DAILY ALMANAC
Today is Saturday, Aug. 21, the 233rd day of 2021. There are 132 days left in the year.
On this date:
1831: Nat Turner launched a violent slave rebellion in Virginia, resulting in the deaths of at least 55 white people; scores of Black people were killed in retribution in the aftermath of the rebellion. (Turner was later captured and executed.)
1911: Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris. (The painting was recovered two years later in Italy.)
1959: President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an executive order making Hawaii the 50th state.
1986: More than 1,700 people died when toxic gas erupted from a volcanic lake in the West African nation of Cameroon.
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.
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.
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.
2000: Rescue efforts to reach the sunken Russian nuclear submarine Kursk ended with divers announcing none of the 118 sailors had survived.
2010: 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.
2013: Army Pfc. Chelsea Manning was sentenced at Fort Meade, Maryland, to up to 35 years in prison for spilling an unprecedented trove of government secrets. (The sentence for the former intelligence analyst was commuted by President Barack Obama in his final days in office.)
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 Michael Brown Jr., a Black 18-year-old, nearly two weeks earlier.
Actor-filmmaker-writer Melvin Van Peebles is 89. Singer Jackie Deshannon is 80. Singer Carl Giammarese of The Buckinghams is 74. Actor Loretta Devine (“Boston Public”) is 72. Newsman Harry Smith is 70. Singer Glenn Hughes (Deep Purple, Black Sabbath) is 69. Guitarist Nick Kane (The Mavericks) is 67. Actor Kim Cattrall is 65. Actor Cleo King (“Mike and Molly”) is 59. Singer Serj Tankian of System Of A Down is 54. Actor Carrieanne Moss (“The Matrix,” “Chocolat”) is 51. Musician Liam Howlett of Prodigy is 50. Actor Alicia Witt (“Law and Order: Criminal Intent,” “Cybill”) is 46. TV personality Brody Jenner (“The Hills”) is 38. Country singer Kacey Musgraves is 33. Actor Hayden Panettiere is 32.