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Today in History ~ August 20
St. Stephen's Day dedicated to St. Stephen, the first king of Hungary
Events0573 - Gregory of Tours selected bishop of Tours
0636 - Battle at Yarmuk: Moslems beat Byzantines
1191 - Crusader King Richard I (the "Lionheart") butchers 3,000 Muslim prisoners in Akko
1534 - Turkish admiral Chaireddin"Barbarossa" occupies Tunis
1619 - The first African slaves arrived to North America when a Dutch ship dropped anchor at Jamestown, Virginia, with twenty human captives among its cargo. (Though Europeans had been using the native Indians for slaves since Columbus.)
1741 - Alaska was discovered when Danish explorer in Russian employ Vitus Jonas Bering landed a party on the Alaskan coast. How the Bering Straights got its name
1745 - Bonnie Prince Charlie reaches Blair Castle Scotland
1781 - George Washington begins to move his troops south to fight Cornwallis
1794 - Gen Mad Anthony Wayne defeats the Indians at Fallen Timbers Ohio
1795 - Joseph Haydn returns to Vienna from England
1852 - Steamer "Atlantic" collided with fishing boat, sinks with 250 aboard
1862 - Horace Greeley's "The Prayer of Twenty Millions" is published [H]
1864 - 8th/last day of battle at Deep Bottom Run Va (about 3900 casualties)
1866 - President Andrew Johnson formally declared the Civil War over, months after the fighting had stopped.
1893 - Shechita (ritual slaughtering) prohibited in Switzerland
1895 - Start of Sherlock Holmes "Adventure of Norwood Builder"
1896 - Dial telephone patented
1901 - Fawcett committee visits Mafeking concentration camp in Cape Colony
1912 - Plant Quarantine Act goes into effect
1913 - 1st pilot to parachute from an aircraft (Adolphe Pegoud-France)
1914 - -24] Battle of Bounderies: Lorraine, Ardennen, Sambre & Meuse, Mons
1914 - Battle at Morhange: German troops chase French, killing 1000s
1914 - German army captured Brussels as the Belgian army retreated to Antwerp
1915 - Italy declares war on Turkey
1918 - Britain opened its offensive on the Western front during World War I.
1920 - Preliminary meeting in Akron to form American Pro Football League
1920 - US's 1st coml radio 8MK later WWJ Detroit began daily broadcasting
1926 - Uprising against Reza Shah Pahlawi in Persia
1930 - Dumont's 1st TV Broadcast for home reception NY city
1939 - Russ offensive under gen Zjoekov against Jap invasion in Mongolia
1940 - Exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky was fatally wounded (dies Aug 21) by an ice-axe-toting assassin in Mexico City. The assassin--Ramón Mercader--was a Spanish Communist and probable agent of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. [H]
1940 - British 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."
1941 - Police raid 11th district of Paris, takes 4,000+ Jewish males
1942 - Dimout regulations implemented in San Francisco.
1944 - "Anna Lucasta," opens on Broadway
1944 - Gen de Gaulle returns to France
1944 - US & British forces destroy German 7th Army at Falaise-Argentan Gap
1952 - Stalin meets Chou Enlai
1953 - General Fazlollah Zahedi arrests premier Mossadeq of Persia
1953 - Russia publicly acknowledges a test detonation of a hydrogen bomb.
1955 - 1st airplane to exceed 1800 mph - HA Hanes Palmdale Ca
1955 - Hundreds of people were killed in anti-French rioting in Morocco and Algeria.
1956 - Republicans start convention at the Cow Palace.
1960 - Senegal breaks from Mali federation, declaring independence from France
1961 - East Germany begins erecting 5' high wall along the border with the west to replace the barbed wire put up Aug 13
1962 - The first 1963 Ford Thunderbird was produced on this day.
1964 - President Lyndon Johnson signed a nearly $1 billion anti-poverty measure.
1966 - Beatles pelted with rotten fruit during Memphis concert
1968 - 650,000 Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia to crush the "Prague Spring" liberalization, Alexander Dubcek, leader of Czechoslovakia, was forced to abandon his liberal reforms.
