Today In History
Today is Monday, Aug. 17, the 230th day of 2020. There are 136 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
› 1964: Teamsters union president Jimmy Hoffa was sentenced in Chicago to five years in federal prison for defrauding his union’s pension fund. (Hoffa was released in 1971 after President Richard Nixon commuted his sentence for this conviction and jury tampering.)
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.)
› 1960: The newly renamed Beatles (formerly the Silver Beetles) began their first gig in Hamburg, West Germany, at the Indra Club.
› 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: Rudolf Hess, the last member of Adolf Hitler’s inner circle, died at Spandau Prison at age 93, an apparent suicide.
› 1998: President Bill Clinton gave grand jury testimony via closed-circuit television from the White House concerning his relationship with Monica Lewinsky; he then delivered a TV address in which he denied previously committing perjury, admitted his relationship with Lewinsky was “wrong,” and criticized Kenneth Starr’s investigation.
› 1999: More than 17,000 people were killed when a magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck Turkey.
› 2018: President Donald Trump said he had canceled plans for a Veterans Day military parade, citing what he called a “ridiculously high” price tag; he accused local politicians in Washington of price-gouging.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Former Chinese president Jiang Zemin is 94. Former MLB All-Star Boog Powell is 79. Actor Robert De Niro is 77.
Movie director Martha Coolidge is 74. Rock musician Gary Talley (The Box Tops) is 73. Actor-screenwriter-producer Julian Fellowes is
71. Actor Robert Joy is
69. International Tennis Hall of Famer Guillermo Vilas is 68. Rock singer Kevin Rowland (Dexy’s Midnight Runners) is
67. Rock musician Colin Moulding (XTC) is 65. Country singer-songwriter Kevin Welch is
65. Olympic gold medal figure skater Robin Cousins is 63. Singer Belinda Carlisle is 62. Author Jonathan Franzen is 61. Actor Sean Penn is 60. Jazz musician Everette Harp is
59. Rock musician Gilby Clarke is 58. Singer Maria McKee is 56. Rock musician Steve Gorman (The Black Crowes) is 55. Rock musician Jill Cunniff is
54. Actor David Conrad is
53. Actor Helen McCrory is 52. Singer Donnie Wahlberg is 51. College Basketball Hall of Famer and retired NBA All-Star Christian Laettner is 51. Rapper Posdnuos is 51. International Tennis Hall of Famer Jim Courier is 50. Retired MLB AllStar Jorge Posada is 49. TV personality Giuliana Rancic is 46. Actor Bryton James is 34. Actor Brady Corbet is 32. Actor Austin Butler is 29. Actor Taissa Farmiga is 26. Olympic bronze medal figure skater Gracie Gold is 25.