Today is Saturday, August 17, the 230th day of 2024. There are 136 days left in the year.
Today in History:
On August 17, 1998, President Bill Clinton testified before a grand jury via closed-circuit television from the White House regarding his relationship with Monica Lewinsky; he then gave a televised speech in which he admitted that his relationship with Lewinsky was “bad” but denied having previously committed perjury (Clinton was later impeached by the House of Representatives, but acquitted by the Senate).
Also on this date:
In 1807, Robert Fulton’s steamboat North River made its first voyage, successfully sailing up the Hudson River from New York to Albany and back.
In 1863, Federal batteries and ships began bombarding Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor during the Civil War, but the Confederates managed to hold out despite several days of bombardment.
In 1915, an angry mob in Cobb County, Georgia, lynched Jewish businessman Leo Frank, 31, whose death sentence for the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan had been commuted to life imprisonment. (Frank, who had maintained his innocence, was pardoned by the state of Georgia in 1986.)
In 1945, Sukarno and Mohammed Hatta declared Indonesian independence, sparking the Indonesian National Revolution against Dutch rule.
In 1945, George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm, an allegorical satire of Soviet communism, was first published in London by Martin Secker & Warburg.
In 1959, trumpeter Miles Davis released “Kind of Blue,” considered one of the most influential jazz albums of all time.
In 1978, the first successful transatlantic balloon flight ended when Maxie Anderson, Ben Abruzzo and Larry Newman landed their Double Eagle II near Paris.
In 1988, Pakistani President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq and US Ambassador Arnold Raphel (RAY’-fehl) were killed in a mysterious plane crash.
In 1999, more than 17,000 people were killed when a 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck Kocaeli province in Turkey.
Today’s birthdays:
- Computer scientist Margaret Hamilton is 88 years old.
- Actor Robert DeNiro is 81 years old.
- Businessman Larry Ellison is 80 years old.
- Filmmaker Martha Coolidge is 78 years old.
- Filmmaker/author Julian Fellowes is 75 years old.
- Tennis Hall of Famer Guillermo Vilas is 72 years old.
- Singer Belinda Carlisle is 66 years old.
- Author Jonathan Franzen is 65 years old.
- Actor Sean Penn is 64 years old.
- Singer/actor Donnie Wahlberg is 55 years old.
- College Basketball Hall of Famer and former NBA All-Star Christian Laettner is 55.
- Rapper Posdnuos (PAHS’-deh-noos) (De La Soul) is 55 years old.
- Tennis Hall of Famer Jim Courier is 54.
- Football legend Thierry Henry is 47 years old.
- Climber Alex Honnold is 39 years old.
- Actor Austin Butler is 33 years old.
- Singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers is 30 years old.
