On This Day:
Friday February 21, 2014 This is the 52nd day of the year, with 313 days remaining in 2014. Fact of the Day: yawning Yawning is an involuntary action that causes us to open our mouths wide and breathe in deeply. No one knows for sure why we yawn, but there are some interesting theories. One states that yawning is physiological: we yawn to draw in more oxygen or remove a build-up of carbon dioxide. Another theory states that we yawn because we are bored, fatigued, or drowsy, while a third suggests that yawning is evolutionary; according to this theory, our ancestors used yawning to intimidate others by showing their teeth, or to signal a change in activity. The use of yawning as a form of communication would also explain why some people find yawning contagious; 55% of people will yawn within five minutes of seeing someone else yawn. Reading about yawning usually makes people yawn as well. The average yawn lasts about six seconds. All animals appear to yawn, too!
Holidays Feast day of St. Robert Southwell, St. Peter Damian, St. George of Amastris, and St. Germanus of Granfel.
Argentina: Tincunaco Ceremony.
Bangladesh: Martyrs Day.
Events 1795 - Freedom of worship was established in France.
1804 - British engineer Richard Trevithick demonstrated the first steam engine to run on rails.
1838 - Samuel F.P. Morse gave the first public demonstration of his telegraph.
1842 - John J. Greenough of Washington, D.C. patented the sewing machine.
1848 - The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx with the assistance of Friedrich Engels, was published in London by the Communist League.
1866 - Lucy B. Hobbs became the first woman to graduate from a dental school, the Ohio College of Dental Surgery in Cincinnati.
1878 - The first telephone directory was issued, by the District Telephone Company of New Haven, Connecticut.
1885 - The 555-foot-high Washington Monument was dedicated.
1916 - In World War I, the Battle of Verdun in northeast France began when German artillery barraged the French lines.
1925 - The first issue of "The New Yorker" went on sale.
1947 - Edwin H. Land publicly demonstrated his Polaroid Land camera, which could produce a black-and-white photograph in 60 seconds.
1972 - Richard M. Nixon arrived in China for an eight-day official visit. He was the first U.S. president to visit the People's Republic of China since its inception in 1949.
1975 - Former U.S. Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H.R. Haldeman, and John D. Ehrlichman were sentenced to 2.5-8 years in prison for their roles in the Watergate cover-up.
1995 - Chicago stockbroker Steve Fossett became the first person to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon, landing in Saskatchewan, Canada.
2000 - David Letterman returns to The Late Show after having an emergency quintuple heart bypass surgery.
Births 1823 - Pierre Laffitte, French philosopher.
1855 - Alice Elvira Freeman Palmer, American educator, administrator.
1893 - Andrés Segovia, Spanish musician and guitarist.
1903 - Anaïis Nin, French-born American author.
1907 - W.H. Auden, English poet.
1927 - Erma Louise Bombeck, American humorist, columnist, writer.
1977 - Kevin Rose, known for founding the social-bookmarking Web site Digg and as former co-host of the TechTV show The Screen Savers.
Deaths 1941 - Frederick Banting, Canadian physician, recipient of the 1923 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
1965 - El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcom X), black militant leader, assassinated.
1968 - Howard Walter Florey, Australian-born pharmocologist, who shared a 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
1999 - Gertrude B. Elion, American biochemist and pharmacologist, and a 1988 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
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