August 20
1833 - Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd president of the United States, was born in North Bend, Ohio.
1862 - The New York Tribune published an open letter by editor Horace Greeley calling on President Abraham Lincoln to take more aggressive measures to free the slaves and end the South’s rebellion.
1866 - President Andrew Johnson formally declared the Civil War over, months after fighting had stopped.
1882 - Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” had its premiere in Moscow.
1914 - German troops occupied Brussels, Belgium during World War I.
1918 - Britain opened on offensive on the Western front during World War I.
1940 - British Prime Minister Winston Churchill paid tribute to the Royal Air Force, saying, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
1953 - The Soviet Union publicly acknowledged that it had tested a hydrogen bomb.
1955 - Hundreds of people were killed in anti-French rioting in Morocco and Algeria.
1964 - As part of his $1 billion Great Society policies, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Economic Opportunity Act, which, among other things, established the Head Start program.
1968 - The Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact nations invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the "Prague Spring" liberalization drive of Alexander Dubcek's regime.
1977 - The space probe Voyager 2 was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying a 12-inch copper phonograph record containing greetings in dozens of languages, samples of music and sounds of nature. It continues to explore to this day and is now more than 7 billion miles from Earth.
1979 - Swimmer Diana Nyad succeeded in her third attempt at swimming from the Bahamas to Florida.
1980 - Italian Reinhold Messner made the first successful solo ascent of Mount Everest and without oxygen.
1986 - Postal employee Patrick Henry Sherrill went on a deadly rampage at a post office in Edmond, Okla., shooting 14 fellow workers to death before killing himself.
1988 - A cease-fire in the war between Iraq and Iran went into effect.
1989 - Fifty-one people died when a pleasure boat sank in the River Thames in London after colliding with a dredger.
1992 - President George H.W. Bush was nominated for a second term in office at the Republican National Convention in Houston.
1998 - U.S. cruise missiles hit suspected terrorist bases in Afghanistan and the Sudan in retaliation for embassy bombings in East Africa.
2006 - Former Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, who took the iconic Iwo Jima flag-raising picture during World War II, died at age 94.
2009 - Voting in Afghanistan's presidential election was marred by rampant ballot-box stuffing. (Hamid Karzai was declared the winner in November.)
2009 - The only man convicted of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 returned home to Libya after his release from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds.
2011 - North Korean leader Kim Jong Il arrived in Russia’s Far East on a nearly weeklong visit.
2016 - Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told a rally in Virginia that his party had to do a better job of appealing to African-American voters.
2017 - Actor, comic and longtime telethon host Jerry Lewis died of heart disease in Las Vegas at the age of 91.
2019 - President Donald Trump abruptly canceled an upcoming trip to Denmark, which owns Greenland, after the Danish prime minister dismissed the idea of the United States purchasing the mostly frozen island.
2020 - Accepting the Democratic presidential nomination, Joe Biden vowed to move the nation past the chaos of Donald Trump’s tenure and return it to its leadership role in the world; capping a virtual convention amid the pandemic, Biden spoke to a largely empty arena in Delaware.
2020 - Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny became ill on a flight to Moscow from Siberia and was hospitalized in a coma. (Navalny would spend five months in Germany recovering from a nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin; he was arrested after his return to Russia.)
2020 - Officials announced a $600 million settlement between the state of Michigan and Flint residents who were harmed by lead-tainted water.
