Today’s Highlight in History:
On Aug. 20, 1986, postal employee Patrick Henry Sherrill went on a deadly rampage at a post office in Edmond, Oklahoma, shooting 14 fellow workers to death before killing himself.
On this date:
In 1862, the New York Tribune published an open letter by editor Horace Greeley calling on President Abraham Lincoln to take more aggressive measures to free the slaves and end the South’s rebellion.
In 1866, President Andrew Johnson formally declared the Civil War over, months after fighting had stopped.
In 1882, Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” had its premiere in Moscow.
In 1910, a series of forest fires swept through parts of Idaho, Montana and Washington, killing at least 85 people and burning some 3 million acres.
In 1940, exiled Communist revolutionary Leon Trotsky was assassinated in Coyoacan, Mexico by Ramon Mercader. (Trotsky died the next day.)
In 1953, the Soviet Union publicly acknowledged it had tested a hydrogen bomb.
In 1955, hundreds of people were killed in anti-French rioting in Morocco and Algeria.
In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Economic Opportunity Act, a nearly $1 billion anti-poverty measure.
In 1968, the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact nations began invading Czechoslovakia to crush the “Prague Spring” liberalization drive.
In 1988, a cease-fire in the war between Iraq and Iran went into effect.
In 1989, fifty-one people died when a pleasure boat sank in the River Thames (tehmz) in London after colliding with a dredger.
In 2020, accepting the Democratic presidential nomination, Joe Biden vowed to move the nation past the chaos of Donald Trump’s tenure and return it to its leadership role in the world; capping a virtual convention amid the pandemic, Biden spoke to a largely empty arena in Delaware. Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny became ill on a flight to Moscow from Siberia and was hospitalized in a coma. (Navalny would spend five months in Germany recovering from a nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin; he was arrested after his return to Russia.)
Celebrity Birthdays, Aug. 20: News anchor Connie Chung is 77. Trombone player Jimmy Pankow of Chicago is 76. Actor Ray Wise (“Reaper,” ″Twin Peaks”) is 76. Actor John Noble (“Lord of the Rings” films) is 75. Singer Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin) is 75. Singer Rudy Gatlin of the Gatlin Brothers is 71. Singer-songwriter John Hiatt is 71. Actor-director Peter Horton (“thirtysomething”) is 70. “Today” show weatherman Al Roker is 69. Actor Joan Allen is 67. Director David O. Russell (“Silver Linings Playbook,” “American Hustle”) is 65. Actor James Marsters (“Angel,” ″Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) is 61. Rapper KRS-One is 58. Actor Colin Cunningham (“Falling Skies”) is 57. Actor Billy Gardell (“Mike and Molly”) is 54. Singer Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit is 53. Actor Ke Huy Quan (“Everything Everywhere All At Once,” “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”) is 53. Guitarist Brad Avery of Third Day is 52. Actor Misha Collins (“Supernatural”) is 49. Singer Monique Powell of Save Ferris is 48. Actor Ben Barnes (“Westworld,” ″Prince Caspian”) is 42. Actor Meghan Ory (“One Upon a Time”) is 41. Actor Andrew Garfield (“The Amazing Spider-Man”) is 40. Actor Brant Daugherty (“Pretty Little Liars”) is 38. Singer-actor Demi Lovato is 31. Actor Christopher Paul Richards (TV’s “The Kids Are Alright”) is 20.