A few of the great historical events that happened today in history, February 21st!

1595	The Jesuit poet Robert Southwell is hanged for “treason” being a Catholic.
1631	Michael Romanov, son of the Patriarch of Moscow, is elected Russian Tsar.
1744	The British blockade of Toulon is broken by 27 French and Spanish warships attacking 29 British ships.
1775	As troubles with Great Britain increase, colonists in Massachusetts vote to buy military equipment for 15,000 men.
1797	Trinidad, West Indies surrenders to the British.
1828	The first issue of the Cherokee Phoenix is printed, both in English and in the newly invented Cherokee alphabet.
1848	Former President John Quincy Adams suffered a stroke on the floor of the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. (He died two days later.)
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. Sir Hugh Gough
1862	The Texas Rangers win a Confederate victory in the Battle of Val Verde, New Mexico.
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.
1905	The Mukden campaign of the Russo-Japanese War, begins.
1907	Poet W.H. Auden was born in York, England.
1916	The battle of Verdun begins with an unprecedented German artillery barrage of the French lines.
1925	The first issue of New Yorker magazine hits the newsstands.
1940	The Germans begin construction of a concentration camp at Auschwitz.
1944	Hideki Tojo becomes chief of staff of the Japanese army.
1947	Edwin H. Land publicly demonstrated his Polaroid Land camera, which could produce a black-and-white photograph in 60 seconds. Edwin H. Land
1949	Nicaragua and Costa Rica sign a friendship treaty ending hostilities over their borders.
1951	The U. S. Eighth Army launches Operation Killer, a counterattack to push Chinese forces north of the Han River in Korea.
1956	A grand jury in Montgomery, Alabama indicts 115 in a Negro bus boycott.
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. Richard Nixon in China
1973	Israeli fighter planes shot down a Libyan Airlines jet over the Sinai Desert, killing more than 100 people.
1974	A report claims that the use of defoliants by the U.S. has scarred Vietnam for a century.
1975	Former Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman were sentenced to 2 1/2 to 8 years in prison for their roles in the Watergate cover-up.
1988	TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart tearfully confessed to his congregation in Baton Rouge, La., that he was guilty of an unspecified sin, and said he was leaving the pulpit temporarily. (Reports linked Swaggart to a prostitute.)
1989	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.”
1995	Chicago stockbroker Steve Fossett became the first person to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon, landing in Canada.
2011	Deep cracks opened in Moammar Gadhafi’s regime, with Libyan government officials at home and abroad resigning, air force pilots defecting and a major government building ablaze after clashes in the capital of Tripoli.

Today in History facts are from various sites including, but not limited too: the History Channel, The New York Times, WHG Historynet.com, and HistoryOrb.com.