Today In History
Catching up here, folks. Been under the weather...
For 8/21/2007
AP Highlight in History: On Aug. 21, 1991, a hard-line coup against Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev collapsed in the face of a popular uprising led by Russian federation President Boris N. Yeltsin. |
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1940 Exiled Communist revolutionary Leon Trotsky died in Mexico City from wounds inflicted by an assassin.
1945President Harry S. Truman ended the Lend-Lease program that had shipped some $50 billion in aid to America's allies during World War II.
1959 President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an executive order proclaiming Hawaii the 50th state of the union.
2006British prosecutors announced that 11 people had been charged in an alleged plot to blow up trans-Atlantic jetliners bound for the United States.
For 8/20/2007
AP Highlight in History: On Aug. 20, 1968, the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact nations invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the "Prague Spring" liberalization drive of Alexander Dubcek's regime. |
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1914German forces occupied Brussels, Belgium, during World War I.
1918Britain opened an offensive on the Western front during World War I.
1940British Prime Minister Winston Churchill paid tribute to the Royal Air Force, saying, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
1953The Soviet Union publicly acknowledged it had tested a hydrogen bomb
1964President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a nearly $1 billion anti-poverty measure.
1977 The United States launched Voyager 2, an unmanned spacecraft carrying a 12-inch copper phonograph record containing greetings in dozens of languages, samples of music and sounds of nature.
1992The Republican National Convention in Houston nominated President George H.W. Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle for a second term.
1998 Retaliating 13 days after the deadly embassy bombings in East Africa, the United States launched cruise missile strikes against al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan and what was described as a chemical plant in Sudan.
2006 Former Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, who had taken the iconic Iwo Jima flag-raising picture during World War II, died at age 94.
For 8/19/2007
AP Highlight in History: On Aug. 19, 1934, a plebiscite in Germany approved the vesting of sole executive power in Adolf Hitler as Fuhrer. |
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1812The USS Constitution defeated the British frigate Guerriere east of Nova Scotia during the War of 1812.
1942 About 6,000 Canadian and British soldiers launched a disastrous raid against the Germans at Dieppe, France, suffering about 50 percent casualties.
1955Severe flooding in the Northeast caused by the remnants of Hurricane Diane claimed some 200 lives.
1974U.S. Ambassador Rodger P. Davies was fatally wounded by a bullet that penetrated the American embassy in Nicosia, Cyprus, during a protest by Greek Cypriots.
1994President Bill Clinton halted the nation's three-decade open-door policy for Cuban refugees.
1996A judge sentenced former Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker to four years' probation for his Whitewater crimes.
2003 A suicide truck bomb struck U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, killing 22, including the top U.N. envoy, Sergio Vieira de Mello.
| 1960 | A tribunal in Moscow convicted American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers of espionage. | ||
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For 8/18/2007
AP Highlight in History: On Aug. 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees the right of women to vote, was ratified when Tennessee became the 36th state to approve it. |
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1227 The Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan died.
1846U.S. forces led by Gen. Stephen W. Kearny captured Santa Fe, N.M.
1894Congress established the Bureau of Immigration.
1914President Woodrow Wilson issued his Proclamation of Neutrality, aimed at keeping the United States out of World War I.
1954 Assistant Secretary of Labor James E. Wilkins became the first black to attend a meeting of a president's Cabinet as he sat in for Labor Secretary James P. Mitchell.
1991Soviet hard-liners launched a coup aimed at toppling President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who was vacationing in the Crimea.
1983Hurricane Alicia slammed into the Texas coast, leaving 22 dead and causing more than $1 billion damage.
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