TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS SUNDAY, AUG. 12, the 224th day of 2018. There are 141 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY: On this date in 1981, IBM introduced its first personal computer, the model 5150, at a press conference in New York.

In 1859, poet and English professor Katharine Lee Bates, who wrote the words to “America the Beautiful,” was born in Falmouth, Mass.

In 1898, fighting in the Spanish-American War came to an end.

In 1909, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home to the Indianapolis 500, first opened.

In 1944, during World War II, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., eldest son of Joseph and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, was killed with his co-pilot when their explosives-laden Navy plane blew up over England.

In 1953, the Soviet Union conducted a secret test of its first hydrogen bomb.

In 1962, one day after launching Andrian Nikolayev into orbit, the Soviet Union also sent up cosmonaut Pavel Popovich; both men landed safely Aug. 15.

In 1977, the space shuttle Enterprise passed its first solo flight test by taking off atop a Boeing 747, separating, then touching down in California’s Mojave Desert.

In 1985, the world’s worst single-aircraft disaster occurred as a crippled Japan Airlines Boeing 747 on a domestic flight crashed into a mountain, killing 520 people. (Four people survived.)

In 1992, after 14 months of negotiations, the United States, Mexico and Canada announced in Washington that they had concluded the North American Free Trade Agreement.

In 2000, the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk and its 118-man crew were lost during naval exercises in the Barents Sea.

In 2004, New Jersey Gov. James E. McGreevey announced his resignation and acknowledged that he’d had an extramarital affair with another man.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Actor George Hamilton is 79. Actresses Dana Ivey and Jennifer Warren are 77. Rock singermusician Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits) is 69. Actor Jim Beaver and singer

Kid Creole are 68. Jazz musician Pat Metheny and actor Sam J. Jones are 64. Actor Bruce Greenwood and country singer Danny Shirley are 62. Rapper Sir Mix-A-Lot is 55. Actor Peter Krause is 53. Actor Brent Sexton is 51. International Tennis Hall-of-Famer Pete Sampras, actor-comedian Michael Ian Black, and actresses Yvette Nicole Brown and Rebecca Gayheart are 47. Actor Casey Affleck and rock musician Bill Uechi are 43. Actresses Maggie Lawson and Dominique Swain are 38. Actor Lakeith Stanfield is 27. Actress Cara Delevingne is 26. Actress Imani Hakim is 25.