TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Thursday, Aug. 19, the 231st day of 2021. There are 134 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On August 19, 1934, a plebiscite in Germany approved the vesting of sole executive power in Adolf Hitler.

On this date:

In 1807, Robert Fulton’s North River Steamboat arrived in Albany, two days after leaving New York.

In 1812, the USS Constitution defeated the British frigate HMS Guerriere off Nova Scotia during the War of 1812, earning the nickname “Old Ironsides.”

In 1814, during the War of 1812, British forces landed at Benedict, Maryland, with the objective of capturing Washington D.C.

In 1848, the New York Herald reported the discovery of gold in California.

In 1909, the first automobile races were run at the justopened Indianapolis Motor Speedway; the winner of the first event was auto engineer Louis Schwitzer, who drove a Stoddard-Dayton touring car twice around the 2.5-mile track at an average speed of 57.4 mph.

In 1942, during World War II, about 6,000 Canadian and British soldiers launched a disastrous raid against the Germans at Dieppe, France, suffering more than 50-percent casualties.

In 1955, torrential rains caused by Hurricane Diane resulted in severe flooding in the northeastern U.S., claiming some 200 lives.

In 1960, a tribunal in Moscow convicted American U2 pilot Francis Gary Powers of espionage. (Although sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment, Powers was returned to the United States in 1962 as part of a prisoner exchange.)

In 1974, U.S. Ambassador Rodger P. Davies was fatally wounded by a bullet that penetrated the American embassy in Nicosia, Cyprus, during a protest by Greek Cypriots.

In 1980, 301 people aboard a Saudi Arabian L-1011 died as the jetliner made a fiery emergency return to the Riyadh airport.

In 1991, rioting erupted in the Brooklyn, New York, Crown Heights neighborhood after a Black 7-year-old, Gavin Cato, was struck and killed by a Jewish driver from the ultraOrthodox Lubavitch community; three hours later, a mob of Black youth fatally stabbed Yankel Rosenbaum, a rabbinical student.

In 2010, the last American combat brigade exited Iraq, seven years and five months after the U.S.-led invasion began.

Ten years ago: Three men — Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jesse Misskelley — who’d spent nearly two decades in prison for the nightmarish slayings of three Cub Scouts in Arkansas, went free after they agreed to a legal maneuver allowing them to maintain their innocence while acknowledging prosecutors had enough evidence against them.