History of the Day for:
February 21
- 1792: Congress passed the Presidential Succession Act providing for the succession to the office of the President and Vice President in case of removal, death, resignation or disability.
- 1804: The first self-propelled locomotive on rails was demonstrated in Wales by Richard Trevithick.
- 1846: Sarah G. Bagley became the first female telegrapher as she took charge at the newly opened telegraph office in Lowell, Mass.
- 1858: The first electric burglar alarm by Edwin T. Holmes was installed in Boston.
- 1866: Lucy B. Hobbs became the first woman to graduate from a dental school, the Ohio College of Dental Surgery in Cincinnati.
- 1878: The first telephone directory was issued, by the District Telephone Co. of New Haven, Conn.
- 1885: The Washington Monument was dedicated by President Arthur.
- 1916: The longest and bloodiest battle of World War I, the battle of Verdun, began in France.
- 1925: The New Yorker magazine made its debut.
- 1931: The Chicago White Sox and the New York Giants became the first major league teams to meet in a night game. They collected 23 hits in a ten?inning exhibition game played in Houston; Alka Seltzer was introduced.
- 1945: World War II: Japanese Kamikaze planes sink the escort carrier Bismarck Sea and damage the Saratoga.
- 1947: Edwin H. Land first demonstrated his Polaroid Land camera, which used self-developing film that produced a black-and-white photograph in 60 seconds.
- 1965: Black activist Malcolm X was shot to death by assassins identified as Black Muslims as he was about to address a rally of several hundred followers in New York.
- 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 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.
- 1990: Milli Vanilli won a Grammy Award for best new artist. The duo of Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus are later forced to return the award after it is learned they did not actually sing the record.
- 1995: Steve Fossett lands in Leader, Saskatchewan, Canada becoming the first person to make a solo flight across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon.
- 2004: The first European political party organization, the European Greens, is established in Rome.
- 2007: Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi resigns from office. His resignation is rejected by the President of Italy, Giorgio Napolitano.