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This Week in History for Aug. 14-20

By The Associated Press - | Aug 13, 2022

Sen. Dan Quayle waves from the podium at the Republican National Convention in New Orleans on Thursday, August 18, 1988 as he accepted the Republican Vice presidential nomination. (AP Photo/Bob Daugherty)

Today is Sunday, Aug. 14, the 226th day of 2022. There are 139 days left in the year.

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Today’s Highlight in History

On Aug. 14, 1945, President Harry S. Truman announced that Imperial Japan had surrendered unconditionally, ending World War II.

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Cuban Economic Minister Ernesto "Che" Guevara speaks during the closing session of the Inter-American Economic Conference at Punta del Este, Uruguay, Aug. 17, 1961. (AP Photo)

On this date

In 1848, the Oregon Territory was created.

In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law.

In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill issued the Atlantic Charter, a statement of principles that renounced aggression.

In 1947, Pakistan became independent of British rule.

Actor and comedian Robin Williams, right, with his wife Valerie Velardi, clowns with a camera in Los Angeles, Calif., Aug. 14, 1979. (AP Photo)

In 1948, the Summer Olympics in London ended; they were the first Olympic games held since 1936.

In 1973, U.S. bombing of Cambodia came to a halt.

In 1980, actor-model Dorothy Stratten, 20, was shot to death by her estranged husband and manager, Paul Snider, who then killed himself.

In 1994, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, the terrorist known as “Carlos the Jackal,” was captured by French agents in Sudan.

In 1995, Shannon Faulkner officially became the first female cadet in the history of The Citadel, South Carolina’s state military college. (However, Faulkner quit the school less than a week later, citing the stress of her court fight, and her isolation among the male cadets.)

FILE - This 1972 file photo shows Elvis Presley, the King of Rock 'n' Roll, during a performance. Television and radio personality Wink Martindale and Jenna Bush Hager, daughter of former President George W. Bush, attended the annual birthday party at Presley's longtime Memphis home on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2014. The event featured a cake cutting and the singing of "Happy Birthday" by 16-year-old Canadian David Thibault. Presley was born in Tupelo, Miss., on Jan. 8, 1935, and moved to Memphis with his parents at age 13. He was 42 when he died Aug. 16, 1977. (AP Photo, file)

In 1997, an unrepentant Timothy McVeigh was formally sentenced to death for the Oklahoma City bombing. (McVeigh was executed by lethal injection in 2001.)

In 2009, Charles Manson follower Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, 60, convicted of trying to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975, was released from a Texas prison hospital after more than three decades behind bars.

In 2020, India’s coronavirus death toll overtook Britain’s to become the fourth-highest in the world after another single-day record increase in cases.

Ten years ago: Vice President Joe Biden sparked a campaign commotion, telling an audience in southern Virginia that included hundreds of Black voters that Republican Mitt Romney wanted to put them “back in chains” by deregulating Wall Street. (Biden later mocked Republican criticism over the remark while conceding he’d meant to use different words.) Ron Palillo, the actor best known as the nerdy high school student Arnold Horshack on the 1970s sitcom “Welcome Back, Kotter,” died in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, at age 63.

Five years ago: Under pressure from right and left, President Donald Trump condemned white supremacist groups by name, declaring them to be “repugnant to everything that we hold dear as Americans.” The CEO of Merck, the nation’s third-largest pharmaceutical company, resigned from a federal advisory council, citing Trump’s failure to explicitly condemn white nationalists who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia. (Kenneth Frazier was one of the few African Americans to head a Fortune 500 company. The CEOs of Intel and Under Armour also resigned from the American Manufacturing Council later in the day.) A jury in Denver, siding with pop star Taylor Swift, ordered a fired radio DJ to pay her a symbolic $1 after concluding that he had groped her.

