YEARS AGO FOR FEB. 21

Today is Tuesday, Feb. 21, the 52nd day of 2017. There are 313 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1513: Pope Julius II, who commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, dies nearly four months after the project is completed.

1613: Mikhail Romanov, 16, is unanimously chosen by Russia’s national assembly to be czar, beginning a dynasty that would last three centuries.

1885: The Washington Monument is dedicated.

1916: The World War I Battle of Verdun begins in France as German forces attack; the French were able to prevail after 10 months of fighting.

1945: During the World War II Battle of Iwo Jima, the escort carrier USS Bismarck Sea is sunk by kamikazes with the loss of 318 men.

1947: Inventor Edwin H. Land publicly demonstrates his Polaroid Land camera, which uses self-developing film to produce a black and white photograph in 60 seconds.

1965: Back Muslim leader and civil-rights activist Malcolm X, 39, is shot to death inside Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom in New York.

1972: President Richard M. Nixon begins his historic visit to China as he and his wife, Pat, arrive in Beijing.

2007: British Prime Minister Tony Blair announces his country will withdraw around 1,600 troops from Iraq in the coming months.

2016: Bombings claimed by the Islamic State group in the Syrian cities of Damascus and Homs kill nearly 130 people.

VINDICATOR FILES

1992: Youngstown Finance Director Gary Kubic says that if city employees take concessions, some of the 20 employees who received layoff notices might be recalled. Frank Wooten, president of the city workers union, says concession talk “adds insult to injury.”

Erwin J. Bendel, who developed the Concordia Chorus of Youngstown into one of the finest amateur choruses in Ohio, is stepping down as director after 48 years.

Ohio Lt. Gov. Michael DeWine, who is planning to challenge U.S. Sen. John Glenn, tells those attending the 77th annual Mahoning Valley McKinley Club banquet in Niles that he believes in term limits, and if elected to the Senate will serve only two terms.

1977: Leetonia Village, alarmed by a declining level in its water reservoir, cuts off emergency service to Washingtonville, where the water storage tank has been empty for a week. Officials are asking for state and federal assistance.

The happiness of a family expecting a baby turns to tragedy when the car rushing the expectant mother to the hospital strikes a tree, killing the mother, husband, a daughter and unborn child. Dead are James E. Wolff Jr., 26; Joyce Wolff, 22, their daughter, Shelley, 1; and a boy stillborn at South Side Hospital.

Roberta Messerly, 76, former Youngstown resident who served as administrative assistant to U.S. Rep. Michael J. Kirwan for 34 years, dies in Bethesda, Md.

1967: A 30-ton crane owned by Soda & Luscher Co. of Niles is damaged by a dynamite bomb at a construction site on the new state Route 11 near Raccoon Road in Austintown. The loss is set at $20,000.

Warren P. Williamson, a member of the Youngstown Board of Education for 27 years and president for 18 years, resigns, citing business and family obligations.

Youngstown schools will be open on Washington’s Birthday as a strike make-up day. Superintendent Wanamaker suggests that Washington’s birthday would be less objectionable than Good Friday or Memorial Day.

1942: Lake Newport in Mill Creek Park is open for weekend ice skating, but Lake Glacier will remain closed.