HISTORY AT GLANCE
TODAY is Tuesday, February 21, the 52nd day of 2017. There are 313 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date: 1921 – Reza Shah takes control of Tehran during a successful
coup 1937 – The League of Nations bans foreign national
“volunteers” in the Spanish Civil War. 1945 – World War II: Japanese kamikaze planes sink the escort carrier USS Bismarck Sea and damage the USS Saratoga. 1947 – In New York City, Edwin Land demonstrates the first “instant camera”, the Polaroid Land Camera, to a meeting of the Optical Society of America. 1948 – NASCAR is incorporated. 1952 – The British government, under Winston Churchill, abolishes identity cards in the UK to “set the people free”. 1952 – The Bengali Language Movement protests occur at the University of Dhaka in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). 1958 – The peace symbol, commissioned by Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in protest against the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, is designed and completed by Gerald Holtom. 1965 – Malcolm X is assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom in
New York City. 1971 – The Convention on Psychotropic Substances is signed
at Vienna. 1972 – United States President Richard Nixon visits the People’s Republic of China to normalize SinoAmerican 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. 1975 – Watergate scandal: Former United States Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman are sentenced to prison. 1986 – Shigeru Miyamoto starts the Legend of Zelda
franchise Legend of Zelda 1995 – Steve Fossett lands in Leader, Saskatchewan, Canada becoming the first person to make a solo flight across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon. 2013 – At least 17 people are dead and 119 injured following
several bombings in the Indian city of Hyderabad.