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This Day In History: August 24th

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Communication
 
 
Crime and Corruption
1981
Mark David Chapman was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison for the murder of John Lennon.
1985
27 anti-apartheid leaders were arrested in South Africa as racial violence rocked the country.
1987
Sergeant Clayton Lonetree was sentenced to 30 years in prison by a military jury for giving U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union.
1989
Pete Rose, the manager of the Cincinnati Reds, was banned from baseball for life after being accused of gambling on baseball.
1995
Harry Wu, human rights activist, was expelled by China after he was convicted of spying.
1998
The U.S. and Britain agreed on the Netherlands as site for the trial of two Libyan suspects for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.
2004
Salim Ahmed Hamdan was formally charged in the first U.S. military tribunal since World War II. Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's former chauffer, was charged with conspiracy as an al-Qaida member to commit war crimes, including murder.
Defence
 
 
Disasters
0079
Mount Vesuvius erupted killing approximately 20,000 people. The cities of Pompeii, Stabiae and Herculaneum were buried in volcanic ash.
1992
Hurricane Andrew hit southern Florida causing 55 deaths in the Bahamas, Florida, and Louisiana.
Discovery
 
 
Education
 
 
Film, Television and Radio
 
 
Heads of State
 
 
Health and Social Welfare
 
 
Industry
1853
The first convention of the American Pharmaceutical Association was held.
1995
Microsoft's "Windows 95" went on sale.
Law
1912
A four-pound limit was set for parcels sent through the U.S. Post Office mail system.
 
Motor Sport
 
 
People
1867
  Johns Hopkins died. The railroad millionaire left $7.5 million in his will for the founding of a new medical school in his name.
1880
Joshua Lionel Cowen was born. He was the inventor of the toy electric train.
1932
Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the U.S. non-stop. The trip from Los Angeles, CA to Newark, NJ, took about 19 hours.
1939
The leader of "Murder, Incorporated", Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, gave himself up to columnist Walter Winchell. Winchell then turned him over to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
1963
John Pennel pole-vaulted 17 feet and 3/4 inches becoming the first to break the 17-foot barrier.
1990
Irish hostage Brian Keenan was released. He had been held in Lebanon for 1,597 days.
Politics
0410
The Visigoths overran Rome. This event symbolized the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
1949
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) went into effect. The agreement was that an attack against on one of the parties would be considered "an attack against them all."
1954
The Communist Party was virtually outlawed in the U.S. when the Communist Control Act went into effect.
1959
Three days after Hawaiian statehood, Hiram L. Fong was sworn in as the first Chinese-American U.S. senator while Daniel K. Inouye was sworn in as the first Japanese-American U.S. representative.
1989
"Total war" was declared by Columbian drug lords on their government.
1991
Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as the head of the Communist Party.
1992
China and South Korea established diplomatic relations.
1998
U.S. officials cited a soil sample as part of the evidence that a Sudan plant was producing precursors to the VX nerve gas. And, therefore made it a target for U.S. missiles on August 20, 1998.
Publishing
 
 
Religion
1456
The printing of the Gutenberg Bible was completed.
1572
The Catholics began their slaughter of the French Protestants in Paris. The killings claimed about 70,000 people.
Science
1989
  The U.S. space probe, Voyager 2, sent back photographs of Neptune.
2001
NASA announced that operation of the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite would end by September 30th due to budget restrictions. Though the satellite is best known for monitoring a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica, it was designed to provide information about the upper atmosphere by measuring its winds, temperatures, chemistry and energy received from the sun.
2005
The planet Pluto was reclassified as a "dwarf planet" by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Pluto's status was changed due to the IAU's new rules for an object qualifying as a planet. Pluto met two of the three rules because it orbits the sun and is large enough to assume a nearly round shape. However, since Pluto has an oblong orbit and overlaps the orbit of Neptune it disqualified Pluto as a planet.
Sport
1975
Davey Lopes of the Los Angeles Dodgers set a major league baseball record when he stole his 38th consecutive base.
 
Technology
1869
A patent for the waffle iron was received by Cornelius Swarthout.
1891
Thomas Edison applied patents for the kinetoscope and kinetograph (U.S. Pats. 493,426 and 589,168).
1968
France became the 5th thermonuclear power when they exploded a hydrogen bomb in the South Pacific.
The Arts
 
 
The Environment
 
 
The Law
 
 
The Workforce
 
 
Trade and Economy
2001
In McAllen, TX, Bridgestone/Firestone agreed to settle out of court and pay a reported $7.5 million to a family in a rollover accident in their Ford Explorer.
2001
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly was randomly picked to take over the Microsoft monopoly case. The judge was to decide how Microsoft should be punished for illegally trying to squelch its competitors.
Transport
1986
Frontier Airlines shut down. Thousands of people were left stranded.
 
War
1814
Washington, DC, was invaded by British forces that set fire to the White House and Capitol.
1970
A bomb went off at the University of Wisconsin's Army Math Research Center in Madison, WI. The bomb that killed Robert Fassnacht was set by anti-war extremists.
1990
Iraqi troops surrounded foreign missions in Kuwait.
2001
The remains of nine American servicemen killed in the Korean War were returned to the U.S. The bodies were found about 60 miles north of Pyongyang. It was estimated that it would be a year before the identies of the soldiers would be known.
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