TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Friday, Aug. 21.
TODAY'S HIGHLIGHT
On August 21, 1831, Nat Turner launched a violent slave rebellion in Virginia resulting in the deaths of at least 55 whites. (Turner was later executed.)
ON THIS DATE
In 1609, Galileo Galilei demonstrated his new telescope to a group of officials atop the Campanile in Venice.
In 1911, Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris. (The painting was recovered two years later in Italy.)
In 1945, President Harry S. Truman ended the LendLease program that had shipped some $50 billion in aid supplies to America's allies during World War II.
In 1961, country singer Patsy Cline recorded the Willie Nelson song "Crazy" in Nashville for Decca Records. (The recording was released in October 1961.)
In 1963, martial law was declared in South Vietnam as police and army troops began a violent crackdown on Buddhist antigovernment protesters.
In 1983, Philippine opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr., ending a selfimposed exile in the United States, was shot dead moments after stepping off a plane at Manila International Airport.
In 1987, Sgt. Clayton Lonetree, the first Marine court-martialed for spying, was convicted in Quantico, Va., of passing secrets to the KGB. (Lonetree ended up serving eight years in a military prison.)
In 1991, the hard-line coup against Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev collapsed in the face of a popular uprising led by Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin.
In 1992, an 11-day siege began at the cabin of white separatist Randy Weaver in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, as government agents tried to arrest Weaver for failing to appear in court on charges of selling two illegal sawed-off shotguns; on the first day of the siege, Weaver's teenage son, Samuel, and Deputy U.S. Marshal William Degan were killed.
In 1993, in a serious setback for NASA, engineers lost contact with the Mars Observer spacecraft as it was about to reach the red planet on a $980 million mission.
In 2000, rescue efforts to reach the sunken
Russian nuclear submarine Kursk ended with divers announcing none of the 118 sailors had survived.
In 2014, Gov. Jay Nixon ordered the Missouri National Guard to begin withdrawing from Ferguson, where nightly scenes of unrest had erupted since a white police officer fatally shot a Black 18-year-old nearly two weeks earlier.
Ten years ago: Iranian and Russian engineers began loading fuel into Iran’s first nuclear power plant, which Moscow promised to safeguard to prevent material at the site from being used in any potential weapons production.
Five years ago: A trio of Americans, U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Spencer Stone, National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos and college student Anthony Sadler, and a British businessman, Chris Norman, tackled and disarmed a Moroccan gunman on a high-speed train between Amsterdam and Paris.
One year ago: Escalating an international spat, President Donald Trump said he had scrapped his trip to Denmark because the country's prime minister had made a "nasty" statement when she rejected his idea of buying Greenland as absurd.
— THE ASSOCIATED PRESS