Today in history

On August 20, 1977, the United States launched Voyager 2, an unmanned spacecraft carrying a 12-inch, gold-plated copper phonograph record containing images, greetings in dozens of languages, samples of music and sounds of nature. (The probe is now more than 10 billion miles away from earth; a more precise, continually updated figure can be found online at https://www. jpl.nasa.gov/voyager/mission/ status/)

In 1833, Benjamin Harrison, 23rd president of the United States, was born in North Bend, Ohio.

In 1866, more than a year after the end of fighting in the Civil War, President Andrew Johnson issued Proclamation 157, which declared that “peace, order, tranquillity, and civil authority now exist in and throughout the whole of the United States of America.”

In 1882, Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” had its premiere in Moscow.

In 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.

In 1914, German forces occupied Brussels, Belgium, during World War I.

In 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.” Exiled Communist revolutionary Leon Trotsky was assassinated in Coyoacan, Mexico by Ramon Mercader. (Trotsky died the next day.)

In 1953, the Soviet Union publicly acknowledged it had tested a hydrogen bomb.

In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Economic Opportunity Act, a nearly $1 billion anti-poverty measure.

In 1968, the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact nations began invading Czechoslovakia to crush the “Prague Spring” liberalization drive.

In 1972, the Wattstax concert took place at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

In 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 (tehmz) in London after colliding with a dredger.

In 1992, shortly after midnight, the Republican National Convention in Houston nominated President George H.W. Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle for second terms in office.

Ten years ago: Tens of thousands of tourists fled the beaches of the Mayan Riviera as Hurricane Dean roared toward Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.

“You know you’re old when your walker has an airbag.” — Phyllis Diller (1917-2012).