NEA DATEBOOK

TODAY’S HISTORY: In 1898, Spain agreed to peace protocols with the United States, bringing an end to the Spanish-American war.

In 1953, the USSR detonated the first Soviet thermonuclear weapon.

In 2017, one person was killed and several others injured when a car was driven into a crowd of counterprotesters during a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Katharine

Lee Bates (1859-1929), songwriter; Christy Mathewson (1880-1925), baseball player; Cecil B. DeMille (1881-1959), film director/ producer; Cantinflas (1911-1993), actor/filmmaker; William Goldman (1931-2018), author/ screenwriter; George Hamilton (1939- ), actor; Ann Martin (1955- ), author; Bruce Greenwood (1956- ), actor; Peter Krause (1965- ), actor; Michael Ian Black (1971- ), actor; Pete Sampras (1971- ), tennis player; Casey Affleck (1975- ), actor; Tyson Fury (1988- ), boxer.

TODAY’S FACT: “Sue,” one of the largest and best-preserved Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons ever found, was discovered in South Dakota on this day in 1990. The skeleton is now displayed at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

TODAY’S SPORTS: In 1994, Major League Baseball players began a 232-day strike that resulted in the first cancellation of the World Series since 1904.

TODAY’S QUOTE: “Writing is finally about one thing: going into a room alone and doing it, putting words on paper that have never been there in quite that way before.” — William Goldman

TODAY’S NUMBER: 64,000 — bytes (62.5 kilobytes) of memory available in the “typical system for home and school” offered in an IBM press release announcing the personal computer on this day in 1981. The system retailed for $3,005.