Today In History

Today is Monday, Aug. 12, the 224th day of 2019. There are 141 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

› 2017: A car plowed into a crowd of people peacefully protesting a white nationalist rally in the Virginia college town of Charlottesville, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and hurting more than a dozen others. (The attacker, James Alex Fields, was sentenced to life in prison on 29 federal hate crime charges, and life plus 419 years on state charges.) President Donald Trump condemned what he called an “egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides;” Democrats and some Republicans called on him to specifically denounce white supremacy. Two Virginia state policemen were killed in a helicopter crash while monitoring the Charlottesville protests.

ON THIS DATE

› 1909: The Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home to the Indianapolis 500, first opened.

› 1937: President Franklin D. Roosevelt nominated Hugo Black to the U.S. Supreme Court.

› 1939: The MGM movie musical “The Wizard of Oz,” starring Judy Garland, had its world premiere at the Strand Theater in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, three days before opening in Hollywood.

› 1944: During World War II, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., eldest son of Joseph and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, was killed with his co-pilot when their explosives-laden Navy plane blew up over England.

› 1953: The Soviet Union conducted a secret test of its first hydrogen bomb.

› 1962: One day after launching Andrian Nikolayev into orbit, the Soviet Union also sent up cosmonaut Pavel Popovich; both men landed safely Aug. 15.

› 1981: IBM introduced its first personal computer, the model 5150, at a press conference in New York.

› 1985: The world’s worst single-aircraft disaster occurred as a crippled Japan Airlines Boeing 747 on a domestic flight crashed into a mountain, killing 520 people. (Four people survived.)

› 1992: After 14 months of negotiations, the United States, Mexico and Canada announced in Washington that they had concluded the North American Free Trade Agreement. Avant-garde composer John Cage died in New York at age 79.

› 2000: The Russian nuclear submarine Kursk and its 118-man crew were lost during naval exercises in the Barents Sea.

› 2004: New Jersey Gov. James E. McGreevey announced his resignation and acknowledged that he’d had an extramarital affair with another man.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Actor George Hamilton is 80. Actress Dana Ivey is 78. Actress Jennifer Warren is 78. Rock singer-musician Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits) is 70. Actor Jim Beaver is 69. Singer Kid Creole is 69. Jazz musician Pat Metheny is 65. Actor Sam J. Jones is 65. Actor Bruce Greenwood is 63. Country singer Danny Shirley is 63. Pop musician Roy Hay (Culture Club) is 58. Rapper Sir Mix-A-Lot is

56. Actor Peter Krause is 54. Actor Brent Sexton is 52. International Tennis Hall of Famer Pete Sampras is 48. Actor-comedian Michael Ian Black is 48. Actress Yvette Nicole Brown is 48. Actress Rebecca Gayheart is 48. Actor Casey Affleck is 44. Rock musician Bill Uechi is 44. Actress Maggie Lawson is 39. Actress Dominique Swain is 39. Actress Leah Pipes is 31. Actor Lakeith Stanfield is 28. NBA AllStar Khris Middleton is

28. Actress Cara Delevingne is 27. Actress Imani Hakim is 26.