February 21st is

Sticky Bun Day

International
Mother Language
Day *
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MORE! Andrés Segovia, Barbara Jordan and Malcolm X, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Bangladesh –
Ekushey (Martyr’s Day)/Shahid Dibosh
(Mother Language Day) *

Bhutan – Anniversary of His Majesty

India – Maharashtra: State Elections
Haryana: Maharshi Dayanand Saraswati Jayanti
(founder Vedic reform movement Arya Samaj)

Norway – Birthday of King Harald V

Vanuatu – Dr. W.H. Lini Day
(Father of Independence)
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On This Day in HISTORY

1437 – James I of Scotland is assassinated, stabbed to death by Sir Robert Graham and other Scottish Lairds fed up with his iron rule

1440 – The Prussian Confederation is formed: 19 Prussian cities bands together to oppose the Teutonic Knights, who imposed high taxes on them to pay off reparations after their defeat by the Kingdom of Poland, and to re-arm for more war

1621 – Rebecca Nurse born, first victim of the Salem witch trials in America

1791 – Carl Czerny is born, Austrian composer; his piano study books still widely used

1804 – The first self-propelled locomotive on rails is demonstrated in Wales

1836 – Leo Delibes born, French opera and ballet composer; music for Coppelia

1842 – John J. Greenough patents a sewing machine

1846 – Sarah G Bagley, first recorded woman telegrapher, becomes superintendent of the Lowell MA telegraph office.

1848 – Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish The Communist Manifesto

1855 – Alice Freeman Palmer born, advocate of higher education for women, President of Wellesley College, the first woman president of a nationally known college

1858 – The first electric burglar alarm is installed in Boston MA

1866 – Lucy B. Hobbs is the first woman to graduate from dental school, the Ohio College of Dental Surgery in Cincinnati

1874 – The Oakland Daily Tribune begins publication

1876 – Constantin Brancusi born, Romanian abstract sculptor

1878 – First U.S. telephone directory is distributed to residents in New Haven CT, a single page of fifty names

1893 – Andrés Segovia born, virtuoso Spanish guitarist

1895 – Carl Peter Henrik Dam born, Danish biochemist; discovers vitamin K (1939)

1903 – Anaïs Nin is born in France, Cuban-American author of journals and novels

1904 – The National Ski Association is formed in Ishpeming, MI

1907 –W.H. Auden is born in England, American poet and author

1916 – The WWI Battle of Verdun begins in France, ending on December 18, 1916

1925 – The first issue of  The New Yorker is published

1931 – Alka Seltzer is introduced

1932 – William N. Goodwin patents the camera exposure meter

1933 – Nina Simone born, American singer-songwriter, pianist and activist

1936 – Barbara Jordan born, first African-American woman in Texas elected to the U.S. Congress (1973-1979), Civil Rights leader

1947 – Edwin Land demonstrates the Polaroid Land Camera to the Optical Society of America in New York City, the first camera to take, develop and print a black-and-white picture on photo paper all in about 60 seconds. It goes on sale in 1948 for $89.75

1947 – Olympia Snowe born, Republican U.S. Senator from Maine (1995-2013), cited extreme partisanship leading to Congressional dysfunction when she retired; now co-chairs the Bipartisan Policy Center Commission on Political Reform

1950 – The first International Pancake Race was held in Liberal KS

1958 – The first Gibson Flying V guitar is shipped from a factory in Kalamazoo MI

1965 – Malcolm X is assassinated in New York City at age 39 by assassins identified as Black Muslims

1968 – McGraw-Hill outbids 8 other publishers for the U.S. rights to Hunter Davies’ authorized biography of the Beatles, paying $150,000

1975 – Former U.S. Attorney General John N. Mitchell and H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman are sentenced to 2 ½ to 8 years in prison for the Watergate cover-up

1988 – In Baton Rouge LA, TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart confesses to his congregation  his guilt of an unspecified sin, and that he is leaving the pulpit temporarily – reports link him to a prostitute

1989 – U.S. President George H.W. Bush calls 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 Leader, Saskatchewan, Canada

1999 – International Mother Language Day * announced by UNESCO, commemorates the 1952 Bangladesh “language martyr” students* who were killed during a protest at the University of Dhaka over Urdu being made the sole official language for both areas of then-Pakistan even though 54% of the population of East Pakistan were Bengali; and to celebrate cultural diversity

2001 – U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft asks William H. Webster, former head of the FBI and CIA, to undertake a  “comprehensive independent review of FBI procedures” after allegations that an FBI agent has been spying for the Russians.

2005 – Great Britain’s Royal Navy announces that it will allow same-sex couples to live in family quarters if they are in registered partnership

2013 – Michael Edwards, British poet and professor of comparative literature, becomes the first English person elected to the Académie française

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Visuals

• Sticky buns
•  International Mother Language Day poster
•  International flags
• Stone marker on Rebecca Nurse’s grave
• Karl Marx, workers unite quote 
• Wisdom of the Earth, by Brancusi 
• Anaïs Nin, choosing a man quote
• W.H. Auden, measuring civilizations quote
• Barbara Jordan, what the people want quote
• Olympia Snowe, truths overshadowed quote
• Malcolm X, the press quote
• Michael Edwards, in glasses at center of photo, at the Académie française

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