Today In History

Today is Thursday, Aug. 17, the 229th day of 2017. There are 136 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

› 1863: Federal batteries and ships began bombarding Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor during the Civil War, but the Confederates managed to hold on despite several days of pounding.

ON THIS DATE

› 1915: A mob in Cobb County, Georgia, lynched Jewish businessman Leo Frank, 31, whose death sentence for the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan had been commuted to life imprisonment. (Frank, who’d maintained his innocence, was pardoned by the state of Georgia in 1986.)

› 1962: East German border guards shot and killed 18-year-old Peter Fechter, who had attempted to cross the Berlin Wall into the western sector.

› 1969: Hurricane Camille slammed into the Mississippi coast as a Category 5 storm that was blamed for 256 U.S. deaths, three in Cuba.

› 1978: The first successful trans-Atlantic balloon flight ended as Maxie Anderson, Ben Abruzzo and Larry Newman landed their Double Eagle II outside Paris.

› 1982: The first commercially produced compact discs, a recording of ABBA’s “The Visitors,” were pressed at a Philips factory near Hanover, West Germany.

› 1987: The musical drama “Dirty Dancing,” starring Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze, premiered in New York.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Former Chinese president Jiang Zemin is 91. Author V.S. Naipaul is 85. Former MLB All-Star Boog Powell is 76. Actor Robert DeNiro is 74. Movie director Martha Coolidge is 71. Rock singer Kevin Rowland (Dexy’s Midnight Runners) is 64. Rock musician Colin Moulding (XTC) is 62. Country singer-songwriter Kevin Welch is 62. Olympic gold medal figure skater Robin Cousins is 60. Singer Belinda Carlisle is 59. Rock musician Jill Cunniff is 51. Actor David Conrad is 50. Actress Helen McCrory is 49. Singer Donnie Wahlberg is 48. College Basketball Hall of Famer and retired NBA All-Star Christian Laettner is 48. Rapper Posdnuos is 48. International Tennis Hall of Famer Jim Courier is 47. Actor Bryton James is 31. Actor Brady Corbet is 29. Actress Taissa Farmiga is 23. Olympic bronze medal figure skater Gracie Gold is 22.