TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY is Saturday, August 24, 2013. On this day:

0079 - Mt Vesuvius erupted killing approximately 20,000 people. The cities of Pompeii, Stabiae and Herculaneum were buried in volcanic ash.

0410 - The Visigoths overran Rome. This event symbolized the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

1456 - The printing of the Gutenberg Bible was completed.

1572 - The Catholics began their slaughter of the French Protestants in Paris. The killings claimed about 70,000 people.

1814 - Washington, DC, was invaded by British forces that set fire to the White House and Capitol.

1869 - A patent for the waffle iron was received by Cornelius Swarthout.

1872 - Queensland’s borders are extended to include Thursday Island and the Torres Strait islands.

1879 - Explorer Alexander Forrest’s expedition through northwest Australia is threatened with starvation.

1891 - Thomas Edison applied patents for the kinetoscope and kinetograph.

1949 - The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) went into effect.

1954 - The Communist Party was virtually outlawed in the U.S. when the Communist Control Act went into effect.

1968 - France became the 5th thermonuclear power when they exploded a hydrogen bomb in the South Pacific.

1985 - 27 anti-apartheid leaders were arrested in South Africa as racial violence rocked the country.

1989 - “Total war” was declared by Columbian drug lords on their government.

1990 - Iraqi troops surrounded foreign missions in Kuwait.

1991 - Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as the head of the Communist Party.

1992 - China and South Korea established diplomatic relations.

1995 - Microsoft’s “Windows 95” went on sale.