Saturday Star

ON THIS DAY AUGUST 20

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2AD Venus and Jupiter are in conjunctio­n, which is a possible astrologic­al explanatio­n for the Star of Bethlehem mentioned in the Bible. 636 At the Battle of Yarmouk, Arab forces take control of the Levant, marking the first great wave of Muslim conquests.

1858 Charles Darwin beats Alfred Wallace to the draw, and his theory of evolution is published first. It holds that new species arise by a process of evolution (natural selection), rather than having been created – forever immutable – by God. Now widely accepted, it still rankles many Christians.

1911 The New York Times sends the first telegram around the world to see how long it takes. After being relayed by 16 different operators, it returns 16.5 minutes later.

1940 Exiled Russian revolution­ary Leon Trotsky is fatally wounded by an ice pick in the head in Mexico City. The heir apparent to Lenin as Soviet leader, he would lose out to Joseph Stalin – of whom Trotsky was openly critical. 1940 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill famously says of the Battle of Britain pilots: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

1955 Simultaneo­us attacks by Algerian rebels against French targets kill 500 people.

1960 The USSR recovers two dogs – the first living creatures to return from space.

1968 Warsaw Pact troops and tanks invade Czechoslov­akia to crush the ‘Prague Spring’. 1977 Nasa launches Voyager II, an unmanned spacecraft aboard which is a copper phonograph called Sounds of Earth.

1988 The Iran-iraq War comes to an end after seven years.

1990 Iraq moves Western hostages to military installati­ons, to be used as human shields. 1998 The US launches Operation Infinite Reach – missile strikes on al-qaeda bases in Afghanista­n and a factory in Sudan in retaliatio­n for al-qaeda’s August 7 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

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