, German jurist and historian (d. 1861)
• 1783 - Princess Catherine of Wuerttemberg, Queen Consort of Westphalia (d. 1835)
• 1791 - John Mercer, English dye and fabric chemist (d. 1866)
• 1791 – Carl Czerny, Austrian composer (d. 1857)
• 1794 – Antonio López de Santa Anna, President of Mexico (d. 1876)
• 1801 - John Henry Newman, English theologian and cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church (d. 1890)
• 1815 - Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, French painter (d. 1891)
• 1817 - José Zorilla y Moral, Spanish dramatist (d. 1893)
• 1821 - Rachel Félix, French actress (d. 1858)
• 1835 - Mikhail Mikeshin, Russian artist (d. 1896)
• 1836 - Leo Delibes, French composer (d. 1891)
• 1844 - Charles-Marie Widor, French organist and composer (d. 1937)
• 1856 - Hendrik Petrus Berlage, Dutch architect (d. 1934)
• 1859 - Mikhail Rodzianko, Russian statesman (d. 1924)
• 1860 - Goscombe John, Welsh sculptor (d. 1952)
• 1865 - John Haden Badley, English school founder (d. 1967)
• 1867 - Otto Hermann Kahn, German millionaire (d. 1934)
• 1875 – Jeanne Calment, French supercentenarian, officially the longest-lived human on record (d. 1997)
• 1876 - Pyotr Konchalovsky, Russian painter (d. 1956)
• 1876 - Joseph Meister, first person to be inoculated against Rabies (d. 1940)
• 1878 - Mirra Alfassa, Indian spiritual leader (d. 1973)
• 1880 – Waldemar Bonsels, German writer (d. 1952)
• 1880 - Otto Christman, Canadian soccer player (d. 1963)
• 1881 - Kenneth J. Alford, British composer (d. 1945)
• 1882 - William Jeremiah Tuttle, American freestyle swimmer and water polo player (d. 1930)
• 1885 - Sacha Guitry, French actor (d. 1957)
• 1887 - Korechika Anami, Japanese general (d. 1945)
• 1888 - Clemence Dane, British novelist and playwright (d. 1965)
• 1893 – Andrés Segovia, Spanish guitarist (d. 1987)
• 1895 – Henrik Dam, Danish chemist, won the 1943 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1976)
• 1899 - Bernard Griffin, Archbishop of Westminster (d. 1956)
• 1900 - Madeleine Renaud, French theatre actress (d. 1994)

