Today is Wednesday, Aug. 22, the 235th day of 2012. There are 131 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight:
On Aug. 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln publicly responded to Horace Greeley’s “Prayer of Twenty Millions,” which had urged Lincoln to take more drastic steps in abolishing slavery; Lincoln replied that his priority was saving the Union, but also repeated his “personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.”
On this date:
In 1485, England’s King Richard III was killed in the Battle of Bosworth Field, effectively ending the War of the Roses.
In 1787, inventor John Fitch demonstrated his steamboat on the Delaware River to delegates from the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
In 1846, Gen. Stephen W. Kearny proclaimed all of New Mexico a territory of the United States.
In 1851, the schooner America outraced more than a dozen British vessels off the English coast to win a trophy that came to be known as the America’s Cup.
In 1862, French composer Claude Debussy was born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
In 1922, Irish revolutionary Michael Collins was shot to death, apparently by Irish Republican Army members opposed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty that Collins had co-signed.
In 1932, the British Broadcasting Corp. conducted its first experimental television broadcast, using a 30-line mechanical system.
In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Vice President Richard Nixon were nominated for second terms in office by the Republican national convention in San Francisco.
In 1962, French President Charles de Gaulle survived an attempt on his life in suburban Paris.
In 1972, President Richard Nixon was nominated for a second term of office by the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach. A hostage drama began at a Chase Manhattan Bank in Brooklyn, N.Y., as John Wojtowicz (WOHJ’-toh-witz) and Salvatore Naturile seized seven employees during a botched robbery; the episode, which ended with Wojtowicz’s arrest and Naturile’s killing by the FBI, inspired the movie “Dog Day Afternoon.”
In 1989, Black Panthers co-founder Huey P. Newton was shot to death in Oakland, Calif. (Gunman Tyrone Robinson was later sentenced to 32 years to life in prison.)
In 1992, on the second day of the Ruby Ridge siege in Idaho, an FBI sharpshooter killed Vicki Weaver, the wife of white separatist Randy Weaver (the sharpshooter later said he was targeting the couple’s friend Kevin Harris, and didn’t see Vicki Weaver).
Associated Press
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