Birthdays
26 - Liana Liberato (actress)
27 - Mitch Trubisky (football player)
28 - Kimmy Jimenez (actress)
29 - Demi Lovato (actress/singer)
29 - Neslihan Atagul (actress)
32 - Olivia Pierson (reality star)
36 - Brant Daugherty (actor)
38 - Andrew Garfield (actor)
39 - Meghan Ory (actress)
40 - Ben Barnes (actor)
42 - Jamie Cullum (singer)
47 - Misha Collins (actress)
47 - Amy Adams (actress)
50 - David Williams (comedian)
51 - Fred Durst (singer)
52 - Billy Gardell (actor)
55 - Colin Cunningham (actor)
59 - James Marsters (actor)
60 - Asha Blake (TV personality)
65 - Joan Allen (actress)
67 - Al Roker (TV weatherman)
68 - Peter Horton (actor)
69 - John Hiatt (singer)
73 - John Noble (actor)
74 - Ray Wise (actor)
75 - Connie Chung (news journalist)
77 - Graig Nettles (baseball player)
90 - Don King (boxing promoter)
===========================================
Today in Sports History - August 20
1912 - Walter Johnson of the Washington Senators wins an American League record 15th straight game.
1920 - Representatives of four professional football clubs met in the first of two meetings in Canton, Ohio. The meetings led to the founding of the American Professional Football Association. Two years later the APFA officially became the National Football League.
1945 - Tommy Brown of the Brooklyn Dodgers became the youngest player to hit a home run in a major league ball game. Brown was 17 years, 8 months and 14 days old.
1974 - Nolan Ryan throws a pitch measured at 100.4 mph.
1990 - George Steinbrenner steps down as principal owner of the New York Yankees.
1991 - Dan Marino of the Miami Dolphins surpasses Joe Montana as the highest paid player in the NFL with a five-year contract extension for $25 million.
2000 - Tiger Woods won the PGA Championship and became the first golfer since Ben Hogan in 1953 to win three majors in one year.
2005 - Thomas Herrion (San Francisco 49ers) collapsed and died after a preseason game in Denver.
2010 - A federal grand jury indicted former baseball player Roger Clemens for lying to the U.S. Congress about steroid use. The trial ended in a mistrial.
2016 - At the Rio Games, the U.S. women’s basketball team won a sixth consecutive Olympic gold medal, routing Spain 101-72.
2020 - The Minnesota Timberwolves won the NBA lottery giving them the first pick in the upcoming draft. (The Timberwolves would select Georgia shooting guard Anthony Edwards.)
1833 - Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd president of the United States, was born in North Bend, Ohio.
1862 - The New York Tribune published an open letter by editor Horace Greeley calling on President Abraham Lincoln to take more aggressive measures to free the slaves and end the South’s rebellion.
1866 - President Andrew Johnson formally declared the Civil War over, months after fighting had stopped.
1882 - Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” had its premiere in Moscow.
1914 - German troops occupied Brussels, Belgium during World War I.
1918 - Britain opened on offensive on the Western front during World War I.
1940 - British Prime Minister Winston Churchill paid tribute to the Royal Air Force, saying, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
1953 - The Soviet Union publicly acknowledged that it had tested a hydrogen bomb.
1955 - Hundreds of people were killed in anti-French rioting in Morocco and Algeria.
1964 - As part of his $1 billion Great Society policies, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Economic Opportunity Act, which, among other things, established the Head Start program.
1968 - The Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact nations invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the "Prague Spring" liberalization drive of Alexander Dubcek's regime.
1977 - The space probe Voyager 2 was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying a 12-inch copper phonograph record containing greetings in dozens of languages, samples of music and sounds of nature. It continues to explore to this day and is now more than 7 billion miles from Earth.
1979 - Swimmer Diana Nyad succeeded in her third attempt at swimming from the Bahamas to Florida.
1980 - Italian Reinhold Messner made the first successful solo ascent of Mount Everest and without oxygen.
1986 - Postal employee Patrick Henry Sherrill went on a deadly rampage at a post office in Edmond, Okla., shooting 14 fellow workers to death before killing himself.
1988 - A cease-fire in the war between Iraq and Iran went into effect.
1989 - Fifty-one people died when a pleasure boat sank in the River Thames in London after colliding with a dredger.
1992 - President George H.W. Bush was nominated for a second term in office at the Republican National Convention in Houston.
1998 - U.S. cruise missiles hit suspected terrorist bases in Afghanistan and the Sudan in retaliation for embassy bombings in East Africa.
