This Day in History on 21st February

The historical events hold a lot of value for aspirants who are sitting for UPSC competitive exams including the IAS Exam. 

On this page, we will list all historical events that occurred on 21st February. The students can refer to them while preparing for all competitive exams and banking exams.

Important Days

International Mother Language Day (UNESCO)


Important Events

1842: George Greeno received a patent for a sewing machine.

1848: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto.

1878: The first telephone directory was published in New Haven, Connecticut.

1915: Armed revolutionary uprisings took place in Lahore, Benaras, and Meerut.

1952: Demonstration of official language status to the Bengali language at Dhaka University in East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh).

1959: Establishment of Press Club of India in New Delhi.

1972: Soviet Unmanned spacecraft Luna 20 landed on the moon.

1999: Former Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and former Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif signed the Lahore Declaration.

2013: At least 17 people were killed and 119 injured in a series of bomb blasts in Hyderabad.

2018: Indian film star Kamal Haasan launched a new political party – Makkal Needhi Mayyam in Tamil Nadu state.

Birth/Birth Anniversary

1703: Shah Waliullah Dehlawi, an Islamic scholar.

Mirra Alfassa

1829: Ameer Minai, a 19th-century Indian poet.

1878: Mirra Alfassa, a spiritual guru, an occultist and a collaborator of Sri Aurobindo.

1894: Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar, an Indian colloid chemist, academic and scientific administrator.

Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar
Nirala

1899: Suryakant Tripathi, Nirala, an Indian poet, novelist, essayist, and story-writer.

1911: Bhabatosh Datta, a noted Indian economist, academic, and writer.

1924: Gulab Khandelwal, an Indian poet.

1943: David Lawrence Geffen, an American business magnate, and co-founder of DreamWorks Pictures.

1896: Nirala, Indian poet and author (d. 1961)

Death/ Death Anniversary

1677: Baruch Spinoza, a Dutch philosopher.

1829: Kitturu Chennamma, the Queen of the Nayakas of the kingdom of Kittur.

Kittur Chennamma

1965: Malcolm X, an African American Muslim minister, and human rights activist.

1991: Nutan, an Indian film actress.

1998: Om Prakash Bakshi, an Indian character actor.

2011: Dwayne McDuffie, an American writer of comic books.

Further Reading

Month-wise This Day in History