1901 – 1950

• 1903 - Anaïs Nin, French writer (d. 1977)
• 1903 - Raymond Queneau, French writer (d. 1976)
• 1907 – W. H. Auden, British poet (d. 1973)
• 1909 – Hans Erni, Swiss painter and sculptor (d. 2015)
• 1910 – Douglas Bader, British fighter pilot (d. 1982)
• 1913 - Roger Laurent, Belgian racing driver (d. 1997)
• 1914 – Ilmari Juutilainen, Finnish fighter pilot (d. 1999)
• 1914 - Park Su-geun, South Korean painter (d. 1965)
• 1915 - Godfrey Brown, British athlete (d. 1995)
• 1915 - Ann Sheridan, American actress (d. 1967)
• 1917 - Lucille Bremer, American actress (d. 1996)
• 1917 - Tadd Dameron, American pianist and composer (d. 1965)
• 1917 - Otto Kittel, German World War II flying ace (d. 1945)
• 1919 - Kehat Shorr, Israeli shooting coach (d. 1972)
• 1921 - John Rawls, American philosopher (d. 2002)
• 1921 - Zdenek Miler, Czech animator (d. 2011)
• 1921 - Antonio Maria Javierre Ortas, Spanish cardinal (d. 2007)
• 1924 – Robert Mugabe, former President of Zimbabwe (d. 2019)
• 1924 - Silvano Piovanelli, Italian cardinal (d. 2016)
• 1925 - Tom Gehrels, Dutch-American astronomer (d. 2011)
• 1925 - Jack Ramsay, American basketball coach (d. 2014)
• 1925 – Sam Peckinpah, American movie director (d. 1984)
• 1927 – Erma Bombeck, American writer and humorist (d. 1996)
• 1927 – Hubert de Givenchy, French fashion designer (d. 2018)
• 1927 - Pierre Mercure, Canadian musician and composer (d. 1966)
• 1929 - Chespirito, Mexican actor, director and screenwriter (d. 2014)
• 1933 – Nina Simone, American singer and musician (d. 2003)
• 1934 – Rue McClanahan, American actress (d. 2010)
• 1935 - Mark McManus, Scottish actor (d. 1994)
• 1935 - Jean Pelletier, 37th Mayor of Quebec City
• 1936 – Barbara Jordan, American politician (d. 1996)
• 1937 – King Harald V of Norway
• 1937 - Ron Clarke, Australian athlete and politician (d. 2015)
• 1937 - Jilly Cooper, English novelist
• 1937 - Gary Lockwood, American actor
• 1938 - Bobby Charles, American singer-songwriter (d. 2010)
• 1938 – Lester Bird, Antiguan politician, former Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda
• 1940 - John Lewis, American politician and civil rights activist (d. 2020)
• 1942 – Margarethe von Trotta, German movie director
• 1942 - Magnus Linklater, Scottish newspaper editor
• 1943 - David Geffen, American record producer
• 1944 - Kitty Winn, American actress
• 1945 - Paul Newton, British musician (Uriah Heep)
• 1945 – Walter Momper, German politician, former Mayor of Berlin
• 1946 - Tyne Daly, American actress
• 1946 - Anthony Daniels, British actor
• 1946 – Alan Rickman, British actor (d. 2016)
• 1947 - Victor Sokolov, Russian journalist (d. 2006)
• 1947 – Olympia Snowe, American politician, former United States Senator for Maine
• 1947 - Marcel Paquet, Belgian philosopher (d. 2014)
• 1948 - Bill Slayback, American baseball player (d. 2015)
• 1949 - Larry Drake, American actor (d. 2016)
• 1949 - Ronnie Hellström, Swedish footballer
• 1949 - Jerry Harrison, American musician
• 1950 - Hakan Nesser, Swedish writer

1951 – 1975

• 1951 - Vince Welnick, American musician
• 1952 - Jean-Jacques Burnel, British musician
• 1952 - Vitaly Churkin, Russian diplomat (d. 2017)
• 1952 - Igor Levitin, Russian political figure
• 1953 - William Petersen, American actor
• 1953 - Christine Ebersole, American singer
• 1954 - Ivo Van Damme, Belgian athlete (d. 1976)
• 1954 - Rudolf Simek, Austrian philologist
• 1955 – Kelsey Grammer, American actor
• 1956 - Ha Jin, Chinese-American writer
• 1957 - Nikolay Rastorguyev, Russian singer
• 1958 - Mary Chapin Carpenter, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
• 1958 - Jack Coleman, American actor
• 1958 - Alan Trammell, American baseball player and manager
• 1960 - Steve Wynn, American singer-songwriter
• 1960 - Plamen Oresharski, 52nd Prime Minister of Bulgaria
• 1961 - Christopher Atkins, American actor
• 1962 - Vanessa Feltz, British television presenter
• 1962 - Chuck Palahniuk, American writer
• 1962 - David Foster Wallace, American writer (d. 2008)
• 1963 - William Baldwin, American actor
• 1964 - Huw Higginson, British actor
• 1964 - Mark Kelly, American astronaut
• 1964 - Scott Kelly, American astronaut
• 1964 - Jane Tomlinson, British cancer campaigner (d. 2007)
• 1967 - Leroy Burrell, American athlete
• 1969 - James Dean Bradfield, Welsh musician (Manic Street Preachers)
• 1969 - Tony Meola, American footballer
• 1969 - Chen Wei, Chinese dissident
• 1970 - Michael Slater, Australian cricketer
• 1973 - Heri Joensen, Faroese musician
• 1973 - Brian Rolston, American ice hockey player
• 1974 - Ivan Campo, Spanish footballer
• 1974 - Roberto Heras, Spanish cyclist

