Deaths
which occurred on a February 21:2003 Two barge workers at the Port Mobil Terminal oil storage facility, at Nervy NY on Staten Island near the Outerbridge Crossing to New Jersey, after the 10:10 explosion of a Bouchard Transportation barge which was unloading its 16'000'000 liters of unleaded gasoline. The barge sinks after the fire spreads to another barge nearby. [photo >]
2002 Natalie Gingerelli, 22, Susan Kerian, 42, Thomas Luyster, 27, and Suzanne LaVecchia, 27, murdered in Dover NJ by retired Newark police officer John W. Mabie, 70, grandfather of Gingerelli. Mabie starts by locking up his wife in their basement. Then he goes across the street to the house of his mother-in-law, before whole eyes he kills Gingerelli with a gun and a knife. Then he goes to the nearby homes of single mother Kerian, and of engaged couple Luyster and LaVecchia, shooting all three. Finally Mabie returns to his front porch and waited for police. When they arrive, he admits that he has killed four people and describes their locations for the officers.
2002: 32 policemen out of 75 on duty late in the night at a police post at Sitalpati, Sallyan district, Nepal, in an attack by “Maoists” guerrillas.
1997 Michael Hollings, 75, catholic priest / crusader.
1992 Roberto D'Aubuisson El Salvadorian founder (ARENA)
1990 Schoenberg, mathematician.
1986 Larry Wu-tai Chin, the first US citizen found guilty of spying for China, kills himself in his Virginia prison cell.
1984 Michail A Sholochov Russian writer (Ocean Don, Nobel 1965)
1973: 108 persons as Israeli fighter planes shoot down a Libyan Airlines jet over the Sinai Desert.
| ^
1967 Bernard Fall
and a Marine photographer, killed by mine in Vietnam Writer and historian Bernard B. Fall is killed by a Viet Cong mine while accompanying a US Marine patrol along the seacoast about 23 km northwest of Hue, on a road known as the "Street Without Joy" (which Fall had used for the title of one of his books about the war). A professor of international relations at Howard University in Washington, D.C., Fall was a French citizen and noted expert on the war in Vietnam. He was killed while gathering material for his eighth book. A US Marine photographer was also killed. |
| ^
1965
Malcolm X, assassinated by Blacks. In New York City, Malcolm X, 39, Black US nationalist and religious leader, is assassinated by rival Black Muslims when about to address his Organization of Afro-American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights. Born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1925, Malcolm was the son of James Earl Little, a Baptist preacher who advocated the black nationalist ideals of Marcus Garvey. Threats from the Ku Klux Klan forced the family to move to Lansing, Michigan, where his father continued to preach his controversial sermons despite continuing threats. In 1931, Malcolm’s father was brutally murdered by the white supremacist Black Legion, and Michigan authorities refused to prosecute those responsible. In 1937, Malcolm was taken from his family by welfare caseworkers and, by the time he had reached high school age, dropped out of school and moved to Boston, where he increasingly became involved in criminal activities. In 1946, at the age of twenty-one, Malcolm was sent to prison on a burglary conviction. It was there that he encountered the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam, whose members were popularly known as Black Muslims. The Nation of Islam advocated African-American nationalism and racial separatism and condemned Americans of European descent as immoral "devils." Muhammad’s teachings had a strong effect on Malcolm, who entered into an intense program of self-education and took the last name of "X" to symbolize his stolen African identity. After six years, Malcolm was released from prison and became a loyal and effective minister of the Nation of Islam in Harlem, New York. In contrast to civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X advocated self-defense and the liberation of African-Americans "by any means necessary." A fiery orator, Malcolm was admired by the African-American community in New York and around the country. In the early 1960s, he began to develop a more outspoken philosophy than that of Elijah Muhammad, whom he felt was lacking in his support of the civil rights movement. In late 1963, Malcolm’s suggestion that President John F. Kennedy’s assassination was a matter of the "chickens coming home to roost" provided Elijah Muhammad with a convenient opportunity to suspend him from the Nation of Islam, who considered Malcolm X too powerful. A few months later, he formally left the organization and made a Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, where he was profoundly affected by the lack of racial discord among orthodox Muslims. He returned to America as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, and in June of 1964, founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity, which advocated black identity and held that racism, not the white race, was the greatest foe of the African American. Malcolm’s new movement steadily gained followers, as his more