February 21 in History

Thomas (Finnish: Tuomas; died in 1248) was the third bishop of Finland, and is the first known one. Little is known of his activities. After admitting to having committed several crimes, he resigned in 1245. He died in Visby three years later. He is sometimes associated with an unnamed bishop who was sent letters from Pope Gregory IX in 1229.

The Prussian Confederation (German: Preußischer Bund, Polish: Związek Pruski) was an organization formed on 21 February 1440 at Marienwerder (present-day Kwidzyn) by a group of 53 nobles and clergy and 19 cities in Prussia, to oppose the arbitrariness of the Teutonic Knights. It was based on an earlier similar organization, the Lizard Union established in 1397 by the nobles of Chełmno Land. In 1454, the leader of the Confederation, Johannes von Baysen (Jan Bażyński), formally asked King Casimir IV Jagiellon, to incorporate Prussia into the Kingdom of Poland. This marked the beginning of the Thirteen Years' War between the Order's State and Poland, with the cities co-financing the military costs of the latter.

Michael I (Russian: Михаил Фёдорович Романов, romanized: Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov; 22 July [O.S. 12 July] 1596 – 23 July [O.S. 13 July] 1645) was Tsar of all Russia from 1613 after being elected by the Zemsky Sobor of 1613 until his death in 1645. He was the first tsar of the House of Romanov, which succeeded the House of Rurik following the Time of Troubles. He was the son of Feodor Nikitich Romanov (later known as Patriarch Filaret) and of Xenia Shestova. He was also a first cousin once removed of Feodor I, the last tsar of the Rurik dynasty, through his great-aunt Anastasia Romanovna, who was the mother of Feodor I and first wife of Ivan the Terrible. His accession marked the end of the Time of Troubles. The Ingrian and Polish–Muscovite Wars were brought to an end in 1617 and 1618 respectively, with continued Russian independence confirmed at the expense of territorial losses in the west. Polish king Władysław IV Vasa finally agreed to formally give up his claim to the Russian throne with the Treaty of Polyanovka in 1634. To the east, Cossacks made unprecedented advances in the conquest of Siberia, and Russian explorers had reached the Pacific Ocean (Sea of Okhotsk) by the end of Michael's reign.

The Battle of Fishguard was a military invasion of Great Britain by Revolutionary France during the War of the First Coalition. The brief campaign, on 22–24 February 1797, is the most recent landing on British soil by a hostile foreign force and thus is often referred to as the "last invasion of mainland Britain". The French general Lazare Hoche had devised a three-pronged attack on Britain in support of the Society of United Irishmen. Two forces would land in Britain as a diversionary effort, while the main body would land in Ireland. Adverse weather and ill-discipline halted two of the forces, but the third, aimed at landing in Wales and marching on Bristol, went ahead. After brief clashes with hastily assembled British forces and the local civilian population, the invading force's Irish-American commander, Colonel William Tate, was forced into unconditional surrender on 24 February. In a related naval action, the British captured two of the expedition's vessels, a frigate and a corvette.

A steam locomotive, also known as an iron horse, is a type of locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material to heat water in the locomotive's boiler to the point where it becomes gaseous and its volume increases 1,600 to 1,700 times. Functionally, it is a self-propelled steam engine on wheels.

Ahvenkoski is a historical site in the Kymenlaakso region, Finland, located by the westernmost branch of the river Kymijoki. It consists of the Vähä-Ahvenkoski village in Loviisa and the Ahvenkoski village in Pyhtää. The site is especially known of its rich military history. Between 1743 and 1809, Ahvenkoski was a border crossing of Sweden and the Russian Empire. Ahvenkoski was originally part of the Pyhtää municipality. As the border divided the village in two, the Swedish side became known as Ruotsinpyhtää, the Swedish Pyhtää, which was annexed to the town of Loviisa in 2010.

The Cherokee Phoenix (Cherokee: ᏣᎳᎩ ᏧᎴᎯᏌᏅᎯ, romanized: Tsalagi Tsulehisanvhi) is the first newspaper published by Native Americans in the United States and the first published in a Native American language. The first issue was published in English and Cherokee on February 21, 1828, in New Echota, capital of the Cherokee Nation (present-day Georgia). The paper continued until 1834. The Cherokee Phoenix was revived in the 20th century, and today it publishes both print and Internet versions.

A sewing machine is a machine used to sew fabric and materials together with thread. Sewing machines were invented during the first Industrial Revolution to decrease the amount of manual sewing work performed in clothing companies. Since the invention of the first sewing machine, generally considered to have been the work of Englishman Thomas Saint in 1790, the sewing machine has greatly improved the efficiency and productivity of the clothing industry.

