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Today is Thursday, August 15, the 228th day of 2024. There are 138 days left in the year.
Today in history:
The Woodstock Music and Art Fair opened in New York State on August 15, 1969; more than 460,000 people attended the three-day festival, which would become a turning point in American music and culture.
Also on this date:
In 1057, Macbeth, king of Scotland, was killed in battle by Malcolm, eldest son of King Duncan, who had killed Macbeth.
In 1914, the Panama Canal officially opened when the SS Ancon crossed the newly completed waterway between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
In 1935, humorist Will Rogers and aviator Wiley Post were killed when their plane crashed near Point Barrow in the Alaska Territory.
In 1947, India became independent after almost 200 years of British rule.
In 1961, as workers began building a concrete Berlin Wall, East German soldier Conrad Schumann jumped over a tangle of barbed wire to freedom.
In 1989, FW de Klerk was sworn in as acting president of South Africa, a day after PW Botha resigned due to a power struggle within the National Party.
In 1998, 29 people were killed by a car bomb that tore apart the center of Omagh (OH’-mah), Northern Ireland; a splinter group calling itself the Real IRA claimed responsibility.
In 2003, cities from the Midwest to Manhattan restored power to tens of millions of people after the largest power outage in American history.
In 2017, President Donald Trump, who faced harsh criticism for initially blaming the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Virginia on “many sides,” told reporters that there were “very fine people on both sides” of the confrontation and that groups protests against white supremacists were “also very violent.” (In between these statements, Trump, at the urging of aides, issued a more direct condemnation of white supremacists.)
In 2021, the Taliban regained control of the Afghan capital Kabul following the withdrawal of US troops from the country.
Today’s Birthdays:
- Actor Jim Dale is 89.
- Retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is 86.
- U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California, is 86.
- Author-journalist Linda Ellerbee is 80.
- Songwriter Jimmy Webb is 78.
- Actor Phyllis Smith is 75.
- British Princess Anne is 74.
- Actor Tess Harper is 74.
- Actor Zeljko Ivanek (ZEHL’-koh eh-VAHN’-ehk) is 67.
- Celebrity chef Tom Colicchio is 62.
- Film director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (ihn-YAH’-ee-tu) is 61.
- Philanthropist Melinda French Gates is 60.
- Actor Debra Messing is 56.
- Actor Anthony Anderson is 54.
- Actor Ben Affleck is 52.
- Olympic gold medal beach volleyball player Kerri Walsh Jennings is 46.
- Rock singer Joe Jonas (The Jonas Brothers) is 35.
- Actor Jennifer Lawrence is 34.
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