2006 - Former Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, who took the iconic Iwo Jima flag-raising picture during World War II, died at age 94.
2009 - Voting in Afghanistan's presidential election was marred by rampant ballot-box stuffing. (Hamid Karzai was declared the winner in November.)
2009 - The only man convicted of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 returned home to Libya after his release from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds.
2011 - North Korean leader Kim Jong Il arrived in Russia’s Far East on a nearly weeklong visit.
2016 - Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told a rally in Virginia that his party had to do a better job of appealing to African-American voters.
2017 - Actor, comic and longtime telethon host Jerry Lewis died of heart disease in Las Vegas at the age of 91.
2019 - President Donald Trump abruptly canceled an upcoming trip to Denmark, which owns Greenland, after the Danish prime minister dismissed the idea of the United States purchasing the mostly frozen island.
2020 - Accepting the Democratic presidential nomination, Joe Biden vowed to move the nation past the chaos of Donald Trump’s tenure and return it to its leadership role in the world; capping a virtual convention amid the pandemic, Biden spoke to a largely empty arena in Delaware.
2020 - Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny became ill on a flight to Moscow from Siberia and was hospitalized in a coma. (Navalny would spend five months in Germany recovering from a nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin; he was arrested after his return to Russia.)
2020 - Officials announced a $600 million settlement between the state of Michigan and Flint residents who were harmed by lead-tainted water.
Birthdays
26 - Liana Liberato (actress)
27 - Mitch Trubisky (football player)
28 - Kimmy Jimenez (actress)
29 - Demi Lovato (actress/singer)
29 - Neslihan Atagul (actress)
32 - Olivia Pierson (reality star)
36 - Brant Daugherty (actor)
38 - Andrew Garfield (actor)
39 - Meghan Ory (actress)
40 - Ben Barnes (actor)
42 - Jamie Cullum (singer)
47 - Misha Collins (actress)
47 - Amy Adams (actress)
50 - David Williams (comedian)
51 - Fred Durst (singer)
52 - Billy Gardell (actor)
55 - Colin Cunningham (actor)
59 - James Marsters (actor)
60 - Asha Blake (TV personality)
65 - Joan Allen (actress)
67 - Al Roker (TV weatherman)
68 - Peter Horton (actor)
69 - John Hiatt (singer)
73 - John Noble (actor)
74 - Ray Wise (actor)
75 - Connie Chung (news journalist)
77 - Graig Nettles (baseball player)
90 - Don King (boxing promoter)
===========================================
Today in Sports History - August 20
1912 - Walter Johnson of the Washington Senators wins an American League record 15th straight game.
1920 - Representatives of four professional football clubs met in the first of two meetings in Canton, Ohio. The meetings led to the founding of the American Professional Football Association. Two years later the APFA officially became the National Football League.
1945 - Tommy Brown of the Brooklyn Dodgers became the youngest player to hit a home run in a major league ball game. Brown was 17 years, 8 months and 14 days old.
1974 - Nolan Ryan throws a pitch measured at 100.4 mph.
1990 - George Steinbrenner steps down as principal owner of the New York Yankees.
1991 - Dan Marino of the Miami Dolphins surpasses Joe Montana as the highest paid player in the NFL with a five-year contract extension for $25 million.
2000 - Tiger Woods won the PGA Championship and became the first golfer since Ben Hogan in 1953 to win three majors in one year.
2005 - Thomas Herrion (San Francisco 49ers) collapsed and died after a preseason game in Denver.
2010 - A federal grand jury indicted former baseball player Roger Clemens for lying to the U.S. Congress about steroid use. The trial ended in a mistrial.
2016 - At the Rio Games, the U.S. women’s basketball team won a sixth consecutive Olympic gold medal, routing Spain 101-72.
2020 - The Minnesota Timberwolves won the NBA lottery giving them the first pick in the upcoming draft. (The Timberwolves would select Georgia shooting guard Anthony Edwards.)