Karl Marx (German: [ˈkaʁl ˈmaʁks]; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, social and political theorist, and revolutionary socialist. He developed the theory of historical materialism, analysing societal structure and change, particularly class struggle under capitalism, and predicting the system's ultimate replacement by communism. Marx co-authored The Communist Manifesto (1848) with Friedrich Engels, and undertook a critique of classical political economy in his magnum opus, Das Kapital (1867–1894). His ideas and their later development, collectively known as Marxism, have had enormous influence on intellectual, political, and social history, and have inspired revolutionary movements in many countries. Born in Trier in the Kingdom of Prussia, Marx earned a doctoral degree in philosophy from the University of Jena in 1841. He became involved in radical journalism and was influenced by the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the Young Hegelians, whose ideas he critiqued in works such as The German Ideology. In Paris, Marx wrote his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and began a close collaboration with Engels. After moving to Brussels, they were active in the Communist League, and in 1848 wrote The Communist Manifesto, which lays out a programme for revolution. Expelled from Germany after the Revolutions of 1848, Marx moved to London, where he wrote his Grundrisse notebooks and the three volumes of Das Kapital. He became a leading figure in the International Workingmen's Association (First International), in which he battled the influence of anarchists led by Mikhail Bakunin and celebrated the Paris Commune of 1871. In his late studies and his Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875), Marx theorized on the transition to a communist society. He died in 1883 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery. Marx's critiques of history, society and political economy hold that human societies develop through class conflict. In the capitalist mode of production, this manifests itself in the conflict between the bourgeoisie, the ruling class that controls the means of production, and the proletariat, the working class that enables these means by selling their labour power for wages. Employing his dialectical approach, Marx observed that capital accumulation produced internal contradictions like previous socioeconomic systems, and predicted that these tensions would lead to its self-destruction. For Marx, the exploitative, alienating, and crisis-prone nature of capitalism would eventuate the working class's development of class consciousness, leading to their conquest of political power and establishment of a classless, stateless, moneyless society constituted by a free association of producers. Marx actively pressed for its realisation, advocating for organised proletarian revolutionary action to achieve human emancipation from economic and social domination. Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures of the modern era, and his work has been both widely lauded and widely criticised. Marxism has exerted major influence on socialist thought and political movements, with Marxist schools of thought such as Marxism–Leninism and its offshoots becoming the guiding ideologies of revolutions that took power in many countries during the 20th century, forming communist states. Marx's work in economics has had a strong influence on modern heterodox theories of labour and capital, and he is often cited as one of the principal architects of modern sociology.

Mariehamn ( mə-REE-ə-hah-mən, Finland Swedish: [mɑriːeˈhɑmn] ; Finnish: Maarianhamina [ˈmɑːriɑnˌhɑminɑ]; Latin: Portus Mariae) is the capital of Åland, an autonomous region of Finland, and the seat of its government and parliament. Mariehamn lies on the main island of Åland. It has about 40% of the region’s population. The city is Swedish-speaking, and most residents have Swedish as their native language. Mariehamn borders Jomala to the north and west and Lemland to the east. The coat of arms of Mariehamn reflects the city’s maritime economy and its linden-lined parks. It was designed by Nils Byman and confirmed in 1951. Mariehamn and all of Åland is a popular summer destination, with about 1.5 million visitors each year.

The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union to preserve slavery in the United States. The South saw slavery as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln as US president in 1860 and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war ended with Union victory, the dissolution of the Confederacy and the national abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans.

The Oakland Tribune was a daily newspaper published in Oakland, California, from 1874 to 2016 when it was merged into the East Bay Times by its owner, Bay Area News Group. The former nameplate of the consolidated newspaper continues to be published every Friday as weekly community supplements.

A telephone directory, commonly called a telephone book, telephone address book or phonebook, is a listing of telephone subscribers in a geographical area or subscribers to services provided by the organization that publishes the directory. Its purpose is to allow the telephone number of a subscriber identified by name and address to be found. It may include a 'yellow pages' section that list businesses by type, architects, beauticians, carpenters, etc., or the Yellow pages may be provided as a separate volume. The slogan "Let Your Fingers Do the Walking", introduced by the Bell System, refers to use of Yellow Pages phone books.