From 1976

• 1976 – Michael McIntyre, British comedian
• 1977 - Steve Francis, American basketball player
• 1979 – Pascal Chimbonda, French footballer
• 1979 - Shane Gibson, American guitarist (d. 2014)
• 1979 – Jennifer Love Hewitt, American actress
• 1979 - Jordan Peele, American actor, director and screenwriter
• 1980 – Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, King of Bhutan
• 1980 - Tiziano Ferro, Italian singer-songwriter and producer
• 1981 - Jun Kaname, Japanese actor
• 1982 - Andre Barrett, American basketball player
• 1983 - Lusine Gevorkyan, Russian-Armenian singer
• 1984 - Andreas Seppi, Italian tennis player
• 1984 – David Odonkor, German footballer
• 1985 – Georgios Samaras, Greek footballer
• 1986 - Prince Amedeo of Belgium, Archduke of Austria-Este
• 1986 – Charlotte Church, Welsh singer and TV presenter
• 1987 – Ellen Page, Canadian actress
• 1987 - Ashley Greene, American model and actress
• 1987 - Carlos Carmona, Chilean footballer
• 1987 - Eniola Aluko, English footballer
• 1987 - Tuppence Middleton, English actress
• 1988 - Matthias de Zordo, Spanish footballer
• 1989 - Josh Walker, English footballer
• 1989 – Corbin Bleu, American actor
• 1989 - Kristin Herrera, American actress
• 1989 - Scout Taylor-Compton, American actress
• 1990 - Mattias Tedenby, Swedish ice hockey player
• 1990 - David Addy, Ghanaian footballer
• 1991 - Riyad Mahrez, Algerian footballer
• 1992 – Phil Jones, British footballer
• 1996 - Sophie Turner, English actress
• 2001 - Isabella Acres, American actress

Deaths

Up to 1900

• 4 - Gaius Caesar, heir to Augustus Caesar
• 1437 – King James I of Scotland (b. 1394)
• 1513 – Pope Julius II (b. 1443)
• 1543 – Ahmed Gragn, Sultan of Adal
• 1554 - Hieronymus Bock, German botanist (b. 1498)
• 1572 - Cho Shik, Korean poet and scholar (b. 1501)
• 1677 - Baruch Spinoza, Dutch philosopher (b. 1632)
• 1715 - Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore, Governor of the province of Maryland (b. 1637)
• 1730 - Pope Benedict XIII (b. 1649)
• 1788 - Johann Georg Palitzsch, German astronomer (b. 1723)
• 1821 - Georg Friedrich von Martens, German diplomat (b. 1756)
• 1824 – Eugène de Beauharnais, son of Napoleon Bonaparte's wife, Josephine (b. 1781)
• 1846 - Emperor Ninko of Japan (b. 1800)
• 1861 - Lars Levi Laestadius, Swedish missionary (b. 1800)
• 1862 - Justinus Kerner, German poet (b. 1786)
• 1894 - Gustave Caillebotte, French painter (b. 1848)
• 1900 - Charles Piazzi Smyth, Scottish astronomer (b. 1819)

