Today is Sunday, Feb. 21, the 52nd day of 2016. There are 314 days left in the year.

Today’s birthdays: Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe is 92. Fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy is 89. Movie director Bob Rafelson is 83. Film/music company executive David Geffen is 73. Actress Tyne Daly is 70. Actor Anthony Daniels is 70. Tricia Nixon Cox is 70. Former Maine senator Olympia J. Snowe is 69. Actor Kelsey Grammer is 61. Country singer Mary Chapin Carpenter is 58. Actor Kim Coates is 58. Actor Jack Coleman is 58. Actor Christopher Atkins is 55. Actor William Baldwin is 53. Actress Jennifer Love Hewitt is 37. Actress Ellen Page is 29.

In 1437, James I, King of Scots, was assassinated; his 6-year-old son succeeded him as James II.

In 1513, Pope Julius II, who’d commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, died four months after the project was completed.

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

In 1916, the World War I Battle of Verdun began in France as German forces attacked; the French were able to prevail after 10 months of fighting.

In 1945, during the World War II Battle of Iwo Jima, the escort carrier USS Bismarck Sea was sunk by kamikazes with the loss of 318 men.

In 1965, black Muslim leader and civil rights activist Malcolm X, 39, was shot to death inside Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom in New York by assassins identified as members of the Nation of Islam. (Three men were convicted of murder and imprisoned; all were eventually paroled.)

In 1972, President Richard M. Nixon began his historic visit to China as he and his wife, Pat, arrived in Beijing.