TODAY IN WORLD HISTORY
Today is Saturday, Aug. 12, the 224th day of 2017. There are 141 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History On August 12, 1867, President Andrew Johnson sparked a move to impeach him as he defied Congress by suspending Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, with whom he had clashed over Reconstruction policies. (Johnson was acquitted by the Senate.)
On this date • In 1944, during World War II, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., eldest son of Joseph and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, was killed with his copilot 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 1981, IBM introduced its first personal computer, the model 5150, at a press conference in New York.
• 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. Avant-garde composer John Cage died in New York at age 79.
On Aug. 13 • In 1846, the American flag was raised for the first time in Los Angeles.
• In 1910, Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing, died in London at age 90.
• In 1934, the satirical comic strip “Li’l Abner,” created by Al Capp, made its debut.
• In 1961, East Germany sealed off the border between Berlin’s eastern and western sectors before building a wall that would divide the city for the next 28 years.
• In 1979, Lou Brock of the St. Louis Cardinals became the 14th player in major league baseball history to reach the 3,000th career hit plateau as his team defeated the Chicago Cubs, 3-2.
• In 1981, in a ceremony at his California ranch, President Ronald Reagan signed a historic package of tax and budget reductions.
• In 1989, searchers in Ethiopia found the wreckage of a plane which had disappeared almost a week earlier while carrying Rep. Mickey Leland, D-Texas, and 14 other people — there were no survivors.
On Aug. 14 • In 1848, the Oregon Territory was created.
• In 1900, international forces, including U.S. Marines, entered Beijing to put down the Boxer Rebellion, which was aimed at purging China of foreign influence.
• In 1917, China declared war on Germany and Austria during World War I.
• In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law.
• In 1945, President Harry S. Truman announced that Imperial Japan had surrendered unconditionally, ending World War II.
• In 1951, newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, 88, died in Beverly Hills, California.
• In 1967, folk singer Joan Baez performed a free concert on the grounds of the Washington Monument a day after she’d been denied the use of Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution because of her opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.
• In 1992, the White House announced that the Pentagon would begin emergency airlifts of food to Somalia to alleviate mass deaths by starvation. Federal judge John J. Sirica, who had presided over the Watergate trials, died in Washington at age 88.
• In 1997, an unrepentant Timothy McVeigh was formally sentenced to death for the Oklahoma City bombing.