moderate philosophy became increasingly influential in the civil rights movement, especially among the leaders of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). On February 21, 1965, one week after his home was firebombed, Malcolm X was shot to death by Nation of Islam members while speaking at a rally of his organization in New York City. Malcolm X is assassinated by three Black Muslim gunmen in New York City. Malcolm X had split from the Nation of Islam almost a year before and had escaped several other attempts on his life in the subsequent months. Reportedly, he was going to publicly reveal the names of the assassins who had been sent to kill him, but was killed at the Audubon Ballroom before he had the opportunity. The break between Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam had its roots in a wide range of matters. Ironically, Malcolm X had been suspended from the group for stating that the murder of President Kennedy was a case of "chickens coming home to roost.. However, the rift was probably due more to the fact that the dynamic and charismatic Malcolm X was challenging the leadership of Elijah Muhammad. His fame threatened the Nation of Islam leaders. When he officially broke from the group, they worried that he would draw away most of their supporters. Malcolm X, constantly aware that his life was in danger, may have had particular worries on February 21. He called his wife, Betty Shabazz, and had her bring their children to the Audubon Ballroom where he was giving a speech later in the day. This was not his usual practice and he may have wanted to see his family a final time. He also declined to institute any security measures for the speech. After he was introduced, but before he could address his supporters, three gunmen in the audience fired several shots at Malcolm X. One of the men, Tommy Hayer, was shot in the leg by one of Malcolm X's bodyguards and caught by the crowd. The other two, Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson, were caught later. Malcolm X died instantly. Malcolm X's body was put on display at a funeral home in Harlem the following day and it is estimated that 30,000 people came to view it. Actor Ossie Davis delivered the eulogy at the funeral. In the meantime, his supporters vowed revenge against Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. The Chicago home of Muhammad Ali, a Nation of Islam member, was burned down shortly after the assassination. However, Elijah Muhammad's rhetoric against Malcolm X continued, blaming the civil rights leader for his own death. The feud between the factions continues to this day. In 1995, one of Malcolm X's daughters, Qubilah Shabazz, was prosecuted for attempting to hire a killer to murder Louis Farrakhan for his alleged involvement in the assassination. While Farrakhan was certainly part of the climate that caused Malcolm X's death-he wrote many articles violently denouncing him after the split-it is highly unlikely that he ever had any contact with the assassins. |
1961 Blaise Cendrars [Frédéric Sauser-Hall], 73, Switzerland, poet.
1882
Jean-Théodore Jean Dupas, French 
Back in Brussels, Marx [< photo] wrote The
Communist Manifesto in January 1848, using as a model a tract Engels
[photo >] wrote for the League in 1847. In early February,
Marx sent the work to London, and the League immediately adopted it as their
manifesto. Many of the ideas in The Communist Manifesto were not
new, but Marx had achieved a powerful synthesis of disparate ideas through
his materialistic conception of history. The Manifesto opens with the dramatic
words, "A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism," and
ends by declaring: "The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.
They have a world to win. Workers of the world, unite!" In The Communist
Manifesto, Marx predicted imminent revolution in Europe. The pamphlet had
hardly cooled after coming off the presses in London when revolution broke
out in France on February 22 over the banning of political meetings held
by socialists and other opposition groups. Isolated riots led to popular
revolt, and on February 24 King Louis-Philippe was forced to abdicate. The
revolution spread like brushfire across continental Europe. Marx was in
Paris on the invitation of the provincial government when the Belgian government,
fearful that the revolutionary tide would soon engulf Belgium, banished
him. Later that year, he went to the Rhineland, where he agitated for armed
revolt. The bourgeoisie of Europe soon crushed the Revolution of 1848, and
Marx would have to wait longer for his revolution. He went to London to
live and continued to write with Engels as they further organized the international
communist movement. In 1864, Marx helped found the International Workingmen's
Association — known as the First International — and in 1867 published
the first volume of his monumental Das Kapital — the foundation
work of communist theory. By his death in 1884, communism had become a movement
to be reckoned with in Europe. Twenty-three years later, in 1917, Vladimir
Lenin, a Marxist, led the world's first successful communist revolution
in Russia. 