1971 - FBI begins covert investigation of CBS journalist Daniel Schorr
1974 - Pres Gerald Ford, assumes office after Richard Nixon's resignation, Nelson Rockefeller becomes VP
1975 - Viking 1, an unmanned U.S. planetary probe, was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a mission to Mars
1977 - Voyager 2 launched for fly-by of Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune carrying a 12-inch copper phonograph record containing greetings in dozens of languages, samples of music and sounds of nature.
1978 - Gunmen open fire on an Israeli El Al Airline bus in London
1979 - Swimmer Diana Nyad succeeded in her third attempt at swimming from the Bahamas to Florida.
1980 - Reinhold Messner of Italy is 1st to solo ascent Mt Everest
1980 - UN Security Council votes 14-0 US abstains condemning Israel's declaration that all of Jerusalem was its capital.
1982 - 800 US marines land in Beirut Lebanon to oversee withdrawal from Lebanon. The future was bleak for 250 marines who were killed in two different car/truck bombs.
1985 - Libya throws out 1000s Tunisian/Egyptian gas workers
1986 - Postal worker Patrick Henry Sherrill shot and killed 14 fellow workers and wounded six others in the Edmond, Okla., post office before killing himself.
1989 - Lyle and Erik Menendez shoot their parents, Jose and Kitty, to death in the den of the family's Beverly Hills, California, home. [H]
1990 - George Steinbrenner steps down as NY Yankee owner
1990 - Iraq moves Western hostages to military installations (human shields) President Bush declared that Americans and other foreigners held by Iraq are "hostages" and warned he will hold Iraq responsible for their "safety and well-being."
1991 - More than 100,000 people rallied outside the Russian Parliament building as protests against the Soviet coup increased. President Bush said he would never deal with the coup leaders.
1993 - Mother Teresa hospitalized with malaria
1994 - Archbishop Quarracino wants all homosexuals to leave Argentina
1994 - Benjamin Chavis Jr. was fired as head of the NAACP after a turbulent 16-month tenure.
1996 - President Clinton approved the first minimum-wage increase in five years, raising the hourly minimum by 90 cents to $5.15 per hour over 13 months.
1996 - Susan McDougal was sentenced in Little Rock, Ark., to two years in prison in a Whitewater fraud case. (She served three months of that sentence, but also 18 months for contempt for refusing to answer questions about President Clinton.)
1997 - United Parcel Service drivers put away their picket signs, put on their brown shirts and shorts, and called on customers again as the delivery giant began to sluggishly recover from its costly strike.
1997 - NATO forces seized thousands of weapons being kept at police stations in Serbian Bosnia's largest city. The Bosnian Serb president claimed the weapons were to be used to overthrow her.
1998 - U.S. missiles struck sites in Afghanistan and Sudan said to be linked with terrorists. The attacks were in response to the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania 13 days earlier.
2000 - Tiger Woods won the PGA Championship in a playoff over Bob May, becoming the first player since Ben Hogan in 1953 to win three majors in one year.
2000 - Verizon Communications and unions representing 50,000 workers reached a tentative agreement on a new three-year-contract as a two-week strike neared an end.
2002 - A group of Iraqis opposed to the regime of Saddam Hussein took over the Iraqi embassy in Berlin for five hours before releasing their hostages and giving up.
Birthdays Today
1625 - Thomas Corneille, French playwright
1778 - Bernardo O'Higgins, won independence for Chile
1785 - Oliver Hazard Perry, US Naval hero ("We have met the enemy")
1833 - Benjamin Harrison (23rd U.S. President, grandson of 9th U.S. President, William Henry Harrison) was born in North Bend, Ohio.