The Washington Monument is a 555-foot (169 m) tall obelisk on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., built to commemorate George Washington, a Founding Father of the United States and the nation's first president. Standing east of the Reflecting Pool and the Lincoln Memorial, the monument is made of bluestone gneiss for the foundation and of granite for the construction. The outside facing consists of three different kinds of white marble, as the building process was repeatedly interrupted. The monument stands 554 feet 7+11⁄32 inches (169.046 m) tall, according to U.S. National Geodetic Survey measurements in 2013 and 2014. It is the third tallest monumental column in the world, trailing only the Juche Tower in Pyongyang, and the San Jacinto Monument in Houston, Texas. It was the world's tallest structure between 1884 and 1889, after which it was overtaken by the Eiffel Tower, in Paris.

Robert James Fitzsimmons (26 May 1863 – 22 October 1917) was a Cornish-New Zealand professional boxer who was the sport's first three-division world champion. In 1897, he knocked out "Gentleman Jim" Corbett to win the World Heavyweight Championship, becoming the first British-born fighter to hold the title. He is also listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the lightest heavyweight champion, weighing just 167 pounds when he won the title. Nicknamed Ruby Robert and The Freckled Wonder, he took pride in his lack of scars and appeared in the ring wearing heavy woollen underwear to conceal the disparity between his trunk and leg-development. After defeating George Gardiner for the world light-heavyweight title on November 25, 1903, Fitzsimmons became the oldest champion at 40, a record that lasted until George Foreman's 1994 WBA heavyweight title win. Considered one of the hardest punchers in boxing history, Fitzsimmons is ranked No. 8 on The Ring magazine's list of 100 greatest punchers of all time. Boxing writer and founder of The Ring magazine, Nat Fleischer, ranked Fitzsimmons the third greatest heavyweight of all time and regarded him as the greatest pound for pound knockout puncher in boxing history.

Ioannina, often called Yanina, is the capital and largest city of the Ioannina regional unit and of Epirus, an administrative region in northwestern Greece.

World War I, or the First World War, also known as the Great War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Central Powers. One of the deadliest conflicts in history, World War I caused 15 to 22 million deaths, including those resulting from war crimes and genocides. The war also contributed to the spread of the Spanish flu pandemic. The conflict saw important developments in weaponry, including machine guns, artillery, aircraft, chemical weapons, and tanks.

The Carolina parakeet, or Carolina conure, is an extinct species of small green neotropical parrot with a bright yellow head, reddish orange face, and pale beak that was native to the Eastern, Midwest, and Plains States of the United States. It was the only indigenous parrot within its range, and one of only three parrot species native to the United States. The others are the thick-billed parrot, now extirpated; and the green parakeet, still present in Texas. A fourth parrot species, the red-crowned amazon, is debated.

Kurt Eisner (German pronunciation: [kʊʁt ˈʔaɪsnɐ]; 14 May 1867 – 21 February 1919) was a German politician, revolutionary, journalist, and theatre critic. As a socialist journalist, he organized the socialist revolution that overthrew the Wittelsbach monarchy in Bavaria in November 1918, which led to him being described as "the symbol of the Bavarian revolution". Eisner subsequently proclaimed the People's State of Bavaria but was assassinated by far-right Bavarian nationalist Anton Graf von Arco auf Valley in Munich on 21 February 1919. He is used as an example of charismatic authority by Max Weber.

The Constituent Assembly of Georgia (Georgian: საქართველოს დამფუძნებელი კრება, romanized: sakartvelos dampudznebeli k'reba) was a national legislature of the Democratic Republic of Georgia which was elected in February 1919 to ratify the Act of Independence of Georgia and enact the Constitution of 1921. The assembly remained active until the Soviet Russian military intervention once again brought Georgia’s independence to an end in March 1921.

Reza Shah Pahlavi was Shah of Iran from 1925 to 1941 and founder of the Pahlavi dynasty. Originally an army officer, he became a politician, serving as minister of war and prime minister of Iran, and was elected shah following the deposition of Ahmad Shah, the last monarch of the Qajar dynasty.

The New Yorker is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for The New York Times. Together with entrepreneur Raoul H. Fleischmann, they established the F-R Publishing Company and set up the magazine's first office in Manhattan. Ross remained the editor until his death in 1951, shaping the magazine's editorial tone and standards, such as its robust fact-checking operation, for which The New Yorker is widely recognized.

The Warlord Rebellion in northeastern Shandong was an uprising of several allied Chinese warlord armies under the leadership of Zhang Zongchang in 1929. The rebels wanted to regain their former territories in Shandong from Liu Zhennian, the man who had defected from Zhang to the Nationalist government in Nanjing during the Northern Expedition. After some initial successes, the rebels were defeated due to the indiscipline of their forces. In the end, the uprising failed to topple Liu Zhennian's rule over eastern Shandong, but resulted in high civilian casualties and widespread destruction at the hands of both sides in the conflict.

