The Almanac
Today is Saturday, Aug. 20, the 233rd day of 2016 with 133 to follow.
The moon is waning. Morning stars are Neptune and Uranus. Evening stars
are Venus, Mercury, Mars, Saturn and Neptune. Those born on this date
are under the sign of Leo. They include Benjamin Harrison, 23rd
president of the United States, in 1833; Finnish architect Eliel
Saarinen in 1873; British poet Edgar Guest in 1881; horror writer H.P.
Lovecraft in 1890; baseball Hall of Fame member Al Lopez in 1908;
Finnish architect Eero Saarinen in 1910; author Jacqueline Susann in
1918; country singer Jim Reeves in 1923; boxing promoter Don King in
1931 (age 85);George Mitchell, former U.S. senator/diplomat, in 1933
(age 83); former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in 1941;
singer/songwriter Isaac Hayes in 1942; former Indian Prime Minister
Rajiv Gandhi in 1944; journalist Connie Chung in 1946 (age 70); singer
Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin) in 1948 (age 68); science fiction writer
Greg Bear in 1951 (age 65); musician John Hiatt in 1952 (age 64); TV
personality Al Roker in 1954 (age 62); actor Joan Allen in 1956 (age
60); actor Amy Adams in 1974 (age 42). On this date in history: In
1741, Danish navigator Vitus Jonas Bering discovered what is now called
Alaska. In 1858, theories by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace
regarding evolution were published in a British scholarly journal. In
1968, about 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 5,000 tanks invaded
Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring -- a brief period of efforts
to democratize socialism in the country. In 1977, the first U.S.
Voyager spacecraft -- one of two launched in 1977 -- left Cape
Canaveral, Fla., bound for Jupiter and Saturn. The two Voyager space
probes are still transmitting data. In 1986, postal worker Patrick
Henry Sherrill killed 14 fellow workers and wounded six others in the
Edmond, Okla., post office before killing himself. In 1996, U.S.
President Bill Clinton signed into law an increase in the minimum wage
in two steps from $4.25 to $5.15 an hour. In 1998, U.S. missiles struck
sites in Afghanistan and Sudan said to be linked with terrorists. The
attacks were in response to the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya
and Tanzania 13 days earlier. In 2003, Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore
was suspended after refusing to comply with a federal court order to
remove a rock inscribed with the Ten Commandments from the lobby of the
state Supreme Court building. In 2005, in his first visit to his German
homeland since becoming pope, Benedict XVI told a group of Muslims that
Islam and Christianity must work together to defeat terrorism. In 2008,
a Spanair jetliner crashed on takeoff in Madrid, killing 154 people and
injuring many others. Observers said the left jet engine was on fire as
the plane took off. In 2009, the Libyan convicted of the 1968 bombing
of Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Scotland killing 270 people,
was freed from prison on compassionate grounds. Abdel Basset Ali
al-Megrahi, who had been sentenced to life in prison in 2001, had
prostate cancer. He died in May 2012. In 2010, with U.S. combat troops
leaving Iraq, the State Department announced a planned increase in
civilian contractors to train police, help keep the peace and perform
other duties. In 2011, two U.S. hikers who said they had wandered into
Iran by mistake were sentenced to eight years in an Iranian prison for
espionage. They were freed one month later and returned to the United
States. In 2012, former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and
businesswoman Darla Moore became the first female members of Georgia's
Augusta National Golf Club, site of the Masters, one of golf's most
prestigious events. The club had long been under attack by women's
rights groups, and others, for its all-male membership. In 2013,
celebrated novelist Elmore Leonard died in Bloomfield Hill,, Mich. He
was 87. In 2014, mudslides caused by heavy rains killed about 70 people
in residential areas on the outskirts of Hiroshima, Japan. A thought
for the day: Hollywood is like an empty wastebasket. -- Ginger Rogers .
