TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

August 20, 1986

Postal employee Patrick Henry Sherrill went on a deadly rampage at a post office in Edmond, Okla., shooting 14 fellow workers to death before killing himself. ALSO ON THIS DATE

1862

The New York Tribune published an open letter by editor Horace Greeley calling on President Abraham Lincoln to take more aggressive measures to free the slaves and end the South’s rebellion.

1866

President Andrew Johnson formally declared the Civil War over, months after fighting had stopped.

1910

A series of forest fires swept through parts of Idaho, Montana and Washington, killing at least 85 people and burning some 3 million acres.

1953

The Soviet Union publicly acknowledged it had tested a hydrogen bomb.

1955

Hundreds of people were killed in anti-French rioting in Morocco and Algeria.

1964

President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Economic Opportunity Act, a nearly $1 billion anti-poverty measure.

1968

The Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact nations began invading Czechoslovakia to crush the “Prague Spring” liberalization drive.

1988

A cease-fire in the war between Iraq and Iran went into effect.

1989

Entertainment executive Jose Menendez and his wife, Kitty, were shot to death in their Beverly Hills mansion by their sons, Lyle and Erik. Fifty-one people died when a pleasure boat sank in the River Thames in London after colliding with a dredger.

2005

Northwest Airlines mechanics went on strike rather than accept pay cuts and layoffs; Northwest ended up hiring replacement workers.