TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Sunday, Aug. 16, the 229th day of 2020. There are 137 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On August 16, 1987, 156 people were killed when Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashed while trying to take off from Detroit; the sole survivor was 4-year-old Cecelia Cichan (SHEE’-an). On this date: In 1777, American forces won the Battle of Bennington in what was considered a turning point of the Revolutionary War.

In 1812, Detroit fell to British and Indian forces in the War of 1812.

In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln issued Proclamation 86, which prohibited the states of the Union from engaging in commercial trade with states that were in rebellion — i.e., the Confederacy.

In 1920, Ray Chapman of the Cleveland Indians was struck in the head by a pitch thrown by Carl Mays of the New York Yankees; Chapman died the following morning.

In 1948, baseball legend Babe Ruth died in New York at age 53.

In 1960, Britain ceded control of the crown colony of Cyprus.

In 1962, The Beatles fired their original drummer, Pete Best, replacing him with Ringo Starr.

In 1977, Elvis Presley died at his Graceland estate in Memphis, Tennessee, at age 42.

In 1978, James Earl Ray, convicted assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., told a Capitol Hill hearing he did not commit the crime, saying he’d been set up by a mysterious man called “Raoul.”

In 2002, terrorist mastermind Abu Nidal reportedly was found shot to death in Baghdad, Iraq; he was 65.

In 2014, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, where police and protesters repeatedly clashed in the week since a Black teenager was shot to death by a white police officer.

In 2018, Aretha Franklin, the undisputed “Queen of Soul,” died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 76.

Ten years ago: A Boeing 737 filled with vacationers crashed in a thunderstorm and broke apart as it slid onto the runway on Colombia’s San Andres Island; all but two of the 131 people on board survived. China eclipsed Japan as the world’s second biggest economy after three decades of blistering growth. Bobby Thomson, whose 1951 “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” clinched the National League pennant for the New York Giants, died in Savannah, Georgia, at age 86.