The League of Nations was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. The main organisation ceased operations on 18 April 1946 when many of its components were relocated into the new United Nations (UN) which was created in the aftermath of the Second World War. The League of Nations was the precursor organisation to the United Nations.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many engaging in total war on an unprecedented scale. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the deaths of 60 to 75 million people, a majority of whom were civilians. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides, including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes in the Nuremberg trials and the International Military Tribunal for the Far East respectively.

The Brazilian Expeditionary Force (Portuguese: Força Expedicionária Brasileira, FEB), nicknamed Cobras Fumantes (lit. 'the Smoking Snakes'), was a military division of the Brazilian Army and Air Force that fought as part of Allied forces in the Mediterranean Theatre of World War II. It numbered around 25,900 men, including a full infantry division, liaison flight, and fighter squadron. Placed under United States command, Brazilian troops fought primarily in the Italian campaign from September 1944 to May 1945, while the Brazilian Navy and Air Force took part in the Battle of the Atlantic from mid-1942 until the end of the war. The FEB operated mostly at the platoon level, seeing heavy combat at the arduous Gothic Line and during the 1945 final offensive. By the end of the war, it took 20,573 Axis prisoners, including two generals and close to 900 officers. The division lost 948 men killed in action across all three services. Brazil was the only independent South American country to send combat troops overseas during the Second World War. Known for its tenacity and bravery, the FEB was well-regarded by both allies and adversaries; it served with distinction in several battles, most notably at Collecchio, Camaiore, Monte Prano, and Serchio Valley. Brazil's navy and air force played important roles in protecting Allied shipping and crippling Axis maritime power, inflicting disproportionately high losses on enemy munitions, supplies, and infrastructure.

Edwin Herbert Land, ForMemRS, FRPS, Hon.MRI (May 7, 1909 – March 1, 1991) was an American scientist and inventor, best known as the co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation. He invented inexpensive filters for polarizing light, a practical system of in-camera instant photography, and the retinex theory of color vision. His Polaroid instant camera went on sale in 1948 and made it possible for a picture to be taken and developed in one minute or less. Land received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963, the IRI Medal in 1965, the Perkin Medal in 1974, the Harold Pender Award in 1979, and the National Medal of Technology in 1988. He was also renowned outside of his home country, being a member of England's Royal Photographic Society, Royal Institution, and Royal Society (receiving Fellowship of the latter).

The Bengali language movement was a political movement in East Bengal in 1952, advocating the recognition of the Bengali language as a co-lingua franca of the Dominion of Pakistan. The movement wanted to allow its use in government affairs, the continuation of its use as a medium of education, its use in media, currency and stamps, and to maintain its writing in the Bengali alphabet and Bengali script. When the Dominion of Pakistan was formed after the separation of the Indian subcontinent in 1947, when the British left, it was composed of various ethnic and linguistic groups, with the geographically non-contiguous East Bengal province having a mainly ethnic Bengali population. In 1948, the Government of the Dominion of Pakistan ordained as part of Islamization of East Pakistan or East Bengal that Urdu will be the sole federal language, alternately Bengali writing in the Perso-Arabic script or Roman script (Romanisation of Bengali) or Arabic as the state language of the whole of Pakistan was also proposed, sparking extensive protests among the Bengali-speaking majority of East Bengal. Facing rising sectarian tensions and mass discontent with the new law, the government outlawed public meetings and rallies. The students of the University of Dhaka and other political activists defied the law and organised a protest on 21 February 1952. The movement reached its climax when police killed student demonstrators on that day. The deaths provoked widespread civil unrest. After years of conflict, the central government relented and granted official status to the Bengali language in 1956. The Language Movement catalysed the assertion of Bengali national identity in East Bengal and later East Pakistan, and became a forerunner to Bengali nationalist movements, including the 6-Point Movement and subsequently the Bangladesh Liberation War and the Bengali Language Implementation Act, 1987. In Bangladesh, 21 February (Ekushey February) is observed as Language Movement Day, a national holiday. The Shaheed Minar monument was constructed near Dhaka Medical College in memory of the movement and its victims. On 17 November 1999, UNESCO declared 21 February as International Mother Language Day, in tribute to the Language Movement and the ethnolinguistic rights of people around the world.

