TODAY IN HISTORY

February 21

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
1974		A report claims that the use of defoliants by the U.S. has scarred Vietnam for a century.