Today is Friday, August twenty third, the 236th day of the 12 months 2024. There are 130 days left within the 12 months.
Today in history:
On August 23, 1970, the Salad Bowl Strike began, organized by farmworkers' union leader Cesar Chavez; between 5,000 and 10,000 staff walked off the job, leading to the biggest farmworkers' strike in U.S. history.
Also on this date:
In 1305, the Scottish rebel leader Sir William Wallace was executed by the English for treason.
In 1914, Japan declared war on Germany during World War I.
In 1927, Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in Boston amid worldwide protests for the murder of two men during a robbery in 1920. (On the fiftieth anniversary of their executions, then-Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis issued a proclamation that Sacco and Vanzetti had been wrongfully 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. All 143 people on board were killed.
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 across the country, died after he was attacked by one other inmate in a Massachusetts prison.
In 2011, a magnitude 5.8 earthquake with an epicenter near Mineral, Virginia, caused the strongest on the East Coast since 1944, Cracks within the Washington Monument and damaged the Washington National Cathedral.
In 2013 a military jury convicted Major Nidal Hasan within the deadly shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas in 2009, through which 13 people were killed; the military 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 excellent warrant; the shooting left Blake partially paralyzed and triggered several nights of violent protests.
In 2022, a Jury convicted two men of conspiracy to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, a victory for prosecutors in a plot uncovered by the FBI and hailed by anti-government extremists as a rallying cry for US civil war.
Today's birthdays:
- Actress Vera Miles is 95.
- Actress Barbara Eden is 93.
- Sonny Jurgensen, member of the Football Hall of Fame, is 90 years old.
- Ballerina Patricia McBride is 82.
- The creator Nelson DeMille is 81.
- Former Surgeon General Antonia Novello is 80.
- Singer-songwriter Linda Thompson is 77.
- Author and motivational speaker Rudy Ruettiger is 76.
- Actor Shelley Long is 75.
- Actor and singer Rick Springfield is 75.
- Noor al-Hussein (Queen Noor of Jordan) is 73.
- The 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.
- Actress Joanne Froggatt is 44.
- Olympic gold medalist in swimming, Natalie Coughlin Hall, is 42.
- The musician Lil Yachty is 27.
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