On Feb. 21, 1794, Mexican revolutionary Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was born. He became president of Mexico and led the attack on the Alamo.
In 1838 American inventor Samuel Morse gave his first public demonstration of the telegraph.
In 1846 Sarah Bagley became the first female telegrapher, taking charge at the newly opened telegraph office in Lowell, Mass.
In 1866 Lucy Hobbs became the first woman to graduate from a dental school, the Ohio College of Dental Surgery in Cincinnati.
In 1878 the first telephone directory was issued, by the District Telephone Company of New Haven, Conn.
In 1885 the Washington Monument was dedicated.
In 1893 classical guitarist Andres Segovia was born in Linares, Spain.
In 1903 writer Anais Nin was born in Neuilly, France.
In 1907 poet W.H. Auden was born in York, England.
In 1916 the World War I Battle of Verdun began in France.
In 1925 The New Yorker magazine made its debut.
In 1947 Edwin Land publicly demonstrated his Polaroid Land camera, which could produce a black-and-white photograph in 60 seconds.
In 1965 former Black Muslim leader Malcolm X, 39, was shot to death in New York by assassins identified as Black Muslims.
In 1973 Israeli fighter planes shot down a Libyan Airlines jet over the Sinai Desert, killing more than 100 people.
In 1974 hockey player Tim Horton, for whom the Canadian chain of doughnut restaurants Tim Hortons is named, died in a car accident outside St. Catharines, Ontario; he was 44.
In 1975 former Atty. Gen. John Mitchell and former White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman were sentenced to 2 1/2 to 8 years in prison for their roles in the Watergate cover-up.
In 1986 Larry Wu-tai Chin, the first American found guilty of spying for China, killed himself in his Virginia jail cell.
In 1988 television evangelist Jimmy Swaggart tearfully confessed to his congregation in Baton Rouge, La., that he was guilty of an unspecified sin, and said he was leaving the pulpit temporarily.
In 1992 Kristi Yamaguchi won the gold medal in women’s figure skating at the Winter Olympics in Albertville, France; Midori Ito of Japan won the silver and Nancy Kerrigan won the bronze.
In 1995 the United States and Mexico signed an agreement to unlock $20 billion in U.S. support to stabilize the peso, but under tough conditions. Also in 1995 Chicago investment millionaire Steve Fossett became the first person to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon, landing in Leader, Saskatchewan.
In 1996 the Space Telescope Science Institute announced that photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope confirmed the existence of a black hole equal to the mass of 2 billion suns in a galaxy 30 million light-years away.
In 1997 Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr reversed his decision to resign.
In 2000 consumer advocate Ralph Nader announced his entry into the presidential race, bidding for the nomination of the Green Party.
In 2001 the Supreme Court ruled that state workers cannot use an important federal disability-rights law to win money damages for on-the-job discrimination.
In 2002 the State Department declared that Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was dead, a month after he had been abducted by Islamic extremists in Pakistan. Also in 2002, at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, American Sarah Hughes jumped from fourth to first to win the women’s figure-skating gold after a near-flawless performance.
In 2003 chief UN inspector Hans Blix ordered the destruction of dozens of Iraqi missiles with ranges that violated UN limits. Also in 2003 Michael Jordan became the first 40-year-old in NBA history to score 40 or more points, getting 43 in the Washington Wizards’ 89-86 win over the New Jersey Nets.
In 2005 Israel freed 500 Palestinian prisoners in a goodwill gesture.
In 2006 Harvard University president Lawrence Summers announced his resignation.
