TODAY IN HISTORY
On Aug. 17, 1982, the first commercially produced compact discs, a recording of ABBA’s “The Visitors,” were pressed in West Germany.
Also on this date
In 1915, a mob in Cobb County, Georgia, lynched Jewish businessman Leo Frank, 31, whose death sentence for the murder of 13-yearold Mary Phagan had been commuted to life imprisonment. (Frank, who had maintained his innocence, was pardoned by the state of Georgia in 1986.)
In 1960, the newly renamed Beatles (formerly the Silver Beetles) began their first gig in Hamburg, West Germany, at the Indra Club.
In 1969, Hurricane Camille slammed into the Mississippi coast; the storm was blamed for 256 U.S. deaths, three in Cuba.
In 1988, Pakistani President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq and U.S. Ambassador Arnold Raphel were killed in a mysterious plane crash.
In 1998, President Bill Clinton gave grand jury testimony via closedcircuit television from the White House concerning his relationship with Monica Lewinsky; he then delivered a TV address in which he denied previously committing perjury but admitted his relationship with Lewinsky was “wrong.”
In 1999, more than 17,000 people were killed when a magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck Turkey.
Ten years ago: A mistrial was declared on 23 corruption charges against Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was accused of trying to sell President Barack Obama’s old Senate seat; the jury convicted him on one charge, lying to the FBI. (In a retrial, Blagojevich was convicted of 17 counts of corruption and sentenced to 14 years in prison, but a federal appeals court dismissed five counts. He was released from a federal prison in February 2020 after his sentence was commuted by President Donald Trump.)
Five years ago: The National Labor Relations Board dismissed a ruling that Northwestern University football players were school employees entitled to form the nation’s first union of college athletes.
One year ago: Thousands of strangers gathered for the funeral of a woman who was among 22 people killed by a gunman at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas; they gathered after hearing that the woman’s longtime companion had few family members left.