Feb 21 - the day the Polaroid was first shown

Almost 800 people died in ethnic rioting which followed elections in Assam.

Today is Monday, February 21, the fifty second day of 2005.
There are 313 days left in the year.

Highlights in history on this date:

Following are some of the major events to have occurred on February 21:

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1431 - Joan of Arc was put on trial

1848 - Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto is published.

1911 - Japan and the United States signed a commercial treaty limiting the flow of Japanese workers to the US
1916 - The German army launched an attack on the French fortress at Verdun. The epic battle lasted until December 18, causing 434,000 German and 543,000 French casualties.
1918 - The Australian cavalry captured the city of Jericho in what was then Jordan.
1925 - First issue of the New Yorker
1944 - In World War Two, Japanese Field Marshal Hajime Sugiyama was replaced as Chief of the Imperial Army General Staff by General Hideki Tojo, the prime minister.
1947 - The first instant camera, the Polaroid, was demonstrated by inventor Edwin Herbert Land in New York.
1965 - Black nationalist leader Malcolm X (Malcolm Little) was murdered in New York as he was about to address a meeting of his Afro-American Unity Organisation.
1972 - Richard Nixon became the first serving US president to visit China.
1973 - A Libyan Boeing 727 was shot down over an Israeli military airfield, killing 104 passengers.
1975 - Three aides of US ex-president Richard Nixon were jailed for obstructing the course of justice in the Watergate affair.
1983 - More than 800 people died in ethnic rioting which followed elections in Assam
1989 - Czech dissident playwright Vaclav Havel was jailed by Prague's communist authorities for incitement and obstruction.
1999 - Father Walter Lini, who guided the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu to independence in 1980, died aged 57.

2001 - Britain uncovered its first cases of foot and mouth disease for 20 years at an abattoir in Essex.
2002 - US President Bush visited China exactly 30 years after a landmark trip by former President Richard Nixon ended over two decades of Sino-US enmity.

Today's birthdays:
Peter III, Tsar of Russia (1728-1762)
Anaïs Nin, writer (1903-1977)
WH Auden, English poet (1907-1973)
Sulabha Deshpande, actress
WilliamPetersen, actor (1953--)
Kelsey Grammar, actor (1955--)
William Baldwin, actor (1963--)
Jennifer Love Hewitt, actress, singer (1979--)