TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS SATURDAY, AUG. 20, the 233rd day of 2016. There are 133 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY: On this date in 1866, months after fighting in the Civil War had ended, 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 1833, Benjamin Harrison, 23rd president of the United States, was born in North Bend, Ohio. In 1882, Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” had its premiere in Moscow.
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 1977, the U.S. launched Voyager 2, an unmanned spacecraft carrying a 12-inch copper phonograph record containing greetings in dozens of languages, samples of music and sounds of nature.
In 1986, postal employee Patrick Henry Sherrill went on a deadly rampage at a post office in Edmond, Okla., shooting 14 fellow workers to death before killing himself.
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 in London after colliding with a dredger.
In 1994, Benjamin Chavis Jr. was fired as head of the NAACP after a turbulent 16-month tenure.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Writer-producerdirector Walter Bernstein is 97. Boxing promoter Don King is 85. Former Sen. George Mitchell, D-Maine, is 83. Former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, is 81. Former MLB All-Star Graig Nettles is 72. Broadcast journalist Connie Chung is 70. Musician Jimmy Pankow (Chicago) and actor Ray Wise are 69. Actor John Noble and rock singer Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin) are 68. Country singer Rudy Gatlin and singersongwriter John Hiatt are 64. Actor-director Peter Horton is 63. TV weatherman Al Roker is 62. Actor Jay Acovone is 61. Actress Joan Allen is 60. Movie director David O. Russell is 58. TV personality Asha Blake is 55.