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Today is Friday, August 23, the 236th day of 2024. There are 130 days left in the year.
Today in history:
On August 23, 1970, the Salad Bowl strike began, organized by farm worker leader Cesar Chavez; between 5,000 and 10,000 workers walked off the job, leading to the largest farm worker strike in American history.
Also on this date:
In 1305, Scottish rebel leader Sir William Wallace was executed by the English for treason.
In 1775, Britain’s King George III declared the American colonies to be in a state of “open and open rebellion.”
In 1914, Japan declared war on Germany in World War I.
In 1927, amid worldwide protests, Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in Boston for the murder of two men during a robbery in 1920. (On the 50th anniversary of their executions, then-Governor of Massachusetts, Michael Dukakis, issued a proclamation that Sacco and Vanzetti were unfairly tried and convicted.)
In 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agreed on a non-aggression pact in Moscow, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
In 2000, a Gulf Air Airbus crashed into the Persian Gulf near Bahrain, killing all 143 people on board.
In 2003, former priest John Geoghan (GAY’-gun), the convicted child molester whose prosecution led to the sex abuse scandal that rocked the Roman Catholic Church nationwide, died after another inmate attacked him in a Massachusetts prison .
In 2011, a magnitude 5.8 earthquake near Mineral, Virginia, the strongest on the East Coast since 1944, caused cracks in the Washington Monument and damaged the Washington National Cathedral.
In 2013, a military jury convicted Major Nidal Hasan in the deadly shooting at Fort Hood, Texas in 2009, which left thirteen people dead; the army psychiatrist was later sentenced to death.
In 2020, a white police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shot a black man, Jacob Blake, seven times as officers attempted to arrest Blake on an outstanding warrant; The shooting left Blake partially paralyzed and triggered several nights of violent protests.
In 2022, a The jury convicted two men of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, a victory for prosecutors in a plot broken up by the FBI and described by anti-government extremists as a rallying cry for an American civil war.
Today’s Birthdays:
- Actor Vera Miles is 95.
- Actor Barbara Eden is 93.
- Football Hall of Famer Sonny Jurgensen is 90.
- Ballerina Patricia McBride is 82.
- Author Nelson DeMille is 81.
- Former general surgeon Antonia Novello is 80.
- Singer-songwriter Linda Thompson is 77.
- Author and motivational speaker Rudy Ruettiger is 76.
- Actor Shelley Long is 75.
- Actor-singer Rick Springfield is 75.
- Noor al-Hussein (Queen Noor of Jordan) is 73.
- Film composer Alexandre Desplat is 63.
- Actor Jay Mohr is 54.
- Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is 53.
- Actor Ray Park is 50.
- Actor Scott Caan is 48.
- Rock singer Julian Casablancas (The Strokes) is 46.
- Actor Joanne Froggatt is 44.
- Olympic gold medal swimmer Natalie Coughlin Hall is 42.
- Musician Lil Yachty is 27.