August 26
Today's:

55 B.C. - Britain was invaded by Roman forces under Julius Caesar.

1498 - Michelangelo was commissioned to make the "Pieta."

1743 - Antoine Lavoisier was born. He was the chemist that proved that the union of oxygen and other chemicals is used in burning, rusting of metals and breathing.

1842 - The first fiscal year was established by the U.S. Congress to start on July 1st.

1847 - Liberia was proclaimed as an independent republic.

1873 - Dr. Lee DeForest was born. He was the inventor of the Audion tube. The tube makes the broadcasting of sound possible.

1873 - The school board of St. Louis, MO, authorized the first U.S. public kindergarten.

1883 - A two-day eruption of the volcanic island Krakatoa began. The tidal waves that were associated with the eruption killed 36,000 people when they destroyed the island.

1896 - In the Philippines, and insurrection began against the Spanish government.

1920 - The 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution went into effect. The amendment prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex in the voting booth.

1934 - Adolf Hitler demanded that France turn over their Saar region to Germany.

1937 - All Chinese shipping was blockaded by Japan.

1939 - The first televised major league baseball games were shown. The event was a double-header between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers.

1939 - The radio program, "Arch Oboler’s Plays", presented the NBC Symphony for the first time.

1945 - The Japanese were given surrender instructions on the U.S. battleship Missouri at the end of World War II.

1947 - Don Bankhead became the first black pitcher in major league baseball.

1957 - It was announced that an intercontinental ballistic missile was successfully tested by the Soviet Union.

1957 - The first Edsel made by the Ford Motor Company rolled out.

1961 - The International Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto opened.

1974 - Charles Lindberg died at the age of 72.

1973 - A U.S. Presidential Proclamation was declared that made August 26th Women's Equality Day.

1978 - Sigmund Jahn blasted off aboard the Russian Soyuz 31 and became the first German in space.

1981 - The U.S. claimed that North Korea fired an antiaircraft missile at a U.S. Surveillance plane while it was over South Korea.

1986 - Jennifer Levin was found strangled in New York City's Central Park. In the case called the "preppie murder" case Robert Chambers eventually pled guilty.

1987 - The Fuller Brush Company announced plans to open two retail stores in Dallas, TX. The company that had sold its products door to door for 81 years.

1990 - In Gainesville, FL, two slain college students were found in their apartment. Three more bodies would be found in the few days that followed.

1990 - The 55 Americans at the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait left Baghdad by car and headed for the Turkish border.

1991 - Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev promised that national elections would be held.

1992 - A mistrial was declared in the Iran-Contra cover-up trial of CIA spy Clair George.

1992 - A "no-fly zone" was imposed on the southern 1/3 of Iraq. The move by the U.S., France and Britain was aimed at protecting Iraqi Shiite Muslims.

1993 - Dorothea Puente was convicted of murdering three people that had been tenants in her boarding house. She was sentenced to life without parole.

1996 - Barbara Jewell asked U.S. President Clinton to clear her son's name in connection with the Centennial Olympic Park bombing. Richard Jewell was later cleared by the Justice Department.

1996 - Robert Vesco, a U.S. financier, was convicted in a Cuban court of economic crimes.

1996 - Chun Doo-hwan, the former military leader of South Korea, was sentenced to death. His crimes were mutiny, treason and embezzlement.

1998 - The U.S. government announced that they were investigating Microsoft in an attempt to discover if they "bullied" Intel into delaying new technology.

1998 - U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno ordered a review of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

1998 - Sudan filed a criminal lawsuit against U.S. President Clinton and the United States for the bombing of the El-Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries Company. The Sudanese claimed that the plant was strictly civilian. Today's: