Today in history
Today is Friday, Aug. 26, the 239th day of 2016. There are 127 days left in the year.
On this date in the SCV: In 1948, The Signal reported that the death demon of the highways had returned to strike savagely, leaving six dead, three more injured, and two young children orphaned. Kids from the city hurrying to the hot rod time trials at Rosamond Dry Lake provided the first holocaust on U.S. 6, between Vincent and the Littlerock cut-off. Four died in this crash, two of whom were pretty, teen-aged girls. A husband and wife were slain before the eyes of their children Sunday night on U.S. 99 near the LaSalle Station, when the husband drove his car into the rear of a slowly moving truck and the cargo of lumber, projecting from the rear, smashed the couple almost into mincemeat. A 12-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son in the back seat miraculously escaped injury.
Today’s Highlight in History: On Aug. 26, 1968, the Democratic National Convention opened in Chicago; the four-day event was marked by a bloody police crackdown on anti-war protesters in the streets and a tumultuous nominating process that resulted in the choice of Hubert H. Humphrey for president.
Ten years ago: Iran’s hardline president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, inaugurated a heavy-water production plant, a facility the West feared would be used to develop a nuclear bomb. Chad’s President Idriss Deby ordered California-based Chevron Corp. and Malaysian company Petronas to leave the country, saying neither had paid taxes. (The dispute over taxes was later resolved, with the two companies agreeing to pay $289 million.)
Five years ago: More than 2 million people along the Eastern Seaboard were ordered to move to safer ground as Hurricane Irene approached the coast. A Boko Haram sect member detonated a car loaded with explosives at the United Nations headquarters in Nigeria’s capital Abuja, killing 25 people and wounding more than 100 others.
One year ago: Alison Parker, a reporter for WDBJ-TV in Roanoke, Virginia, and her cameraman, Adam Ward, were shot to death during a live outdoor interview with Vicki Gardner, executive director of the Smith Mountain Lake Chamber of Commerce, by Vester Lee Flanagan, a disgruntled former station employee who then fatally shot himself while being pursued by police. (Gardner was seriously wounded in the attack.) Amelia Boynton Robinson, 104, who was widely considered the mother of the American civil rights movement, died in Montgomery, Alabama.
On this date: In 1789, France’s National Assembly adopted its Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. In 1883, the island volcano Krakatoa began cataclysmic eruptions, leading to a massive explosion the following day. In 1920, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing American women’s right to vote, was certified in effect by Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby. In 1939, the first televised major league baseball games were shown on experimental station W2XBS: a double-header between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field. (The Reds won the first game, 5-2, the Dodgers the second, 6-1.) In 1944, French Gen. Charles de Gaulle braved the threat of German snipers as he led a victory march in Paris, which had just been liberated by the Allies from Nazi occupation.