Today is Feb. 21. On this date in:
1613
Mikhail Romanov, 16, was unanimously chosen by Russia’s national assembly to be czar, beginning a dynasty lasting three centuries.
1885
The Washington Monument was dedicated.
1911
Composer Gustav Mahler, despite a fever, conducted the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in what turned out to be his final concert (he died the following May).
1916
The World War I Battle of Verdun began in France as German forces attacked; the French were able to prevail after 10 months of fighting.
1918
Incas, the last known Carolina parakeet in the world, died at the Cincinnati Zoo.
1945
During the World War II Battle of Iwo Jima, the escort carrier USS Bismarck Sea was sunk by kamikazes with the loss of 318 men.
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. (Three men were convicted of murder and imprisoned; all were eventually paroled.)
1972
President Richard M. Nixon began his historic visit to China as he and his wife, Pat, arrived in Beijing.
1975
Former Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman were sentenced to 21/2 to eight years in prison for their roles in the Watergate cover-up (each ended up serving a year and a-half).
1986
Larry Wu-tai Chin, the first American found guilty of spying for China, killed himself in a Virginia jail.
1997
A bomb exploded at the Otherside Lounge, a gay and lesbian nightclub in Atlanta, injuring five people. (Eric Rudolph later admitted targeting the club.)
2013
Drew Peterson, the Chicago-area police officer who gained notoriety after his much-younger fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, vanished in 2007, was sentenced to 38 years in prison for murdering his third wife, Kathleen Savio.
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