February 21

February 21 in history:

• 1972: President Richard M. Nixon began his historic visit to mainland China; the event is oddly commemorated in John Adams's opera Nixon in China.

• 1965: Malcolm X, the influential black-nationalist advocate who had split away from the Nation of Islam, was shot and killed in New York City by assassins thought to be connected with that group.

• 1925: The New Yorker magazine first appeared, under the editorial guidance of Harold Ross, who announced that it was not designed for "the little old lady in Dubuque."

• 1916: During World War I, the Germans launched an offensive on the region surrounding Verdun, which lay in the middle of an Allied salient jutting into the German zone in northeastern France; this began one of the longest and bloodiest encounters of the war.

• 1868: President Andrew Johnson dismissed Edwin Stanton as secretary of war, defying the Tenure of Office Act passed by Congress over Johnson's veto; this action spurred the House of Representatives to impeach Johnson three days later.

• 1848: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published the Communist Manifesto in London; intended as a platform statement for a small international workers' party, the Communist League, it began with the introductory words, "A specter is haunting Europe—the specter of Communism."

• 1828: The first Native American newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, began publication; it was written partly in English and partly in the Cherokee syllabary, or alphabet, developed by Sequoya.