Today in History (August 24th):
0079: Thousands died and the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Italy.
1759: Birthdays: Pioneer British abolitionist William Wilberforce;
1814: The British captured Washington and burned the Capitol building and the White House.
1872: Birthdays: English author and parodist Max Beerbohm;
1884: Birthdays: Charlie Chan detective series author Earl Derr Biggers;
1898: Birthdays: Country music publisher Fred Rose;
1899: Birthdays: Argentine poet and author Jorge Luis Borges;
1929: Birthdays: Nobel Peace Prize laureate Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat;
1932: Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly non-stop across the United States.
1938: Birthdays: Musician David Freiberg; Musician Mason Williams;
1945: Birthdays: Wrestling entrepreneur Vince McMahon;
1957: Birthdays: Actor Stephan Fry;
1958: Birthdays: Actor Steve Guttenberg;
1960: Birthdays: Baseball Hall of Fame member Cal Ripken Jr. (U.S. major league record 2,632 consecutive games);
1962: Birthdays: Political commentator Major Garrett;
1965: Birthdays: Actor Marlee Matlin;
1973: Birthdays: Comedian Dave Chappelle;
1987: A U.S. appeals court in Cincinnati ruled public schools could require students to study textbooks not accepted by religious fundamentalists.
1988: Birthdays: Actor Rupert Grint.
1990: Irish-British hostage Brian Keenan, held by pro-Iranian Muslim extremists in Lebanon for more than four years, was freed.
1991: Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev quit as general secretary of the Communist Party central committee. He also ordered his Cabinet to resign.
1992: Hurricane Andrew smashed into Florida south of Miami with sustained winds of 145 mph. The storm killed 15 people and caused more than $30 billion in damage.
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1995: Beijing convicted and then expelled Chinese-American human rights activist Harry Wu, arrested in June while trying to enter China from Kazakhstan.
1996: Four women became students at The Citadel, a military school in South Carolina that had fought in court to remain all-male.
2004: Two Russian passenger jetliners crashed within minutes of each other after taking off from Domodedovo Airport in Moscow. A total of 89 people were killed.
2005: U.S. President George W. Bush vowed in an Idaho speech that he wouldn’t retreat from Iraq or the rest of the Middle East until U.S. troops win the war on terror. A Peruvian passenger plane crashed in the jungle of central Peru, killing at least 40 people.
2006: Pluto, the small, distant astronomic body that has discovered in 1930, was demoted to dwarf planet status when the International Astronomical Union adopted a new definition of planet, which excludes Pluto.
2008: The Summer Olympic Games came to a close in Beijing with the United States winning the most medals, 110, including 36 gold. Host China captured the most gold medals, 51, and was second in the overall category at 100. U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps turned in the best individual performance with a record eight gold medals in eight events.
2010: U.S. existing home sales in July plummeted to their lowest level in a decade with a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.83 million units, a 25.5 percent drop from a year earlier, an industry report said. Prices, however, rose 0.7 percent. Stepping up their terrorist campaign, Somali insurgents killed four legislators and about 29 others in a hotel raid in Mogadishu.
2011: Steve Jobs, co-founder and chief executive officer of Apple. Inc., resigned, telling his company’s board he could no longer meet my duties and expectations. Jobs, 56, who stayed on as chairman, had battled cancer for several years. He died Oct. 5, 2011.
2012: Deaths: Neil Armstrong, Astronaut;
Quotes
“Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.” – Charles Dudley Warner, Hartford (Conn.) Courant Editor.
Jean Rhys (1894-1979) Welsh-Dominican writer:
“I often want to cry. That is the only advantage women have over men – at least they can cry.”
“Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.”
“The feeling of Sunday is the same everywhere, heavy, melancholy, standing still. Like when they say, ‘As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.'”
“She could give herself up to the written word as naturally as a good dancer to music or a fine swimmer to water. The only difficulty was that after finishing the last sentence she was left with a feeling at once hollow and uncomfortably full. Exactly like indigestion.”
“We can’t all be happy, we can’t all be rich, we can’t all be lucky – and it would be so much less fun if we were … Some must cry so that others may be able to laugh the more heartily.”
“I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness, sad as an eagle without wings, sad as a violin with only one string and one that is broken, sad as a woman who is growing old.”
“Age seldom arrives smoothly or quickly. It’s more often a succession of jerks.”