Today is Friday, August 23, the 236th day of the year 2024. There are 130 days left in the year.
Today in History:
On August 23, 1970, the Salad Bowl strike began, organized by farm union leader Cesar Chavez; between 5,000 and 10,000 workers walked off the job, resulting in the largest farm workers’ strike in U.S. history.
Also on this date:
In 1305, Scottish rebel leader Sir William Wallace was executed by the English for treason.
In 1775, King George III of England proclaimed that the American colonies were in a state of “open and avowed 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 murders of two men during a 1920 robbery. (On the 50th anniversary of their execution, then-Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis issued a proclamation saying Sacco and Vanzetti had been unjustly tried and convicted.)
In 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union concluded a non-aggression treaty, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in Moscow.
In 2000, a Gulf Air Airbus crashed in 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 sparked the sex abuse scandal that rocked the Roman Catholic Church nationwide, died after another inmate assaulted him in a Massachusetts prison.
In 2011, a magnitude 5.8 earthquake centered 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 Maj. Nidal Hasan of the deadly 2009 shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, that left 13 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 sparked several nights of violent protests.
In 2022, a jury convicted two men of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, a victory for prosecutors in a plot dismantled by the FBI and described as a rallying cry for an American civil war by anti-government extremists.
Today’s birthdays:
- Actress Vera Miles is 95 years old.
- Actress Barbara Eden is 93 years old.
- Football Hall of Famer Sonny Jurgensen is 90.
- Ballerina Patricia McBride is 82 years old.
- Author Nelson DeMille is 81 years old.
- Former chief physician Antonia Novello is 80 years old.
- Singer-songwriter Linda Thompson is 77 years old.
- Author and motivational speaker Rudy Ruettiger is 76 years old.
- Actress Shelley Long is 75 years old.
- Actor-singer Rick Springfield is 75 years old.
- Noor al-Hussein (Queen Noor of Jordan) is 73 years old.
- Film composer Alexandre Desplat is 63.
- Actor Jay Mohr is 54 years old.
- Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is 53 years old.
- Actor Ray Park is 50 years old.
- Actor Scott Caan is 48 years old.
- Rock singer Julian Casablancas (The Strokes) is 46 years old.
- Actress Joanne Froggatt is 44 years old.
- Olympic swimming gold medalist Natalie Coughlin Hall is 42 years old.
- Musician Lil Yachty is 27 years old.