A number of peace symbols have been used many ways in various cultures and contexts. The dove and olive branch was used symbolically by early Christians and then eventually became a secular peace symbol, popularized by a Dove lithograph by Pablo Picasso after World War II. In the 1950s, the "peace sign", as it is known today (also known as "peace and love"), was designed by Gerald Holtom as the logo for the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), a group at the forefront of the peace movement in the UK, and adopted by anti-war and counterculture activists in the US and elsewhere. The symbol is a superposition of the semaphore signals for the letters "N" and "D", taken to stand for "nuclear disarmament", while simultaneously acting as a reference to Goya's The Third of May 1808 (1814) (aka "Peasant Before the Firing Squad"). The V hand signal and the peace flag also became international peace symbols.

The Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971 is a United Nations treaty designed to control psychoactive drugs such as amphetamine-type stimulants, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, and psychedelics signed in Vienna, Austria on 21 February 1971. The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 did not ban the many newly discovered psychotropics, since its scope was limited to drugs with cannabis, coca and opium-like effects.

Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 until his resignation in 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he represented California in both houses of the United States Congress before serving as the 36th vice president under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1961. His presidency saw the reduction of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, détente with the Soviet Union and China, the Apollo 11 Moon landing, and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Nixon's second term ended early when he became the only U.S. president to resign from office, as a result of the Watergate scandal.

The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from its formation in 1922 until its dissolution in 1991. It was the world's third-most populous country, the largest by area, and bordered twelve other countries. A diverse multinational state, it was organized as a federal union of national republics, with the largest and most populous being the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (SFSR). The world's flagship communist state, it was governed by the Communist Party under Marxism–Leninism, through soviet councils. The Soviet economy was also centrally planned. Its capital and largest city was Moscow.

The Sinai Peninsula, or simply Sinai, is a peninsula in Egypt, and the only part of the country located in West Asia. It is between the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Red Sea to the south, and is a land bridge between Africa and Asia. Sinai has a land area of about 60,000 km2 (23,000 sq mi) and a population of approximately 600,000 people. Administratively, the vast majority of the area of the Sinai Peninsula is divided into two governorates: the North Sinai Governorate and the South Sinai Governorate. Three other governorates span the Suez Canal, crossing into African Egypt: Suez Governorate on the southern end of the Suez Canal, Ismailia Governorate in the center, and Port Said Governorate in the north.

The Suez Canal is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez and dividing Africa and Asia. The 193.3-kilometre-long (120.1-mile) canal is a key trade route between Europe and Asia.

The Watergate scandal, or simply Watergate, was a political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon. On June 17, 1972, operatives associated with Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign were caught burglarizing and planting listening devices in the Democratic National Committee headquarters at Washington, D.C.'s Watergate complex. Nixon's efforts to conceal his administration's involvement led to an impeachment process and ultimately to his resignation in August 1974.

Aldrich Hazen Ames was an American counterintelligence officer with the Central Intelligence Agency who was convicted of espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union and Russia in 1994.

James Stephen Fossett was an American businessman and a record-setting aviator, sailor, and adventurer. He was the first person to fly solo nonstop around the world in a balloon and in a fixed-wing aircraft. He made his fortune in the financial services industry and held world records for five nonstop circumnavigations of the Earth: as a long-distance solo balloonist, as a sailor, and as a solo flight fixed-wing aircraft pilot.

On 21 February 2013, at around 19:00 IST, two blasts occurred in the city of Hyderabad, India. The bombs exploded in Dilsukhnagar, a crowded shopping area, within 100 metres (330 ft) of each other. The first explosion occurred outside a roadside eatery named A1 Mirchi, next to the Anand Tiffin Centre and opposite the Konark movie hall, followed by the second one two minutes later near the Route 107 bus stand close to the Venkatadri theatre. In December 2016, Yasin Bhatkal - the co-founder of Indian Mujahideen, Pakistani national Zia-ur-Rahman, Asadullah Akhtar, Tahaseen Akhtar, and Ajaz Shaikh were sentenced to death by a National Investigation Agency special court for carrying out the attacks under the Arms Act, Explosive Substances Act and Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act. In 2025, the Telangana High Court also upheld their death sentence.

In March and April 2021, before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Armed Forces began massing thousands of personnel and military equipment near Russia's border with Ukraine and in Crimea, representing the largest mobilisation since the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. This precipitated an international crisis due to concerns over a potential invasion. Satellite imagery showed movements of armour, missiles, and heavy weaponry towards the border. The troops were partially withdrawn by June 2021, though the infrastructure was left in place. A second build-up began in October 2021, this time with more soldiers and with deployments on new fronts; by December over 100,000 Russian troops were massed around Ukraine on three sides, including Belarus from the north and Crimea from the south. Despite the Russian military build-ups, Russian officials from November 2021 to 20 February 2022 repeatedly denied that Russia had plans to invade Ukraine.