TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS SUNDAY, AUG. 25, the 237th day of 2019. There are 128 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY:

On this date in 1718, hundreds of French colonists arrived in Louisiana, with some settling in present-day New Orleans.

In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed an act establishing the National Park Service within the Department of the Interior.

In 1944, during World War II, Paris was liberated by Allied forces after four years of Nazi occupation.

In 1967, George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party, was shot to death in the parking lot of a shopping center in Arlington, Virginia; former party member John Patler was later convicted of the killing.

In 1981, the U.S. spacecraft Voyager 2 came within 63,000 miles of Saturn’s cloud cover, sending back pictures of and data about the ringed planet.

In 1984, author Truman Capote was found dead in a Los Angeles mansion; he was 59.

In 1993, Amy Biehl, a 26-year-old Fulbright scholar from Newport Beach, California, was slain by a mob near Cape Town, South Africa. (The four men convicted in Biehl’s death claimed the attack was part of the war on apartheid; they were granted amnesty after confessing before the Truth and

Reconciliation Commission.)

In 2001, rhythm-and-blues singer Aaliyah was killed with eight others in a plane crash in the Bahamas; she was 22.

In 2004, an Army investigation found that 27 people attached to an intelligence unit at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad either approved or participated in the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

In 2017, Hurricane Harvey, the fiercest hurricane to hit the U.S. in more than a decade, made landfall near Corpus Christi, Texas. The hurricane left at least 68 people dead and caused an estimated $125 billion in damage in Texas.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Actors Sean Connery and Page Johnson are 89. TV personality Regis Philbin is 88. Actor Tom Skerritt and jazz musician Wayne Shorter are 86. Rhythm-and-blues singer Walter Williams (The O’Jays) is

76. Rock singer-actor Gene Simmons and author Martin Amis are 70. Rock musician Geoff Downes (Asia) is 67. Rock singer Elvis Costello is 65. Movie director Tim Burton is 61. Rock musician Vivian Campbell (Def Leppard) is 57. Actor Blair Underwood is 55. Actor Robert Maschio and rap DJ Terminator X (Public Enemy) are 53. Alternative country singer Jeff Tweedy (Wilco) is 52. Actor Alexander Skarsgard is 43. Actor Jonathan Togo is

42. Actress Rachel Bilson is 38. Actress Blake Lively is 32. Actor Josh Flitter is 25.