Year 1842
George Greeno received a patent for a sewing machine.
FEBRUARY 21
Daily Historical Chronicle
UPSC CSE • State PSC • SSC CGL Matrix
21 February: What Happened On This Day in History
Curated historical timeline of momentous political pacts, freedom struggle uprisings, constitutional developments, scientific breakthroughs, and prominent birthdays recorded on 21 February.
Observances & Special Days
International Mother Language Day (UNESCO)
Year 1848
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto.
Year 1878
The first telephone directory was published in New Haven, Connecticut.
Year 1915
Armed revolutionary uprisings took place in Lahore, Benaras, and Meerut.
Year 1952
Demonstration of official language status to the Bengali language at Dhaka University in East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh).
Year 1959
Establishment of Press Club of India in New Delhi.
Year 1972
Soviet Unmanned spacecraft Luna 20 landed on the moon.
Year 1999
Former Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and former Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif signed the Lahore Declaration.
Year 2013
At least 17 people were killed and 119 injured in a series of bomb blasts in Hyderabad.
Year 2018
Indian film star Kamal Haasan launched a new political party – Makkal Needhi Mayyam in Tamil Nadu state.
Born 1703
Shah Waliullah Dehlawi, an Islamic scholar.
Born 1829
Ameer Minai, a 19th-century Indian poet.
Born 1878
Mirra Alfassa, a spiritual guru, an occultist and a collaborator of Sri Aurobindo.
Born 1894
Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar, an Indian colloid chemist, academic and scientific administrator.
Born 1899
Suryakant Tripathi, Nirala, an Indian poet, novelist, essayist, and story-writer.
Born 1911
Bhabatosh Datta, a noted Indian economist, academic, and writer.
Born 1924
Gulab Khandelwal, an Indian poet.
Born 1943
David Lawrence Geffen, an American business magnate, and co-founder of DreamWorks Pictures.
Born 1896
Nirala, Indian poet and author (d. 1961)
Died 1677
Baruch Spinoza, a Dutch philosopher.
Died 1829
Kitturu Chennamma, the Queen of the Nayakas of the kingdom of Kittur.
Died 1965
Malcolm X, an African American Muslim minister, and human rights activist.
Died 1991
Nutan, an Indian film actress.
Died 1998
Om Prakash Bakshi, an Indian character actor.
Died 2011
Dwayne McDuffie, an American writer of comic books.