#TodayInHistory – February 21

February 21 – Some important events on this day

1173 👉🏼 Pope Alexander III canonizes Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury
1583 👉🏼 Groningen, Netherlands, begins using Gregorian calendar
1613 👉🏼 Michael Romanov, son of Patriarch of Moscow, elected first Russian Tsar of the house of Romanov
1804 👉🏼 1st locomotive, Richard Trevithick’s, runs for the 1st time, along the tramway of the Penydarren Ironworks in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales
1821 👉🏼 Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire begins
1828 👉🏼 1st American Indian newspaper in US, “Cherokee Phoenix”, published
1842 👉🏼 1st known sewing machine patented in US, John Greenough, Washington, D.C.
1848 👉🏼 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish “The Communist Manifesto” in London
1878 👉🏼 World’s 1st telephone directory issued, 50 subscribers (New Harbor, Connecticut.

1916 👉🏼 World War I: Battle of Verdun begins.
At 7:12 a.m. on the morning of this day, a shot from a German Krupp 38-centimeter long-barreled gun—one of over 1,200 such weapons set to bombard French forces along a 20-kilometer front stretching across the Meuse River—strikes a cathedral in Verdun, France, beginning the Battle of Verdun, which would stretch on for 10 months, become the longest conflict of World War I and leads to an estimated 1 million casualties.

1922 👉🏼 Britain declares Egypt a sovereign state
1972 👉🏼 Richard Nixon becomes the first US President to visit China, normalizing relations between the countries in a meeting with Chinese leader Mao Zedong in Beijing
1974 👉🏼 Yugoslavia adopts constitution

2018 👉🏼 Laykyun Sekkya, the world’s third tallest statue at 116 meters depicting Gautama Buddha completed in Khatakan Taung, Myanmar.