1860 - Raymond Poincar‚, French prime minister (1912) president
1873 - Eliel Saarinen, Finnish architect
1881 - Edgar Guest (writer: syndicated columnist; poet)
1881 - Nikolay Yakovlevich Myaskovsky, composer
1886 - Paul Tillich, German/US theologian (Die sozial Entscheidung)
1890 - Howard Phillips Lovecraft, US horror writer (Weird Tales)
1901 - Salvatore Quasimodo, Italian poet critic translator (Nobel 1959)
1908 - Al Lopez (Baseball Hall of Famer: Brooklyn Dodgers, Boston Braves, Pittsburgh Pirates, Cleveland Indians; manager: Cleveland, Chicago White Sox)
1910 - Eero Saarinen, Finnish/US architect (IBM Building, MIT Chapel)
1921 or 1926 - Jacqueline Susann (author: The Valley of the Dolls)
1921 or 1926 - Jacqueline Susann (author: The Valley of the Dolls)
1924 - Jim (James Travis) Reeves (Country Music Hall of Famer: Four Walls, He'll Have to Go, Am I Losing You, I Won't Come In While He's There, Billie Bayou, Welcome to My World, This is It, Guess I'm Crazy, Mexican Joe; baseball: St. Louis Cardinals)
1925 - Lola Albright, in Ohio
1926 - Frank Rosolino (musician: trombone: with Stan Kenton, Harold Land, Bob Cooper, Clarke-Boland Big Band)
1927 - Joya Sherrill (singer: Long, Strong and Consecutive, I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart)
1931 - Donald King (promoter: boxing)
1931 - Frank Capp (musician: drums: big jazz band: Capp-Pierce Juggernaut)
1933 - George Mitchell, (Sen-D-Me)
1935 - Justin Tubb (singer: Looking Back to See, Sure Fire Kisses; songwriter: Lonesome 7-7203, Love is No Excuse, Keeping Up with the Joneses; Ernest Tubb's son)
1936 - Sam Melville (actor: The Rookies, Roughnecks, Twice Dead)
1938 - Jean-Loup Chr‚tien, 1st French traveler in space (on Soyuz T-6)
1940 - Sam Melville, actor
1941 - Slobodan Milocevic, premier Serbia
1942 - Isaac Hayes Covington TN (Grammy and Academy Award-winning singer, song-writer: Theme from Shaft {1970]; score: Shaft; w/David Porter: Soul Man, Hold on I'm Coming; actor: Tough Guys, Truck Turner)
1944 - Don Hansen (football)
1944 - Graig Nettles (baseball: NY Yankees)
1944 - Rajiv Gandhi, PM of India (1984-89)
1946 - Connie Chung (Yu-Hwa) (journalist: CBS Evening News, Saturday Night with Connie Chung, Eye to Eye; married to Maury Povich)
1947 - Jim Pankow (trombonist, song writer; group: Chicago: Make Me Smile, Colour My World)
1948 - Robert Plant (singer: group: Honeydrippers: Big Log, Sea of Love, Rockin' at Midnight; Led Zeppelin: Stairway to Heaven, Whole Lotta Love, Immigrant Song, D'yer Mak'er, Fool in the Rain; solo: Little Sister)
1948 - Tom Banks (football)
1951 - Guy Lafleur, NHL star
1953 - Peter Horton (actor: Thirtysomething, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers)
Famous deaths
1153 - Bernard de Clairvaux, French saint, dies
1804 - Charles Floyd, only fatality of the Lewis & Clark Expedition [H]
1912 - William Booth, English minister/founder (Salvation Army), dies
1915 - Paul Ehrlich, Germ geneologist (Chemotherapy, Nobel 1908), dies at 61
1980 - Otto Frank, father of Anne Frank, dies at 91
1989 - Jose and Kitty Menendez shot to death in the den of the family's Beverly Hills, California, home. by their sons Lyle and Erik. [H]
2001 - Sir Fred Hoyle, the astronomer who coined the term "Big Bang" but never accepted that theory for the origin of the universe, died in Bournemouth, England, at age 86.
2001 - Actress Kim Stanley died in Santa Fe, N.M., at age 76.
If you have other Birthdays or events to add for this day please E-mail me
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