NOW & THEN
21 FEBRUARY
1613: Michael Romanov, son of Patriarch of Moscow, was elected Tsar of Russia, thus founding House of Romanov.
1795: Dutch surrendered Indian Ocean island of Ceylon to British.
1804: A self-powered railway locomotive was demonstrated in Wales by Richard Trevithick.
1901: First republic of Cuba was founded.
1916: Battle of Verdun in France began, the longest and bloodiest battle of the First World War, with more than one million killed before Petain achieved victory in June.
1921: Premiere of Charlie Chaplin’s film The Kid.
1931: Leon Trotsky was stripped of Soviet citizenship.
1951: Canberra, Britain’s first jet bomber, crossed the Atlantic to Canada in four hours 40 minutes.
1952: Identity cards were abolished in Britain.
1956: The Duke of Edinburgh’s award scheme for enterprising young people was inaugurated.
1965: Malcolm X, American black Islamic militant leader, was murdered in New York, while making a speech.
1963: Soviet Union warned United States that an American attack on Cuba would mean world war.
1972: United States president Richard Nixon arrived in China on historic visit.
1975: Thirty-two-member United Nations Commission on Human Rights, in Geneva, accused Israel of violating “basic norms of international law” in Arab territories it occupied.
1975: John Ehrlichman, HR Haldeman and John Mitchell were sentenced in United States after the Watergate affair.
1986: South Africa government opened “whites only” districts of Johannesburg and Durban to all races – first break with apartheid policy of segregated business areas.
1988: The grave of Boadicea, the warrior queen who fought the Romans in Britain nearly 2,000 years ago, was located by archaeologists under Platform 8 at King’s Cross railway station, London.
1991: Government accused by Commons select committee of “seriously misleading” MPS over grants of £38million “sweeteners” during sale of £150 million Rover Group to British Aerospace in 1988.
1992: United States Navy said its official farewell to the Holy Loch submarine base.
1995: Andrew Wilson survived for 62 hours in the snow after getting lost while skiing at Glenshee, Perthshire.
1997: Three men jailed for the murder of paperboy Carl Bridgewater walked free after serving nearly 19 years in prison when the Court of Appeal in London quashed their convictions, which it said were “unsafe”.
2002: Over five million television viewers in Britain watched the all-scots curling team of Rhona Martin, Fiona Macdonald, Janice Rankin, Debbie Knox and Margot Morton win the gold medal at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Britain’s first gold for 18 years.
2004: The first European political party organisation, the European Greens, was established in Rome.