[Rors]

On This Day: August 23

Today is Saturday, August 23, 2008. This is the 236th day of the year, with 130 days remaining in 2008.


Fact of the Day: Yuri Gagarin

"Yuri (or Yury) Gagarin was a 20th-century Russian explorer who became the first person to journey into space and to orbit the earth. Gagarin earned this honor after joining the air force and becoming known as a daring and skillful fighter pilot. His spaceship, Vostok I, was launched from a European desert and made it around the Earth in 1 hour and 48 minutes. Just seven years later, Gagarin was killed when testing a new jet trainer. Gagarin was honored by having his ashes buried in the Kremlin wall in Moscow's Red Square."


Holidays

Feast day of St. Rose of Lima, Saints Asterius and Claudius, St. Tydfil, St. Philip Benizi, and St. Eugene or Eoghan of Ardstraw.

Romania: National Day.


Events

1541 - Jacques Cartier landed near Quebec on his third voyage to North America.

1775 - King George III of England refused the American colonies' offer of peace and declared them in open rebellion.

1821 - After 11 years of war, Spain granted Mexican independence as a constitutional monarchy.

1839 - Hong Kong was taken by the British in a war with China.

1902 - Fanny Farmer, among the first to emphasize the relationship of diet to health, opened her School of Cookery in Boston.

1914 - Japan declared war on Germany in World War I.

1927 - Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian-American anarchists, accused of robbery and murder on April 15, 1920 were sent to the electric chair.

1944 - Romanian prime minister Ion Antonescu was dismissed by King Michael, paving the way for Romania to abandon the Axis in favor of the Allies.

1950 - Up to 77,000 members of the U.S. Army Organized Reserve Corps were called involuntarily to active duty to fight the Korean War.

1962 - The first live TV program was relayed between the U.S. and Europe through the U.S. Telstar satellite.

1979 - Soviet dancer Alexander Godunov defected while the Bolshoi Ballet was on tour in New York.

1989 - Yusuf Hawkins, a 16-year-old black teenager, was shot to death after he and his friends were confronted by white youths in a Brooklyn neighborhood.

1990 - President Saddam Hussein appeared on Iraqi state television with a group of Western detainees that he referred to as "guests." He told the group that they were being held "to prevent the scourge of war."

1992 - Hurricane Andrew hit the Bahamas with 120 mile per hour winds.

1998 - Protestors in Sudan carried a sign that bore the resemblance of Monica Lewinsky and the words "No War for Monika." The anti-U.S. demonstration was in Khartoum, Sudan.

1998 - Michael Jones, a 16-year old boy, was shot when he refused to drop a water gun that appeared real to police officers. In New York City it was illegal to carry to possess a toy gun that looks real or is painted black.

1998 - Boris Yeltsin dismissed the Russian government again.

1999 - Rescuers in Turkey found a young boy that had been buried in rubble from an earthquake for about a week.

1999 - Robert Bogucki was rescued after getting lost in the Great Sandy Desert of Australia on July 11. During the 43 day ordeal Bogucki lost 44 pounds.

2000 - Richard Hatch was revealed as the winning castaway on CBS' "Survivor." Hatch won $1,000,000 for his stay on the island of Pulau Tida in the South China Sea.

2005 - TANS Peru Flight 204 crashes near Pucallpa, Peru, killing 41.

2005 - Israeli forces evicted militant holdouts from two Jewish settlements, completing a historic withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank.


Lebanon Related Events

1982 - The parliament of Lebanon elected Bashir Bemayel president. He was assassinated three weeks later.

2006 - Syria opposed deployment of an international force along its border to prevent arms shipments to Hezbollah, and Israel called the situation in Lebanon "explosive." In southern Lebanon 3 Lebanese soldiers were killed while they dismantled an unexploded missile. An Israeli soldier was killed and three others wounded in southern Lebanon when their tank drove over a land mine.
(AP, 8/23/06)(AP, 8/24/06)

2007 - A cluster bomb left over from last year's Hezbollah-Israel war exploded in southern Lebanon, killing a Lebanese mine-clearing expert and wounding three others who were trying to dismantle it.
(AP, 8/23/07)


Births

1754 - King Louis XVI of France.
1785 - Oliver Hazard Perry, American naval officer.
1852 - Arnold Toynbee, English economist, social reformer.
1912 - Gene Kelly, American dancer, choreographer, actor.
1932 - Mark Russell, an American political satirist/comedian.
1943 - Nelson DeMille, American novelist.
1946 - Keith Moon, English singer and drummer for the rock band The Who.
1963 - Kenny Wallace, American race car driver.
1978 - Kobe Bryant, American basketball player.


Deaths

1305 - Sir William Wallace, a Scottish knight who led his countrymen in resistance to English domination in the region, during periods of the Wars of Scottish Independence.
1926 - Rudolph Valentino, Italian-born American film actor.
1960 - Oscar Hammerstein II, American lyricist and collaborator with composer Richard Rogers.
1990 - David Rose, British-born American composer and orchestra leader.
1997 - John Kendrew, British molecular biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
2006 - Maynard Ferguson, Canadian jazz trumpeter and bandleader.