TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

Aug. 20, 1953

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

ALSO ON THIS DATE

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 85people and burning some 3million acres.

1914

German forces occupied Brussels, Belgium, during World War I.

1940

During World War II, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill paid tribute to the Royal Air Force before the House of Commons, saying, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

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.

1977

The United States launched Voyager 2, an unmanned spacecraft carrying a 12inch, gold-plated copper phonograph record containing images, greetings in dozens of languages, samples of music and sounds of nature.

1988

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

2008

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski signed a deal to put a U.S. missile defense base in Poland.