TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY is Thursday, August 22, 2013. On this day:

1485 - The War of the Roses ended with the death of England’s King Richard III. He was killed in the Battle of Bosworth Field. His successor was Henry VII.

1642 - The English Civil War began when Charles I called Parliament and its soldiers traitors.

1770 - Australia was claimed under the British crown when Captain James Cook landed there.

1775 - The American colonies were proclaimed to be in a state of open rebellion by England’s King George III.

1851 - The schooner America outraced the Aurora off the English coast to win a trophy that became known as the America’s Cup.

1872 - Giles begins his first expedition into the Australian desert.

1872 - The Northern and Southern sections of the Overland Telegraph Line, crossing the Australian continent, are joined.

1906 - The Victor Talking Machine Company began to manufacture the Victrola. The hand-cranked unit, with horn cabinet, sold for $200.

1910 - Japan formally annexed Korea.

1932 - The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) began its first TV broadcast in England.

1938 - Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers appeared on the cover of “LIFE” magazine.

1941 - Nazi troops reached the outskirts of Leningrad during World War II.

1972 - Rhodesia was asked to withdraw from the 20th Olympic Summer Games.

1986 - Kerr-McGee Corp. agreed to pay the estate of the late Karen Silkwood $1.38 million to settle a 10-year-old nuclear contamination lawsuit.

1991 - Mikhail S. Gorbachev returned to Moscow after the collapse of the hard-liners’ coup. On the same day he purged the men that had tried to oust him.