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 August 12, 1981, IBM introduced its first personal computer, the model 5150, at a press conference in New York.
On this date:
■ In 1859, poet and English professor Katharine Lee Bates, who wrote the words to “America the Beautiful,” was born in Falmouth (FAHL’muhth), Mass.
■ In 1898, fighting in the Spanish-American War came to an end.
■ In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt nominated Hugo Black to the U.S. Supreme Court.
■ 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 (moh-HAH’-vee) 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.
Ten years ago: Declaring “the aggressor has been punished,” the Kremlin ordered a halt to Russia’s devastating assault on Georgia—five days of air and ground attacks that left homes in smoldering ruins and uprooted 100,000 people. Michael Phelps won the 200-meter freestyle for his third gold medal at the Beijing Games.
Thought for Today: “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”— Rene Descartes, French philosopher (1596-1650).