TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT, FEB. 21 1975

Former Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman were sentenced to 2 1⁄2 to 8 years in prison for their roles in the Watergate cover-up.

ALSO ON THIS DATE 1613

Mikhail Romanov, 16, was unanimously chosen by Russia’s national assembly to be czar, beginning a dynasty that would last three centuries.

1862

Nathaniel Gordon became the first and only American slavetrader to be executed under the U.S. Piracy Law of 1820 as he was hanged.

1945

During the World War II Battle of Iwo Jima, the escort carrier USS Bismarck Sea was sunk by kamikazes.

1958

The USS Gudgeon became the first American submarine to complete a round-theworld cruise.

1965

Black Muslim leader and civil rights activist Malcolm X, 39, was shot to death inside Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom in New York by assassins identified as members of the Nation of Islam.

1972

President Richard M. Nixon began his historic visit to China.

1973

Israeli fighter planes shot down Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 over the Sinai Desert, killing all but five of the 113 people on board.

1995

Chicago adventurer Steve Fossett became the first person to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean by balloon.

2013

Drew Peterson, the Chicagoarea police officer who gained notoriety after his muchyounger fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, vanished in 2007, was sentenced to 38 years in prison for murdering his third wife, Kathleen Savio.