1901 – 2000

• 1901 - George Francis Fitzgerald, Irish mathematician (b. 1851)
• 1919 – Kurt Eisner, Bavarian socialist (b. 1867)
• 1926 – Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, Dutch physicist (b. 1853)
• 1934 - Augusto Nicolas Calderon Sandino, Nicaraguan revolutionary (b. 1895)
• 1938 – George Ellery Hale, American astronomer (b. 1868)
• 1941 – Frederick Banting, Canadian doctor, won the 1923 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, (b. 1891)
• 1944 – Ferenc Szisz, Hungarian-born French race car driver (b. 1873)
• 1945 – Eric Liddell, Scottish runner (b. 1902)
• 1958 - Duncan Edwards, English footballer (b. 1936)
• 1965 – Malcolm X, American civil rights activist (b. 1925)
• 1967 – Charles Beaumont, American writer (b. 1929)
• 1968 – Howard Walter Florey, Australian pharmacologist (b. 1898)
• 1972 - Zhang Guohua, Chinese general and politician (b. 1914)
• 1972 - Bronislava Nijinska, Polish-Russian ballet dancer (b. 1891)
• 1974 – Tim Horton, Canadian hockey player (b. 1930)
• 1980 - Mario Lanzi, Italian athlete (b. 1914)
• 1982 - Gershom Scholem, German-born Israeli Jewish philosopher (b. 1897)
• 1984 – Michail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov, Russian novelist (b. 1905)
• 1986 - Shigechiyo Izumi, Japanese centenarian, previously thought to have been the oldest man ever (b. probably in 1890)
• 1987 - Noel Odell, British mountaineer (b. 1890)
• 1989 - Alex Thepot, French footballer (b. 1906)
• 1991 – Dame Margot Fonteyn, British ballet dancer (b. 1919)
• 1994 - Johannes Steinhoff, German pilot and commander (b. 1913)
• 1995 – Calder Willingham, writer (b. 1922)
• 1996 – Morton Gould, American composer (b. 1913)
• 1997 – Josef Posipal, German footballer (b. 1927)
• 1999 - Walter Lini, 1st Prime Minister of Vanuatu (b. 1939)
• 1999 – Ilmari Juutilainen, Finnish fighter pilot (b. 1914)
• 1999 – Gertrude B. Elion, American scientist (b. 1918)

From 2001

• 2002 – John Thaw, British actor (b. 1942)
• 2003 - Eddie Thomson, Scottish footballer (b. 1947)
• 2004 – John Charles, Welsh footballer (b. 1931)
• 2005 - Ara Berberian, American opera singer (b. 1930)
• 2008 - Sunny Lowry, first British woman to swim across the English Channel (b. 1911)
• 2008 - Sufi Abu Taleb, Egyptian politician (b. 1925)
• 2008 – Emmanuel Sanon, Haitian footballer (b. 1951)
• 2013 - Bruce Millan, British politician (b. 1927)
• 2013 - Bob Godfrey, British animator (b. 1921)
• 2014 - Sakis Boulas, Greek singer-songwriter and actor (b. 1954)
• 2014 - Georgette Rejewski, Dutch actress (b. 1910)
• 2014 - Francesco Di Giacomo, Italian singer (b. 1947)
• 2014 - Stanley Brotman, American federal judge (b. 1924)
• 2014 - Matthew Robinson, Australian Paralympic snowboarder (b. 1985)
• 2015 - Clark Terry, American jazz trumpeter (b. 1920)
• 2015 - Sadeq Tabatabaei, Iranian politician (b. 1943)
• 2016 - Eric Brown, Scottish test pilot (b. 1919)
• 2017 - Kenneth Arrow, American economist (b. 1921)
• 2017 - Douglas Coe, American religious leader (b. 1928)
• 2017 - Desmond Connell, Irish cardinal (b. 1926)
• 2017 - Cosmo Haskard, Irish-born British Governor of the Falkland Islands (b. 1916)
• 2017 - Bengt Gustavsson, Swedish footballer (b. 1928)
• 2017 - Jeanne Martin Cissé, Guinean teacher and politician (b. 1926)
• 2017 - Brunella Bovo, Italian actress (b. 1932)
• 2017 - Ion Croitoru, Canadian professional wrestler (b. 1963)
• 2017 - Edwin Kessler, American atmospheric scientist (b. 1928)
• 2018 - Billy Graham, American evangelist (b. 1918)
• 2018 - Emma Chambers, English actress (b. 1964)

Observances

• International Mother Language Day
• Language Movement Day (Bangladesh)
• Biikebrennen in Northern Schleswig-Holstein (Germany) and Southern Jutland (Denmark)

See also

In Spanish: 21 de febrero para niños