Today’s highlight:
On Aug. 15, 1961, as workers began constructing a Berlin Wall made of concrete, East German soldier Conrad Schumann leapt to freedom over a tangle of barbed wire in a scene captured in a famous photograph.
On this date:
In 1057, Macbeth, King of Scots, was kil
led in battle by Malcolm, the eldest son of King Duncan, whom Macbeth had slain.
In 1769, Napoleon Bonaparte was born on the island of Corsica.
In 1914, the Panama Canal opened to traffic.
In 1935, humorist Will Rogers and aviator Wiley Post were killed when their airplane crashed near Point Barrow in the Alaska Territory.
In 1945, in a radio address, Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced that his country had accepted terms of surrender for ending World War II.
In 1947, India became independent after some 200 years of British rule.
In 1969, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair opened in upstate New York.
In 1971, President Richard Nixon announced a 90-day freeze on wages, prices and rents. Bahrain declared its independence from Britain.
In 1974, a gunman attempted to shoot South Korean President Park Chung-hee during a speech; although Park was unhurt, his wife was struck and killed, along with a teenage girl. (The gunman was later executed.)
In 1998, 29 people were killed by a car bomb that tore apart the center of Omagh, Northern Ireland; a splinter group calling itself the Real IRA claimed responsibility.
Ten years ago: A Texas appeals court halted the execution of Napoleon Beazley just hours before he was scheduled to die for a murder he’d committed as a teenager. (Beazley was executed in May 2002.) The Air Force gave the go-ahead to build its new F-22 fighter. Robert R. Courtney, a Kansas City, Mo., pharmacist accused of diluting chemotherapy drugs, surrendered to the FBI. (He was later sentenced to 30 years in prison.) Astronomers announced the discovery of the first solar system outside our own.
Five years ago: Israel began withdrawing its forces from southern Lebanon. Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu, the queen of New Zealand’s indigenous Maori population, died on North Island, New Zealand, at age 75.
One year ago: Former medical student Philip Markoff, charged with killing Julissa Brisman, a masseuse he’d met through Craigslist, was found dead in his Boston jail cell, a suicide. Martin Kaymer won the PGA Championship in Sheboygan, Wis., in a three-hole playoff that did not include Dustin Johnson, who was penalized two strokes for grounding his club in a bunker on the last hole.
Associated Press
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