Republican Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin delivers her speech as Republican presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., introduces her as his Vice Presidential running mate Friday, Aug. 29, 2008 at the Ervin J. Nutter Center in Dayton, Ohio. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato)

Today is Sunday, Aug. 23, the 236th day of 2020. There are 130 days left in the year.

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Today’s Highlight in History

On August 23, 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to a non-aggression treaty, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in Moscow.

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Pope John Paul I gives his first message as the new pope in front of a large crowd at Vatican City on Sunday, Aug. 27, 1978. The newly elected pontiff is flanked by Monsignors Orazio Cocchetti, right, and Virgilio Noe. Visible in the background is the packed St. Peter's Square with the colonnades. (AP Photo)

On this date

In 1754, France’s King Louis XVI was born at Versailles.

In 1775, Britain’s King George III proclaimed the American colonies to be in a state of “open and avowed rebellion.”

In 1912, actor, dancer, director and choreographer Gene Kelly was born Eugene Curran Kelly in Pittsburgh.

In 1914, Japan declared war against Germany in World War I.

FILE - In this Aug. 28, 1963 file photo, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, addresses marchers during his "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. (AP Photo/File)

In 1926, silent film star Rudolph Valentino died in New York at age 31.

In 1927, amid worldwide protests, Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in Boston for the murders of two men during a 1920 robbery. (On the 50th anniversary of their executions, then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis issued a proclamation that Sacco and Vanzetti had been unfairly tried and convicted.)

In 1973, a bank robbery-turned-hostage-taking began in Stockholm, Sweden; the four hostages ended up empathizing with their captors, a psychological condition now referred to as “Stockholm Syndrome.”

In 1982, Lebanon’s parliament elected Christian militia leader Bashir Gemayel president. (Gemayel was assassinated some three weeks later.)

In 2003, former priest John Geoghan (GAY’-gun), the convicted child molester whose prosecution sparked the sex abuse scandal that shook the Roman Catholic Church nationwide, died after another inmate attacked him in a Massachusetts prison.

Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., listens to remarks on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 31, 2009, during a confirmation hearing for Health and Human Services Secretary-designate, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

In 2008, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama introduced his choice of running mate, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, before a crowd outside the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill.

In 2013, a military jury convicted Maj. Nidal Hasan in the deadly 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, that claimed 13 lives; the Army psychiatrist was later sentenced to death. Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, the U.S. soldier who’d massacred 16 Afghan civilians, was sentenced at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, to life in prison with no chance of parole.

In 2018, the United States and China imposed tariff increases on an additional $16 billion of each other’s goods.

Ten years ago: A jury in Goldsboro, North Carolina, convicted former Marine Cesar Laurean of first-degree murder in the death of a pregnant colleague, Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach. (Laurean was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.) Tiger Woods and his wife, Elin (EE’-lihn) Nordegren, officially divorced.

Five years ago: Islamic State militants destroyed a temple at ancient ruins of Palmyra in Syria, realizing the worst fears archaeologists had for the fate of the 2,000-year-old Roman-era city after the extremists seized it and beheaded a local scholar. The United Arab Emirates said its military had freed a British hostage, Robert Douglas Semple, who was kidnapped 18 months earlier ago by al-Qaida in Yemen. Ohio State became the first unanimous preseason No. 1 in The Associated Press college football poll.

One year ago: The Supreme Court said 86-year-old Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had completed radiation therapy for a cancerous tumor on her pancreas, and there was no evidence of the disease remaining. Billionaire industrialist David Koch, who with his brother Charles was a major donor to conservative causes and educational groups, died at the age of 79. President Donald Trump threatened to use the emergency power granted by a powerful but obscure federal law to make good on his tweeted “order” to U.S. businesses to cut ties in China.

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AUGUST 24

On August 24 in A.D. 79, long-dormant Mount Vesuvius erupted, burying the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in volcanic ash; an estimated 20,000 people died.

In A.D. 410, Rome was overrun by the Visigoths, a major event in the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

In 1932, Amelia Earhart embarked on a 19-hour flight from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey, making her the first woman to fly solo, non-stop, from coast to coast.

In 1981, Mark David Chapman was sentenced in New York to 20 years to life in prison for murdering John Lennon. (Chapman remains imprisoned.)

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AUGUST 25

On August 25, 1944, during World War II, Paris was liberated by Allied forces after four years of Nazi occupation.

In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed an act establishing the National Park Service within the Department of the Interior.

In 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a measure providing pensions for former U.S. presidents and their widows.

In 2012, Neil Armstrong, 82, who commanded the historic Apollo 11 lunar landing and was the first man to set foot on the moon in July 1969, died in Cincinnati, Ohio.

In 2009, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the liberal lion of the U.S. Senate, died at age 77 in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, after a battle with a brain tumor.

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AUGUST 26

On August 26, 1968, the Democratic National Convention opened in Chicago; the four-day event that resulted in the nomination of Hubert H. Humphrey for president was marked by a bloody police crackdown on antiwar protesters in the streets.

In 55 B.C., Roman forces under Julius Caesar invaded Britain, with only limited success.

In 55 B.C., Roman forces under Julius Caesar invaded Britain, with only limited success.

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AUGUST 27

On August 27, 2008, Barack Obama was nominated for president by the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

In 1858, the second debate between senatorial candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas took place in Freeport, Ill.

In 1908, Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th president of the United States, was born near Stonewall, Texas.

In 1963, author, journalist and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois died in Accra, Ghana, at age 95.

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AUGUST 28

On August 28, 1963, more than 200,000 people listened as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

In 1917, ten suffragists demanding that President Woodrow Wilson support a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote were arrested as they picketed outside the White House.

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AUGUST 29

On Aug. 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast near Buras, Louisiana, bringing floods that devastated New Orleans. More than 1,800 people in the region died.

In 1862, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing began operations at the United States Treasury.

In 1877, the second president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Brigham Young, died in Salt Lake City, Utah, at age 76.

In 1964, Roy Orbison’s single “Oh, Pretty Woman” was released on the Monument label.

In 1982, Academy Award-winning actor Ingrid Bergman died in London on her 67th birthday.

In 2008, Republican presidential nominee John McCain picked Sarah Palin, a maverick conservative who had been governor of Alaska for less than two years, to be his running mate.