[Rors]

On This Day: August 20

This is the 233rd day of the year.


Fact of the Day: Little League

Little League started in 1939 in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, by Carl E. Stotz and brothers Bert and George Bebble. The league originally included boys age 8 to 12, but girls have been admitted since 1974. The Little League now includes a senior division for players age 13 to 15 and a big-league division for ages 16 to 18.


Holidays

Feast day of St. Rognwald or Ronald, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Amator or Amadour, St. Philibert, and St. Oswin.

Hungary: St. Stephen's Day.

Morocco: Revolution of the King and the People.


Events

1641 - Scotland and Britain signed the Treaty of Pacification.

1741 - Danish navigator Vitus Jonas Bering discovered Alaska.

1862 - Horace Greeley's "The Prayer of Twenty Millions" was published.

1866 - The National Labor Union in the U.S. advocated an eight-hour workday.

1866 - It was formally declared by U.S. President Andrew Johnson that the American Civil War was over. The fighting had stopped months earlier.

1882 - Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" debuted in Moscow.

1885 - "The Mikado", by Gilbert and Sullivan, opened at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City.

1914 - German forces occupied Brussels, Belgium, during World War I.

1918 - The British opened its Western Front offensive during World War I.

1923 - The first American dirigible, the "Shenandoah," was launched in Lakehurst, NJ.

1939 - Johnny Weissmuller married Beryl Scott.

1939 - The National Bowling Association was founded in Detroit, MI. It was the first bowling association in the U.S. for African-Americans.

1940 - France fell to the Germans during World War II.

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.

1949 - Cleveland’s Indians and Chicago’s White Sox played at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland before the largest crowd, 78,382 people, to see a nighttime major-league baseball game.

1953 - It was announced by the Soviet Union that they had detonated a hydrogen bomb.

1955 - In Morocco and Algeria hundreds of people were killed in anti-French rioting.

1955 - Col. Horace A. Hanes, a U.S. Air Force pilot, flew to an altitude of 40,000 feet. Hanes reached a speed of 822.135 miles per hour in a Super Sabrejet.

1955 - Bo Diddley made his first appearance at the Apollo Theater in New York City.

1964 - A $1 billion anti-poverty measure was signed by U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson.

1967 - The New York Times reported about a noise reduction system for album and tape recording developed by technicians R. and D.W. Dolby. Elektra Record's subsidiary, Checkmate Records became the first label to use the new Dolby process in its recordings.

1968 - The Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact nations began invading Czechoslovakia to crush the "Prague Spring" liberalization.

1977 - Voyager 2 was launched by the United States. The spacecraft was carrying a 12 inch copper phonograph record containing greetings in dozens of languages, samples of music and sounds of nature.

1985 - The original Xerox 914 copier was presented to the Smithsonian Institute's Museum of American History. Chester Carlson was the man who invented the machine.

1986 - Patrick Henry Sherril, postal employee, killed 14 co-workers in a shooting spree at the post office in Edmon, OK.

1988 - Eight British soldiers were killed by a landmine while in a military bus in Northern Ireland. The mine belonged to the Irish Republican Army.

1989 - Jose and Kitty Menendez were shot to death by their sons Lyle and Erik. The first trials ended in hung juries.

1989 - British conservationist George Adamson was killed by bandits in Kenya. Adamson was 83.

1989 - In London, a pleasure boat sank in the Thames River killing 51 people.

1991 - A rally of more that 100,000 people occurred outside the Russian parliament building to protest the coup that removed Gorbachev from power.

1991 - Estonia declared independence.

1995 - 348 people were killed in a train incident in northern India.

1997 - NATO troops seized six police stations in Banja Luka that had been held by troops controlled by former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic.

1997 - Britain began voluntary evacuation of its Caribbean island of Montserrat due to the volcanic activity of the Soufriere Hills.

1998 - Canada's Supreme Court announced that Quebec could not secede without the federal government's consent.

1998 - U.S. military forces attacked a terrorist camp in Afghanistan and a chemical plant in Sudan. Both targets were chosen for cruise missile strikes due to their connection with Osama bin Laden.

1998 - The U.N. Security Council extended trade sanctions against Iraq for blocking arms inspections.

Lebanon Related Events

1997 - Israeli jets struck deep in Lebanon and bombed a guerrilla base and a power plant supplying electricity to Sidon.
(WSJ, 8/21/97, p.A1)

2006 - Lebanese PM Fuad Saniora called the Israeli bombing campaign "a crime against humanity," and Lebanon's defense minister warned any group that breaks the Middle East cease-fire will be dealt with harshly.
(AP, 8/20/06)


Births

1833 - Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd President of the United States of America (1889-1893).


Deaths

1940 - Leon Trotsky, Russian communist politician and rival of Joseph Stalin, assassinated.