Today’s highlight

On Feb. 21, 1975, former Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman were sentenced to 2 1/2 to 8 years in prison for their roles in the Watergate cover-up (each ended up serving 1 1/2 years).

On this date

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

1885: The Washington Monument was dedicated.

1911: Composer Gustav Mahler, despite a fever, conducted the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in what turned out to be his final concert (he died the following May).

1964: The first shipment of U.S. wheat purchased by the Soviet Union arrived in the port of Odessa.

1965: Minister and civil rights activist Malcolm X, 39, was shot to death inside Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom in New York.

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

1973: Israeli fighter planes shot down Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 over the Sinai Desert, killing all but five of the 113 people on board.

1992: Kristi Yamaguchi of the United States won the gold medal in ladies’ figure skating at the Albertville Olympics; Midori Ito (mee-doh-ree ee-toh) of Japan won the silver, Nancy Kerrigan of the U.S. the bronze.

The Associated Press