TODAY IN HISTORY

MONDAY, AUGUST 20, 2018

1836 - Colonel William Light arrives in South Australia to survey a site for the first settlement.

1857 - 121 people die and one survives when the Dunbar hits the rocks at The Gap, next to the entrance to Sydney Harbour.

1858 Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace publish their same theories of evolution through natural selection simultaneously.

1860 - Burke and Wills start their expedition to cross Australia from south to north 15,000 people send them off. 1866 President Andrew Johnson formally declares the American Civil War over. 1882 - Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture debuted in Moscow. 1908 - The Great White Fleet arrives in Sydney on a world tour to demonstrate the US’s power.

1908 - The first transcontinental car trip - from Adelaide to Darwin - is completed on its second attempt.

1910 - The Great Fire of 1910 (the Big Blowup or the Big Burn) occurs in northeast Washington, northern Idaho (the panhandle), and western Montana, burning approximately 1.2 million hectares.

1914 - World War I: German forces occupy Brussels. 1918 - World War I: Britain opened the Western Front offensive.

1926 - Japan’s public broadcasting company, Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK) is established.

1940 - World War II: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill makes the fourth of his famous wartime speeches, containing the line “Never was so much owed by so many to so few”.

1940 - World War II: France fell to Nazi Germany.

1944 - World War II: The Battle of Romania begins with a major Soviet Union offensive. 1944 - World War II: 168 captured Allied airmen, accused by the Gestapo of being terror fliers, arrive at Buchenwald concentration camp.

1950 - Korean War: UN forces repel an offensive by North Korean divisions attempting to cross the Nakdong River and assault the city of Taegu.