One year ago: The Taliban captured Mazar-e-Sharif, a large, heavily-defended city in northern Afghanistan, and approached the capital Kabul, less than three weeks before the U.S. hoped to complete its troop withdrawal. President Joe Biden authorized an additional 1,000 U.S. troops for deployment to Afghanistan to ensure what he called an “orderly and safe drawdown” of American and allied personnel. A 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, turning thousands of structures into rubble; the quake left more than 2,200 people dead and injured more than 12,000 others.

Today’s Birthdays: Broadway lyricist Lee Adams (“Bye Bye Birdie”) is 98. College Football Hall of Famer John Brodie is 87. Singer Dash Crofts is 84. Rock singer David Crosby is 81. Country singer Connie Smith is 81. Comedian-actor Steve Martin is 77. Movie director Wim Wenders is 77. Actor Antonio Fargas is 76. Singer-musician Larry Graham is 76. Actor Susan Saint James is 76. Author Danielle Steel is 75. Rock singer-musician Terry Adams (NRBQ) is 74. “Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson is 72. Actor Carl Lumbly is 71. Olympic gold medal swimmer Debbie Meyer is 70. Actor Jackee Harry is 66. Actor Marcia Gay Harden is 63. Basketball Hall of Famer Earvin “Magic” Johnson is 63. Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., is 63. Singer Sarah Brightman is 62. Actor Susan Olsen is 61. Actor-turned-fashion/interior designer Cristi Conaway is 58. Rock musician Keith Howland (Chicago) is 58. Actor Halle Berry is 56. Actor Ben Bass is 54. Actor Catherine Bell is 54. Rock musician Kevin Cadogan is 52. Actor Scott Michael Campbell is 51. Actor Christopher Gorham is 48. Actor Mila Kunis is 39. Actor Lamorne Morris is 39. TV personality Spencer Pratt is 39. Former NFL player Tim Tebow is 35. Actor Marsai Martin is 18.

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AUGUST 15

On Aug. 15, 1969, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair opened in upstate New York.

In 1935, humorist Will Rogers and aviator Wiley Post were killed when their airplane crashed near Point Barrow in the Alaska Territory.

In 1945,in a pre-recorded radio address, Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced that his country had accepted terms of surrender for ending World War II.

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AUGUST 16

On Aug. 16, 1977, Elvis Presley died at his Graceland estate in Memphis, Tennessee, at age 42.

In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln issued Proclamation 86, which prohibited the states of the Union from engaging in commercial trade with states that were in rebellion — i.e., the Confederacy.

In 1948, baseball legend Babe Ruth died in New York at age 53.

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AUGUST 17

On Aug. 17, 1982, the first commercially produced compact discs, a recording of ABBA’s “The Visitors,” were pressed at a Philips factory near Hanover, West Germany.

In 1945, the George Orwell novel “Animal Farm,” an allegorical satire of Soviet Communism, was first published in London by Martin Secker & Warburg.

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AUGUST 18

On Aug. 18, 1587, Virginia Dare became the first child of English parents to be born in present-day America, on what is now Roanoke Island in North Carolina. (However, the Roanoke colony ended up mysteriously disappearing.)

In 1963, James Meredith became the first Black student to graduate from the University of Mississippi.

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AUGUST 19

On Aug. 19, 1960, a tribunal in Moscow convicted American U2 pilot Francis Gary Powers of espionage. (Although sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment, Powers was returned to the United States in 1962 as part of a prisoner exchange.)

In A.D. 14, Caesar Augustus, Rome’s first emperor, died at age 76 after a reign lasting four decades; he was succeeded by his stepson Tiberius.

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AUGUST 20

On Aug. 20, 1986, postal employee Patrick Henry Sherrill went on a deadly rampage at a post office in Edmond, Oklahoma, shooting 14 fellow workers to death before killing himself.

In 1862, the New York Tribune published an open letter by editor Horace Greeley calling on President Abraham Lincoln to take more aggressive measures to free the slaves and end the South’s rebellion.

In 1882, Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” had its premiere in Moscow.

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